“Polytheism is the belief in multiple deities; monotheism in just one. Atheism is a belief in no deity whatsoever. Through logical succession, it follows that this remains true when going into negative numbers, with belief systems involving minus 1 or more deities displaying unprecedented theological properties.”
Cookie Clicker is a game about clicking a cookie; a seemingly simple premise that hides a categorically ridiculous yet brilliantly existentialist piece of absurdist media. At its core lies the ‘news ticker,’ an in-game storytelling device that progresses with the player, going from fairly normal dialogue about strikes in cookie factories to screaming about ‘ancient baking artifacts’ being found on some alien planet and how “Suspiciously bald babies are on the rise; ancient alien cabal denies involvement.”
The gameplay itself is a surreal escalation of increasingly bizarre cookie-production mechanisms. You purchase grandmas to bake cookies for you, mines to uproot cookies from the core of the Earth, shipments to bring in cookies from outer space—but why stop there? You buy time machines to steal cookies before they are eaten, fractal engines to create cookies out of other cookies, chancemakers to apparate cookies out of pure air, and so on. The sheer quantity of cookies you produce is staggering: a billion to a trillion to a quadravigintillion, and yet it is never enough. This endless, progressive pursuit mirrors the existential struggle at the heart of absurdism.
The goal isn’t to win—there is no end. The goal is simply to get more cookies… forever. And so, as the numbers keep climbing, so does one’s desire to continue. This loop of meaningless accumulation is where the philosophy of the Absurd finds its true place. The Absurd, as referred to in philosophy, is the tension between humanity’s persistent quest for meaning and the universe’s silent indifference to it. Cookie Clicker, in all its magnificent simplicity and irreverent meaning, is symbolic of this struggle; you, the player, are at constant awareness of the complete nonsensical nature of the game you are playing. And yet, you continue.
Even as the Grandmas revolt, dwarfing cityscapes in eldritch horror, as Santa turns into some cookie-like abomination, as cookie-based lifeforms are found on alien planets: you continue.But beneath its absurdist humor, Cookie Clicker offers a critique—of you, the player. The heavy-handed, not-so-subtle critique of capitalism is a central theme throughout your progression in Cookie Clicker. You are exploiting this fictional world and all of its available resources (Grandmas, Factories, Alien civilizations) for your own personal gain, just like in the real world. After a certain point, the number of cookies you produce becomes meaningless. The pursuit of more cookies was never about the cookies themselves but rather about chasing some external measure, some value that you can judge your own progress and thus yourself by. And to achieve this aim, you have desecrated this fictional world. You’ve industrialized baking so thoroughly that cookies have become the currency of oppression: even your workers are paid in them.
And here lies the game’s ultimate reflection of the Absurd: by acknowledging the futility of the pursuit you find yourself engaged in, the only meaningful choice left is to stop playing. But stopping feels as futile as continuing, so you lean further into the absurdity and embrace the humor of it all.
My advice? Just read the upgrade descriptions—they’re pretty funny.