In the electronic game Among Us (2018), players take on the role of crewmates, shown in this image, originally on a spaceship. One or a few of the apparent crewmates is actually an impostor, tasked with killing crewmates and sabotaging their work.
Credit: © Awangart18, Shutterstock

Are your friends acting strangely? Have they begun accusing various colors of being “sus”? They haven’t necessarily lost their minds. They’re just going crazy for the latest video game sensation: Among Us.

Among Us is a multiplayer game in which players take on the role of crewmates, originally on a spaceship. Each crewmate is given a list of tasks to perform, such as repairing vital systems or refueling the engines. Crewmates accomplish these tasks by succeeding at minigames, smaller games within the main game. However, one or a few players are secretly assigned to be impostors. Impostors look like crewmates, but it is their job to sabotage equipment and kill crewmates without being discovered.

Among Us can be played via the internet or a local wireless network. The game is played from a top-down perspective, with players moving around a map. Each player has a limited field of vision, enabling impostors to sneak around and conduct their mischief. When the body of a dead crewmate is discovered, play stops, and the players are taken to a meeting. Players can also call an emergency meeting.

It is at the meetings that the game really gets wild. In a meeting, players share information in an attempt to deduce the identity of one or more impostors. The players can then vote to kick people off the crew, with the goal of kicking out the impostors. It may sound simple enough, but remember the impostors are in the meeting also, and they are indistinguishable from ordinary crewmates. The impostors can deceive, misdirect, and outright lie to the crewmates, coaxing them to vote an innocent crewmate off the ship. Players refer to one another by the color of their spacesuits at these meetings, for example declaring “Cyan is sus” (short for suspicious).

Among Us traces its style of play to a party game sometimes called Mafia or Werewolf. In that game, certain players are secretly selected to be “killers,” and the other players must work to deduce their identity. Among Us was developed by the game studio InnerSloth of Redmond, Washington, and released in 2018. Among Us exploded in popularity in mid-2020, partly through playthroughs (video recordings of gameplay) posted on the video-streaming service Twitch. In October, a stream of the United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez playing the game became one of the most widely viewed Twitch streams ever.

March 13, 2019

March is Women’s History Month in the United States. In honor of the celebration, World Book looks at U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In 2018, AOC—she is often referred to by her initials—became the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress. She turned 29 less than one month before her election victory in November 2018. Ocasio-Cortez is a Democrat from the Bronx borough of New York City.

In 2018, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She is 29 years old. Credit: U.S. House of Representatives

Ocasio-Cortez was born on Oct. 13, 1989, in the Bronx. Her father was from the Bronx, and her mother came from Puerto Rico. The family later moved to Westchester County, New York. Ocasio-Cortez graduated from high school in 2007. She received a bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics at Boston University in 2011. While a college student, she worked as an intern for Senator Edward Kennedy, focusing on immigration issues. After college, AOC returned to the Bronx, where she worked for a nonprofit organization promoting education and literacy. She also started a company that published children’s books emphasizing positive aspects of the Bronx, much of which has historically been troubled by crime and poverty. For several years, Ocasio-Cortez also worked as a waitress and bartender.

Ocasio-Cortez later became an organizer for the 2016 presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In 2017, AOC announced that she would challenge incumbent Democratic U.S. Representative Joe Crowley for the party’s 2018 nomination for New York’s 14th Congressional District. The district includes parts of Bronx and Queens counties in New York City. During the campaign, Ocasio-Cortez described herself as a democratic socialist. In democratic socialism, a democratically elected government enacts policies that encourage private companies to act in the public interest. Millions of users of the social media site Twitter followed AOC because of her lively, confident personality and her criticisms of both President Donald J. Trump and her own Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez defeated Crowley in the Democratic primary held in June 2018. As a candidate for Congress, she advocated for universal health care, tuition-free public college, and increasing the income tax rate paid by Americans who earn more than $10 million per year. Since taking her seat in the House in January 2019, AOC has promoted a number of major reforms, including a platform known as the “Green New Deal,” which calls for a system in which all the nation’s electricity would be produced by renewable sources such as the sun and wind.