Month: November 2010

#oneaday, Day 306: Need for Speed

My brother was good enough to send me a copy of the new Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It arrived this morning and I’ve spent a fair amount of time putting it through its paces today. I shall now share my thoughts for the benefit of those of you considering it.

In very simple terms, it can be described as “Burnout with real cars”. This is not in the slightest bit surprising, given developer Criterion’s history. But this is through-and-through a Burnout game, right down to the ways you earn boost and the cinematic “crash camera”. And not a Burnout Paradise interpretation of Burnout, either. Because although I loved that game, as did some of my friends, there are plenty of people out there who didn’t like it much, either, for various reasons.

Hot Pursuit returns to the roots of both the Need for Speed and the Burnout series, in that it is about driving impossibly-expensive and shiny cars through a variety of circuits in an effort to Be The Fastest Mo-Fo In The World. There’s no tacked-on story (besides the fact that the cops have outfitted themselves with some seriously heavy-duty automotive hardware) and no unnecessary fluff—it’s just a map screen, a series of events and a bunch of cars to unlock gradually according to your progress. Those who did enjoy the free-roaming nature of past Need for Speed games as well as Burnout Paradise are free to drive around the sprawling game world as they please to find events, but those who prefer kicking it old-school can just select events from a map. Best of both worlds. You have to wonder why this hasn’t been thought of previously.

The shining light in Hot Pursuit‘s arsenal of, err, light-emitting weapons (abandon metaphor!) is the Autolog system. Essentially an in-game social network, it sets out to do what Blur did, but better, and succeeds admirably. While racing any event, you have not only the single-player targets to beat, but also an “Autolog Recommends” target to beat, too. This way, when you do beat all the single-player events (and you will, eventually, because they’re not that difficult, at least to begin with) you have plenty of incentive to go back and beat your friends. This incentive is made even better by the fact that you have a Facebook-style “wall” on which you can brag about your Achievements and even write your own custom messages and comments. There’s a fairly heavy-duty naughty word filter in place, though, which inexplicably censored the post “This game is awesome. Time to take a break, now, though.” in its entirety. I haven’t seen bizarre censorship of this nature since Phantasy Star Online censored the words “shoes” and “Saturday” for having rude words in the middle of them.

Overzealous censorship aside, though, the Autolog feature is an excellent one. Every time you log in, assuming you have friends playing the game, you’ll have a new set of challenges to beat. Autolog even recommends friends of friends that are playing the game whom you may want to add to your Xbox friends lists. This is a smart idea—again, why hasn’t anyone thought to do this before?

Possibly my favourite thing, though, is the return of one of the best things about Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The cinematic “chase music” when you’re being chased by cops. While the licensed soundtrack that plays in cop-free events is solid enough, though fairly forgettable, the orchestral, cinematic music that plays in Hot Pursuit events gets the pulse pounding and adds a sense of urgency to these races. I’m glad to see the return of it.

I haven’t tried playing as a cop yet, though I’m anticipating an experience akin to a modern-day remake of Chase HQ. This is very much a Good Thing. Further reports as events warrant.

In summary, then: You like arcade racing? You gonna love this.

#oneaday, Day 305: My Content! No, MY Content!

I was watching a programme called It’s Only A Theory the other night. It’s an entertaining and thought-provoking show hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter in which they bring on a series of experts, get them to argue the case for their theory then make an arbitrary ruling on whether to accept or reject it.

The episode I watched featured a guy with terrible posture who was convinced that “user generated media is killing our culture and economy”. You can watch the episode from this point here if you’re in the UK.

The gist of the guy’s argument was that the sheer amount of user-generated content out… there (here?) on the Internet is killing established cultural phenomena, partly because of the “culture of free” that there is on the Internet. Why pay for stuff when you can get it for free?

He also argued that the predilection for misinformation and relative lack of censorship on the Internet meant that overtly biased material could easily make its way out into the wild and people assume it’s fact.

Take this video:

Despite it clearly being dubbed with someone pretending to hiccup and fart, it was all over the Internet yesterday, accompanied by hyperbolic language (“I literally couldn’t stop watching”) and more exclamation marks than your mother uses when writing an email.

It is kind of funny, fake or not, but that’s beside the point.

There was an interesting twist in the ever-running battle of “who invented [annoying meme x]” recently as Rage Guy found himself at the centre of controversy. According to Internet wisdom, a meme is apparently officially “over” as soon as Hot Topic make a T-shirt of it. Because once people in the street start going “FFFFFFUUUUUUU-” to each other, what hope is there?

4chan decided not to take this insult lying down, despite having milked the concept beyond dry for the last two years. Yesterday, this post appeared on Hot Topic’s Facebook page:

Someone had “tipped off” Hot Topic that “Rage Guy” was actually a racist comic featuring a guy called “Race Guy” and promptly set about creating a lengthy back catalogue of racist comics. Hot Topic, as a company in the public eye, did the only thing that they could do in the situation—withdrew the stock.

This being the Internet, though, they were of course informed of the prank within a matter of hours and a short while later, this post appeared:

As mildly amusing as all this was, it goes some distance to showing that user-generated media is probably never going to topple properly-produced, accredited and protected media. Both will undoubtedly exist side by side. But while the children of the Internet fight over what is “theirs”, play childish pranks on each other, throw their toys out of their respective prams and call each other “faggots”, the professionals will continue doing their thing, the same as they’ve always done, and be paid accordingly. Those with nothing better to do will tear each others’ eyes out over who came up with the concept of producing shitty comics in MS Paint first.

You wouldn’t catch the BBC World Service trolling Hot Topic.

#oneaday, Day 304: Head-Up Display

I’m a big sci-fi fan, as many of you will know. But one thing always confuses me when it comes to visual design for sci-fi movies, TV shows and games.

I am, of course, talking about the “information overload” screen displays. Take this example:

Look at all that shit all over his face. What does it mean?

And, from the same source (SEGA’s Vanquish, if you were curious):

Look at all that shit floating around her. What does it mean?

The future, it appears, will be filled with masses and masses of information floating around us in 360-degree 3D, very little of which we’ll actually need. And this is a pattern that is by no means limited to video games. We see it in movies, too. Any time you see a first-person view from a robot/android/cyborg/guy with mechanical penis that shoots lasers from the bellend, there’ll always be some inexplicable spinning numbers, wireframe graphics, text (inevitably in blue or green), blips or markers implying “scanning”.

Now, consider what a world where you’re bombarded with that much information in one go would be like. It’s bad enough having a hand-held device like an iPhone that showers you with push notifications, text messages, emails and all manner of other nonsense 24/7, but at least you can turn that off, switch it to silent, hide it in your sock drawer, whatever. But it seems that visual designers for sci-fi movies, TV shows and games believe that the future is filled with unnecessary, redundant and, often, meaningless information.

You don’t get sci-fi writers indulging in this, though, usually. Asimov’s Elijah Bailey never spent five pages worth of exposition staring at a green-hued computer screen wondering desperately which set of jiggling alphanumeric characters allowed him to open the door to his apartment, for example. If Charles Dickens wrote sci-fi, his protagonists might well do that. But, well, he’s not around to inflict that on us. Thank God.

In actuality, what we’re more likely to get, should we ever end up with head-mounted displays or computers in our brains, is something akin to a first-person shooter’s head-up display. Perhaps with the capability to install apps. So while you’re sitting in a boring meeting and not paying attention, you can be playing Snake instead. And no-one will be any the wiser, except when they see your eyes darting around to find the next apple. And when curious sound effects start emanating from your nostrils.

Actually, given the amount of time people waste with plain-sight devices like computers and smartphones, perhaps the ability to install apps into your own brain might not be the best idea.

So, the future then. Somehow I doubt it’s going to be quite the way it’s been represented to us in movies over the years. And that’s probably a good thing, since popular representations of the future often end up with most of us being horribly mutilated, raped and/or killed by machines/robots/aliens/demons from another dimension/the government.

The only hope is, of course, Star Trek.

#oneaday, Day 303: Panic Stations

Human beings, and especially British human beings, are inclined to panic at the most ridiculous things. It’s probably a side-effect of being bombarded with negativity from the media and the news—if something bad could happen, then it probably already has, they tell us. (Maybe. I’m making that up a bit.)

But really, there’s no need to concern yourselves with these things that might actually kill you. Seriously. Allow me to set your mind at rest for a few of these things that typically induce enormous amounts of panic.

The kettle isn’t turning off!

The kettle is boiling and it hasn’t made that familiar, comforting “click” of turning itself off, you say? Well, isn’t that a pickle? Still, it’s unlikely that your kettle will detonate like a bomb if you don’t turn it off manually. In actual fact, it probably will turn itself off after a moment if you just leave it. Or if you’re really that concerned, you can prevent inadvertent kettle detonation by simply turning it off yourself. You’ll find it will stop boiling pretty quickly.

The toilet won’t flush, and it’s not my toilet!

Oh no! You did your business and now you can’t get it to vacate the premises. How embarrassing! Because no-one else ever has a poo, right? You are literally the first person to ever have a poo in someone else’s toilet. And explaining this situation to your hosts will be mortifying.

Never fear. In actual fact, your hosts have probably deduced the fact you were having a poo from the fact that you’ve been in there for more than the few seconds a wee normally takes. Also, you took a magazine and/or your iPhone/Nintendo DS with you. Simply explain to them that their toilet doesn’t appear to be flushing and is there a special trick to it? Chances are if they live with an idiosyncratic toilet, they know how to talk to the toilet pixies and make it do the thing it’s supposed to do.

Someone said a mean thing on the Internet!

You made a valid argument on a subject you feel passionately about, and someone called you a douchebag, whilst not contributing to the discussion at all. There’s a simple solution to this problem: picturing the person who called you a douchebag. They’re probably not a ripped jock with a six-pack who has a bevy of beautiful women satisfying his every sexual need at all times. He’s probably an overweight gentleman with personal hygiene issues and a taste for Cheetos or similar snack foods.

This electrical device that was perfectly fine yesterday isn’t working!

Rather than assuming that it’s “broken” and wailing to the heavens, why not try checking the things that everyone forgets to check? Is it turned on? Plugged in? Is the socket working? Does it need new batteries? Does it need batteries at all?

On the off-chance that it is, in fact, “broken”, consider what your life was like before you had the device in question. Was it significantly worse? If yes, then go get it repaired or buy a new one. If no, then you can probably live without your smoothie-maker/light-up dildo/automatic toilet paper dispenser.

I disagree with your opinion!

It’s okay. Really. That’s why it’s called an “opinion”. Well, it might not technically be the reason that the word “opinion” was chosen. But you are perfectly entitled to have your own opinion on something, and to be able to voice that opinion. You should also be prepared to deal with any consequences for voicing that opinion. If you slag off Call of Duty: Black Ops on the biggest Call of Duty fan site in the world, you’re probably going to get called a douchebag by someone. If you stand naked in the middle of the street yelling “I AM A NAZI!” you will probably get arrested. If you tweet “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!!” then you will probably get prosecuted.

This online service which I don’t pay anything for isn’t working!

Twitter down? Facebook failing? Reddit “under heavy load”? GO OUTSIDE.

No further questions, y’honor.

#oneaday, Day 302: Faceache

So, apparently Facebook are launching their own email service. Here’s a writeup on it from the very lovely Keri Honea. Go read it and support her work. Then come back. I’ll wait. I’ll even stay open in this tab while you go and read it.

Okay. Here’s the thing. Facebook is so prevalent in modern online life, so splattered all over pretty much everything we do on the Internet, that setting up an email service probably makes sense for them. After all, there’s a bunch of people who already spend a considerable amount of time on the site each day, and not all of them play Farmville, even. So why not incorporate their email into it, too?

Now, granted, few of us have had the chance to test out the new features yet. And there are a few neat ideas in there, like the filtering options, which are apparently pretty cool. But the thing that will give some people—particularly the more net-savvy amongst us—pause is Facebook’s rapidly-eroding reputation for personal privacy violations.

There are all sorts of responses to this. No, you shouldn’t post things on there that you’re not happy to share with the world—just like any website. But you don’t always have complete control over everything you appear in. The tagging process, while cool in principle, is open to all sorts of abuse and has been the source of many arguments I’ve heard in the street. This is something which wouldn’t have happened five years ago.

And then there’s the controversy over exactly how “personal” your personal information remains, even with all your privacy settings jacked up to the max. Sure, you may be able to lock off your wall, photos, messages and all manner of other things from prying eyes. Everyone, that is, except for advertisers. Those supposedly “targeted” ads on Facebook that get everywhere—what will happen once email, an inherently more private form of communication, enters the picture? Will we start seeing targeted ads on Facebook based on your emails?

Yeah, GMail does this already. But at least GMail’s ads are non-obtrusive, limiting themselves to simple text links that are at least relevant to the message you’re reading at the time. But imagine, just hypothetically speaking of course, that you sign yourself up to a particular kind of site that you don’t really want to talk to other people about. It could be a dating site. It could be a porn site. It could be a forum specialising in some sort of obscure fetish which only you and a gentleman from Bulgaria frequent. But the advertisers spot this, and so the ad campaigns begin.

This isn’t a problem until you decide to show someone who’s popped over for coffee this hilarious new link you posted earlier today. You click over onto your profile and BOOM! Ads for tortoise porn. Or something.

Okay, it’s a bit of a kneejerk reaction, of course, and Facebook themselves claim that they’re not intending to be a competitor to the big boys of the webmail arena. But given the huge number of Facebook subscribers, it’s not unreasonable to assume that a goodly proportion of those people will happily opt-in without checking the terms and conditions thoroughly. Which, as many people have been finding out, is becoming more and more important to do.

I remember joining Facebook a good few years back. It was a relatively small community that was kept private to your close group of specifically-allowed friends. It was a good place to post photos and private-ish messages, and a complete contrast to the other big-hitter at the time, MySpace. Nowadays, though? Facebook is something of a running joke to long-standing users of the Internet, many of whom have either switched completely to Twitter, or only use Facebook when dealing with people who don’t understand Twitter.

Trends change over time, and it’s possible that Facebook will eventually fall from grace completely when the next Greatest Thing Ever comes along. What will happen to those petabytes of data they’re storing about everyone then? Including, now, super-private emails? You can guarantee that not everyone will remember to delete their accounts and remove any incriminating “evidence” from there.

Simple solution: scale back on your Facebook use and find alternatives. I barely use Facebook these days. I’m a Twitter man primarily, and am slowly creeping around to using GMail as my email client of choice. Can’t argue with perfection.

In short: if you email me anything @facebook.com, I probably won’t be reading it, because I’ll assume anything that comes to that address will be something to do with Farmville. I am yet to hear anyone in my group of friends say something positive about the prospect of having a Facebook email address. Why not be the first? Convince me why it’s a good idea in the comments!

Or, you know, don’t. Your choice, really.

Free bonus: What Your Email Address Says About You, from The Oatmeal

#oneaday, Day 301: I’ve Read It

I’ve been on Reddit before. I didn’t find it terribly intuitive, and the sheer volume of information on it was daunting and offputting. Sure, I helped support friends’ submissions when I could, but delving into the whole thing proper just seemed like a frankly terrifying prospect.

However, yesterday, I felt differently. Spurred on by this article, which several people had posted to Twitter seemingly independently of one another, I decided to give the community another look. I decided to just dive in and start looking at things, rather than getting analysis paralysis whilst looking at the front page.

And that, seemingly, is the way to do it. There is so much content on Reddit that it is impossible (and probably undesirable) to read it all. So you pick and choose the things that you’re interested in.

Now, I know that there are several people amongst those who follow me who are still utterly bewildered as to what Reddit is and what its appeal is. So, with apologies to those of you who are already well familiar with what Reddit is and how it works, here is, erm, what Reddit appears to be and how it appears to work, after a mighty one day’s experience of use.

Perhaps the easiest way of thinking about it is that it’s the world’s biggest forum. Users can post things, which are either links to other sites or “self posts”, which are simple messages. Attached to each post are two things: upvote and downvote buttons, and a comment facility. Upvoting or downvoting something promotes or demotes the content, making it more likely to rise to the top of the page (or not, as the case may be). And then the comments underneath are threaded, just like on most blogs these days.

It’s in these comment sections that the excellence of Reddit shows itself, though. A far cry from your average YouTube commenter (“u suck!!!!! lol!”), Reddit contributors and commenters appear to be, for the most part, mature, articulate, literate individuals with fantastic senses of humour and some of the quickest punning minds I’ve ever come across. It’s a community that, after lurking for a few days, I certainly wanted to be a part of. Discussion is (from what I’ve seen so far, at least) mature, thought-provoking but not afraid to lapse into a bit of silliness from time to time.

And diverse. Good God, Reddit is diverse. If you have a particular niche interest, you can pretty much guarantee there will be a “subreddit” for it. Whether you’re into gaming, gardening, FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU- comics, porn, music, Uzbekistani sledgehammer dancing… chances are you will find someone there with the same freaky tastes as you. And for those embarrassing questions that you really want to ask people, the creation of “throwaway” sock puppet accounts is actively encouraged to help everyone feel comfortable enough to say what they feel. Many Redditors use their main accounts, though, as the atmosphere of help and support in the appropriate subreddits is, at times, a shining example of what the Internet can be.

A poster I read earlier described Reddit as 4chan 3 days late with a filter for all the disgusting, gross and/or illegal crap. Which isn’t exactly high praise, but I can see their point. 4chan, love it or hate it, originates (or at least popularises) many of the words, phrases and memes we take for granted on the Internet today. But then those who are too scared to delve into the murky waters of 4chan (like me… I’m not ashamed) can come across this stuff without unwittingly stumbling into gore porn via Reddit. Everyone’s a winner.

Oh, just one tip, though… if you’re not interested in seeing a wide selection of user peens (interspersed with a few boobies) then just steer clear of /r/gonewild.

#oneaday, Day 300!

Other people may have made it to this milestone before me, but here I am: day 300. I am going to resist any “This Is Sparta”-type quotes here, largely because I haven’t seen 300 and also because that whole meme is kind of played out, really.

So, here we are. This day arrived with little in the way of fanfare and, in fact, a bunch of tweets and posts ranting about things which happened to other people. But I think today of all days I’ve earned the right to be a bit selfish, to say things about me. So that’s what I’m going to do.

This is very much the home stretch now, of course, with just 65 days remaining until I’ve completed a full year of non-stop blogging. Well, not non-stop, but daily. You know what I mean.

It’s been one hell of a journey, as those who have been following from the start (and prior to that) will be able to attest. And it’s not, naturally, the course I would have chosen this year to take had I the opportunity to decide my own destiny on a moment-to-moment basis. But, unfortunately, sometimes the consequences of the things you do and the choices you make aren’t immediately apparent, and it’s not until months or years later that you realise you were heading down one road when you thought you were heading down another. A big step in life’s journey is accepting that sometimes things don’t go the way you expect them to, and thus you will have to learn to deal with them, for better or worse. Most of the time, you do have choices, although they might not be clear at the time. And, decisions to murder, rape and pillage notwithstanding, there are no “wrong” choices per se, so long as you’re just willing to deal with the knock-on effects that your choices have.

Back on January 19 of this year, I made the decision to take on the #oneaday challenge. It’s a decision I’m glad I took, as it’s a habitual process now; it’s something I enjoy doing every day and if nothing else, it’ll provide an interesting record of a particularly difficult year in my life. It got me to thinking, though; does every year contain as many “events” as this one has? In my 29-and-a-bit years on this planet, is every year so filled with things that are “interesting” and affecting? Quite possibly; it’s just that most of the time, things happen, they pass by and you forget about them. And making a note of them may make some things seem bigger than they actually are. But on the flip-side, looking back at things that happened with the benefit of hindsight can make you feel better about them.

I’m not saying this is how I’d have chosen 2010 to go for myself. If I had completely free choice, I’d have won the lottery, bought an exciting car, be living in a nice (but not excessive house) with at least one cat and maybe be doing a bit of freelancing. Or possibly I might have invented faster-than-light travel and gone into space. I couldn’t say. I didn’t have completely free choice, sadly.

But here I am, 300 days later, and I’m at a stage where I can look back in a contemplative manner, stroke my beard and go “Hmm”. This is a better state to be in than I have been in the past. So here’s hoping that over the next 65 days that things only continue to get better.

And to all of you who have been following this blog, however long you’ve been reading it for, thanks for coming along for the ride. Your thoughts, comments and support have been very much appreciated. Here’s to that final push.

#oneaday, Day 299: The Internet Hits Me… But It Loves Me

The Internet is, as I’ve said a number of times on this blog, a fabulous invention. I certainly wouldn’t be without it and the friends I’ve found because of it, the things I’ve learned from it, and all manner of other good stuff.

Paul Chambers, he of the #TwitterJokeTrial, certainly wouldn’t be without it either. Because today has been a pretty remarkable demonstration of solidarity and support for him, with huge proportions of Twitter reposting his original “menacing” tweet in full, coupled with the hashtag “#IAmSpartacus”. The story even made The Guardian earlier. The principle behind the thing, if you haven’t worked it out for yourself anyway, is that if everyone was posting the exact same thing that Chambers posted and was not, in fact, getting arrested for it, then clearly his conviction and the failure of his appeal is utter nonsense.

And so far, there have been no reports of anyone getting a friendly knock on the door from their local bobby. Which is good.

It was actually quite heartwarming to see Twitter—a community of, essentially, strangers—coming together to show an enormous amount of unified support for someone who is still technically a stranger to most of us. The vast majority of people posting the #IAmSpartacus tweets don’t know Chambers personally. But they understand what his plight represents—a pretty serious threat to not only free speech, but the British sense of humour as well. Whatever will be the eventual conclusion to the whole fiasco is still shrouded in mystery. But in the meantime, Chambers is doubtless sleeping a little easier at night knowing that to many people, he’s a hero of sorts.

So that’s all very nice, and one of many examples of how The Internet is clearly a Force for Good. (Of course, some might, at this stage, point out that if there was no Internet Chambers wouldn’t have got into this situation in the first place, but let’s just leave that argument to one side for a moment, shall we?)

And then we get this:

Source

Good old 4Chan, cesspool of the Internet, originator of some of the funniest and/or most irritating (depending on your outlook) memes to do the rounds on the Web. There they are, genuinely proposing to flood Tumblr with gore, porn, child pornography and “the worst [they] can offer”, which probably means “all of the above”.

Now granted, Tumblr is a bit of a hipster hangout that is full of people who do nothing but post pretentious photographs, “inspirational” quotes and tame pornography. But there are also plenty of people out there who use it as their blogging platform of choice. With good reason—it’s a simple system for sharing text, photos, video and audio that is mobile-friendly. There’s no extraneous features or plugins to worry about, it’s just type, post, go. Couple that with the built-in community features and, to some, it’s like an extended Twitter with no character limits. Not just for hipsters, see.

Whether 4Chan will actually go through with their threat or not is kind of beside the point. The fact that the possibility of such a campaign was even considered is the thing which makes me want to invest in an expansive hammer collection. According to Urlesque, earlier today there wasn’t a huge amount of traction for the plan. Which is kind of encouraging, I guess, but it still sucks that there are a bunch of a-holes out there who feel the need to wave their e-peen around at every opportunity.

Whoever came up with the campaign seems genuinely affronted that Tumblr, as a community, is trying to “imitate” 4Chan. Now, there are many things to aspire to in life. But to aspire to being 4Chan is not something that most people would say with pride. And it’s pretty likely that a considerable proportion of Tumblr’s users aren’t even aware of what 4Chan is in the first place. So the particular “Anonymous” who has his (you know it’s a “he”, and likely a “he” who has never known the touch of a woman/man, depending on preference) panties in a bunch over Tumblr’s “imitation” of 4Chan is clearly just looking for an excuse to wipe his dick on everybody’s curtains.

Still, as ever, it comes back to the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, which I’ve posted links to on this blog more times than I care to remember. I guess once more can’t hurt.

Basically, Internet, you’re capable of showing the very best and/or worst the human race has to offer at a moment’s notice. So it should hopefully go without saying by now that the words you should live your life by are very simple: always follow Wheaton’s Law.

Don’t be a dick.

#oneaday, Day 298: Did You Hear The One About The [REDACTED] And The #TwitterJokeTrial?

If the name Paul Chambers doesn’t mean anything to you at the moment, then take a moment to read this summary of the day’s proceedings, courtesy of The Guardian.

The TL;DR version (God, I hate that phrase and wish it, and everyone who uses it unironically, would die in a f… would, err, live a long and happy life filled with kittens and/or puppies, whichever they preferred, really, because it’s up to them how they live their lives and I love them, whatever they decide) is this: Chambers made an (arguably) ill-advised joke on Twitter about blowing Robin Hood Airport “sky high”. It was a throwaway comment that got blown (pardon) out of all proportion and, thanks to some very, very silly people, has been treated as something roughly approaching a mid-level terrorist incident.

The conclusions of the judge today were that Chambers’ original comment was “obviously menacing” and that any “ordinary person” would “be alarmed”.

Funny, then, that Twitter itself has been full of bomb threats, incitements to violence, discussions of inflicting bodily harm on individuals, and no-one else (save Conservative councillor for Birmingham, Gareth Compton, who made some similarly ill-advised comments, got bollocked and then promptly released on bail) has been arrested for it.

The long and short of it, though, is that Chambers’ appeal was unsuccessful, meaning he is now lumbered with a mounting legal bill and fine which—bless him—Stephen Fry has offered to pay, but members of the public have been generously donating to, also. (Find out how you can help too here).

Chambers has lost his job as a result of one silly comment on Twitter that clearly wasn’t intended to be “menacing” in the slightest. What sort of incompetent terrorist hatches their plans via social media anyway? Everyone knows they still use cassettes and VHS tapes. But the fact stands; this poor chap has had his life pretty much destroyed as a result of an almost total abandonment of Common Sense.

I like to think of myself as a fairly ordinary person, and I certainly wasn’t menaced by Chambers’ tweet. I wasn’t even aware of it until this whole legal fiasco started—but I follow plenty of people who make comments which could, according to Judge Jacqueline Davies, be interpreted as “menacing” and “alarming”. Are they all going to be arrested now? Or was Chambers set up to be made an example of? Certainly if the authorities are intending prosecuting everyone who has made mock “bomb threats” on Twitter today, they’d better get started now, because it’s going to take a good long while, and lots of courthouse space to get it all sorted.

Or perhaps they could, you know, focus on some actual crimes. Perhaps they could take some steps to deal with kids carrying knives, youth gangs, burglaries, assaults, murders, even fucking traffic incidents carry more weight than a ridiculous comment on Twitter.

Or even—here’s a thought—they could invest some resources into tracking down actual, genuine terrorists and foiling their plots before they happen. But perhaps that’s too difficult, and it’s much easier to make a scapegoat of a poor fella who was simply excited to spend time with the love of his life, and was frustrated by the fact that the airport’s closure was making that look more and more unlikely.

So, moral of the story, kids? Be careful what you say. Otherwise Big Broth—

[THE REMAINDER OF THIS BLOG POST HAS BEEN REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND. PLEASE DIRECT ALL ENQUIRIES TO [email protected]]

#oneaday, Day 297: Read This Or I’ll Punch You In The Balls/Face

The latest episode of The Squadron of Shame SquadCast is currently uploading. In it, we discuss the ever-present topic of video game violence. Is it really destroying our children and turning them into violent assholes?

Well, you’ll have to listen to the podcast for our group conclusions, but here’s my take on the whole thing. Video game violence has now been around for some time. In fact, it’s been around for quite a bit longer than some people realise. A couple of the guys brought up Forbidden Forest on the Commodore 64, a game which, while laughable now, was pretty shocking and gory for the time. I know that certainly five-year old me would have been freaked out by the big-ass spiders.

One side-effect of the violence issue being around for so long is that it’s now somewhat taken for granted. Whether or not this is “desensitisation” per se is a matter of opinion. But the fact is, violence in video games is very rarely shocking these days. Shoot someone in Call of Duty and it doesn’t carry much in the way of emotional impact, because you do it so much. Shoot someone in Heavy Rain, though, and it carries much more gravitas due to the context, and the fact it happens less.

But desensitisation to violence in the video games medium doesn’t mean that we as a culture are desensitised to violence as a whole. I’ve played a ton of games that involve ultra-violence, dismemberment, heads exploding, that sort of thing. One of my favourite games in recent memory was Bayonetta, which features a huge range of over-the-top violence and implements of extreme torture. But if I saw something like that happening in real life, I would be horrified and disgusted. I see a photograph of something violent and I feel sick. And anything involving eyes—even if it’s just on a TV show or a movie—ugh, count me out.

So it’s clear, then, that video games haven’t desensitised me, personally, to anything except video game violence, which is something much more akin to cartoon violence than anyone else. I doubt there’s anything that can adequately prepare you for real-world violence and gore, save being immersed in it for some time by being either a psychopath or a soldier on active duty. And neither of those things are particularly desirable.

What I have observed, though, is a knock-on effect from some of these games, and it’s not necessarily the violence itself that is to blame. Back where I used to live, a lot of kids used to play in the streets rather noisily. Nothing unusual, you might say, until you heard the language they were coming out with. It became abundantly clear to me from listening to them, and the fact I had played through Modern Warfare 2 relatively recently, that they were re-enacting something they’d seen in a video game. And the parents didn’t seem to care that their kids—aged between about 5 and 10, I’d wager—were out in the street, yelling “MOTHERFUCKER!” at each other and threatening to blow each others’ legs off.

“Kids will be kids,” is the easy response, of course. But these kids picked up on this material from somewhere, and obviously hadn’t had a discussion with their parent(s) about what was appropriate to be shouting in the street, and what wasn’t.

I don’t envy the task that parents have these days. There is so much crap out there that kids can access easily. So the challenge is not to stop them from seeing it at all—that’s an impossible mission that grows more impossible by the day—but to help them understand what is and isn’t “appropriate” in certain contexts. And some parents, it seems, just can’t be bothered to have those conversations. And, as a result, assholes beget assholes.

It’s a big topic, far more than just one blog post can cover. Want to hear more? Then check out the latest episode of the SquadCast, which will be up online very soon. Head over to the Squadron of Shame Squawkbox in the meantime to debate the issue.