Fake History
- Paulie
- Dec 29, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
"History is filled with liars" - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Paulie here again, heyyyyyyyy. You thought you could get rid of me? You can expect some of my bullshit in your inbox every now and then, as a lil bonus whilst our writers cook up some more sauce for you. I'm like the warm up act. Onwards...
What a year. We’re in a period which can be classified as “loads” right now, with things happening all the time. We’re also in era of “post-truth”, where it’s really really hard to keep up with what’s actually real and what’s been AI generated, or spun by a compulsive narcissistic liar, or spread as misinformation and so on. Naturally, I can’t speak on all of that without this essentially becoming doomscrolling. But for this letter, I thought it’d be fun to explore instances throughout history and culture, where we’ve made up our own versions of history, for better or worse.
JFK Reloaded
When John F Kennedy was shot in the head by [REDACTED] in 1963, it immediately struck the nation as the first and to date only, televised assassination of a sitting U.S. president. The now iconic image of Jackie Kennedy trying desperately to escape the car in horror as secret service swarm the vehicle is both harrowing and fixating. I think assassinations, particularly of American presidents sit so prominently in the cultural zeitgeist not only because the complicated logistics of an assassination lend themselves to conspiracies and investigation, but because of the symbolic power they hold over the public psyche. If the most powerful people in the world can be reached and made vulnerable, am I safe? Is my neighbourhood safe?
We saw this year how the attempted assassination of Donald Trump likely helped him yap his way back into office; the raised fist amongst the gaggle of secret service agents became a key image of the election, a symbol of his apparent virility versus a withered opponent who could just as easily be assassinated by a set of stairs.
I digress. What if you could kill JFK yourself? Was the question asked and answered by Traffic Games founder Kirk Ewing in 2004, with their first and only video game release, JFK Reloaded. The name itself likely a tongue in cheek reference to The Matrix Reloaded from the year prior, JFK Reloaded allowed you to recreate the assassination from Lee Harvey Oswald’s perspective, stood in the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Using remarkably sophisticated bullet physics (for 2004 anyway) and a game engine that borrowed heavily from the 1997 title Carmageddon, the simulation game allowed the user to aim three bullets at the motorcade, with bonus points for historical accuracy.
