I am not one to give in to online outrage, in most cases, I find it performative. I don’t typically get mad or feel moral indignation when someone does or says something shitty on the internet, but like with everything in life, there are exceptions.
And Tenderloin Night Shift is a fucking exception.
Tenderloin Night Shift is an in-browser FPS (First Person Shooter) video game where you kill scores of “zombies” in San Francisco’s most disadvantaged neighborhood, the Tenderloin. The zombies are modeled after the neighborhood’s unhoused population. They even have a class of zombies called “The Folded” that resemble people struggling with fentanyl addiction.
To say this game is in bad taste is an understatement. But the game, made by Y Combinator alumni, Pierre-Louis Biojout, isn’t just a reflection of one techie transplant being a gigantic piece of shit, it’s indicative of a growing contempt for anyone in San Francisco who isn’t a rich, privileged asshole flush with tech money.
Since the beginning of the dot com boom in the 1990s, and then the tech boom of the 2010s, and now the AI boom of today, San Francisco has experienced waves of high income workers in the tech field. And when those workers make their way to the city, San Francisco prioritizes them and their needs over the needs of the city’s middle and working class, as well as the needs of their most vulnerable population: the unhoused.
These vulnerable populations are mostly clustered in places like the Tenderloin, which is exactly where Tenderloin Night Shift, a game simulating the mass slaughter of the city’s most vulnerable, takes place.
But the dehumanization and murder of impoverished residents in the Tenderloin doesn’t just stay on the screen; it’s something San Francisco has been doing for years.
In 2023, Banko Brown, a trans man who had experienced homelessness since the age of 12, walked into a Walgreens on Market Street, not far outside the official boundaries of the Tenderloin, and allegedly stole a sandwich and a few other snacks from the store. This led to a physical altercation with an armed security guard.
The security guard won the fight without needing to use his firearm, and yet, after the altercation, as Banko was leaving, the security guard shot Brown in the chest. Brown later died of his wounds at a local hospital.
The security guard faced no criminal liability for his actions; despite there being footage of the incident, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins refused to charge the security guard with the murder of Banko Brown.
Earlier this year, Daniel Lurie, mayor of San Francisco, and billionaire heir to the Levi Jeans fortune, approached Tony Phillips, an unhoused man in the Tenderloin and asked him to vacate an alleyway. When the man refused, one of Lurie’s bodyguards (an SFPD officer) violently shoved Phillips to the ground, as the Mayor casually watched with both hands in his suit pockets. After Phillips got back up, Lurie's guard shoved him back to the ground a second time, and a struggle ensued.
The mayor then runs away, and SFPD arrested Phillips.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins charged Phillips with felony assault and resisting arrest.
However, security footage of the incident spread quickly online and directly contradicted Lurie and the bodyguard’s story.
Tony Phillips could be facing up to 2-5 years in prison if convicted. As of publication, there is no indication that the charges have been dropped.
Both incidents precede the release of Tenderloin Night Shift. The game didn’t come out of nowhere.
No matter how disgusting and genuinely offensive I find it, this kind of overt indifference to the suffering of others and simulated murder of San Francisco’s most at-risk residents serves as an unintentional mirror to a city and a culture of contemporary wealth that’s increasingly cruel and completely out of touch.
