PWN Washington!
This article has some fairly interesting ideas on the subject of gaming and the internet being once again demonised by the media and governments:
There are some problems with the author’s logic which I think are mainly there for the sake of brevity, (as well as some heinious crimes of proof-reading in the first couple of paragraphs, but I’m really not in a position to judge).
For example, the implied assertion that 100 million MySpace users represents a workable army of letter writers or voters for social change ignores the fact that that figure is spread across several countries, and any issues that might concern them would most likely be localised, so the number of users who could usefully be used in any given situation would be diminished considerably.
(It also ignores the fact that most people using the internet and online games are argumentative assholes who would sooner stab each other in the back to the detriment of their community than put some effort into actually making things better, but maybe I’m just being cynical)
But as a call to look at changing how we deal with these issues, and creating a few new areas for debate to continue in, it’s still pretty thought-provoking, because a “considerably diminished” portion of 100 million people is still an awful lot of people.
(Although part of me thinks that what Ondrejka‘s suggesting is brain-spazzingly obvious that I’m clearly just behind the curve again, and the rest of you have been thinking about this stuff for ages.)
Cousin George
MySpace has 100 million users? Wow… that’s a big number even if you half it to remove the number of users which are people’s second accounts (fan sites, band sites etc).
What’s the user count on something like eBay or Google?
Also worth remembering about MySpace is that it’s now owned by News International and I’m pretty sure that Rupert Murdoch can work a lobby when he wants to…
btw – second link goes somewhere interesting, but probably not what you had intended (if so – I missed the point!)
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Not sure about the other sites. The more I think about the 100 million figure, the more crazy it sounds, to be honest… but I suppose it is possible.
That’s a good point about Murdoch, but I guess when you’re worrying about fighting the establishment, it’s difficult to know where Murdoch would stand… he pretty much is the establishment.
And yeh, that second link was intentional, I think (panicked for a second that I’d accidentally dropped in a link to my slutporn.xxx account). Was looking for a more concise version of the story, but essentially it boils down to the fact that the guy in the story was stitched up by rivals from Wikipedia.
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Cousin George
Well, apparantly “Tom has 84937041 friends”..
I’ll put the commas in so it’s easier… 84,937,041.
Assuming that’s true – you can add onto it the ones that have removed him from their friends list (like myself) and maybe it is 100 million.
Still looks like shitloads but there you go!!
And you weren’t talking about ‘the establishment’ you were talking about legislation and governments. Different things – particulalry if you believe the conspiricies…
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
That’s a point well taken.
And Tom almost makes me feel inadequate with that friend amount…
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Vanessa
Nick – this is MY “progressive” Washington State you’re talking about in the initial post. Not only is it now illegal to use online gaming sites (except, of course, our beloved-and-local horse racing), but so are websites that TALK about online gaming sites, or give advice or LINKS to online gaming sites (except, of course, our state lottery).
You haven’t heard me on my soapbox yet. Get me started. Come on. I dare you.
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Vanessa – What, seriously? How do they even enforce a law like that…? That sounds a bit scary and draconian, to me…
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Vanessa
Well, the state just figures that it needs to protect the fragile and naive citizens of Washington from the perils of international gambling. They would much rather we lose our gambling dollars in the tribal casinos here. They are going to have to set up a special commission just to patrol the ether.
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Cousin George
Wanna bet on how successful that will be?
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Yeh, I’m guessing there’ll be a few high-profile cases where they cause controversy by pulling a few pale, overweight, spotty teenagers, blinking, out of their parent’s basements for “questioning”, costing millions of taxpayers’ dollars for relatively little result (compared to, say, the result you get when a remote control missile costing the same amount is used on a foreign “soft target”).
At which point, the campaign/legislation will go underground, trying not to draw attention to how fundamentally retarded an idea it was in the first place.
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