You Cheated Not Only the Game, But Yourself

About

You Cheated Not Only the Game, But Yourself refers to a viral tweet made by Twitter user @Fetusberry in which he criticized PC Gamer journalist James Davenport for resorting to cheats to beat the final boss in 2019 video game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Starting in April 2019, the tweet has been parodied and used as a copypasta, often in reference to well-known exploits used in video games and lifehacks.

Origin

On April 5th, 2019, PC Gamer published an article by game journalist James Davenport titled "I Beat Sekiro's Final Boss With Cheats and I Feel Fine".^[1] In the article, the journalist admitted using a game mod which allowed slowing the speed of the game, and using it to beat the final boss by decreasing the in-game speed to 50%.

Some might say I missed out on the intended catharsis, sidestepping the 'artist's intent.' So what? There’s nothing to preserve for the greater good in Sekiro’s design. I'll get what I can from it. And I got a lot from Sekiro.

On April 5th, PC Gamer Twitter account posted a tweet linking to the article (shown below, left).^[2] On the same day, Twitter user @Fetusberry quoted the tweet, writing "You cheated not only the game, but yourself (shown below, right).^[3] The tweet gained over 5,000 retweets and 21,000 likes in four days.

You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference.

Spread

In the following days, the tweet gained popularity as a copypasta, often paired with screenshots and videos of popular video game cheats, exploits and speedrunning techniques. For example, on April 7th, 2019, Twitter user @CartridgeGames posted the copypasta with a screenshot of Backwards Long Jump trick from Super Mario 64 mid-execution.^[4] The tweet gained over 350 retweets and 1,300 likes in two days (shown below).

On the same day, Twitter user @NitroRad recorded a dramatic narration of the copypasta.^[5]

On April 8th, 2019, Redditor zoink69 posted the copypasta to /r/copypasta subreddit,^[6] where it received over 110 upvotes in 24 hours.

Related Memes

You Didn't Beat the Game

You Didn't Beat the Game and You Didn't Beat the Boss refers to the argument that using a certain in-game mechanic, such as Summons or Bleed in Elden Ring, disqualifies the player from being considered to have beaten the game. The argument, which was used by hardcore Soulslike since 2018, inspired counter-arguments, memes, and parodies.

Various Examples

External References