#oneaday, Day 254: Be The First Of Your Friends To Like This

I remember back in primary school we were encouraged to never use the words "nice" or "said" because they were boring. There are always better words to use, we were told, so we should be creative and extend our vocabularies.

Fast forward to today and we have much the same issue with the word "like", a word which is rapidly losing all meaning thanks to its total domination over the social networking space. Every day on Facebook, it's a fair bet that there is at least one entry in everyone's news feed that says "Amber likes OMG!! Where did you get you're shoes LOL! on ♥." or "Bob likes I hate it when your trying 2 go 2 sleep and u cant on Likebook." Not only do these sentences make no sense, they're a symbol of a peculiar shift in communication styles that has taken place in recent years, particularly amongst teens and tweens.

Essentially, rather than just typing "I hate it when you're trying to go to sleep and you can't" and sharing that particular inanity with the world (not to mention spelling it correctly), it seems that it's now much more the done thing to go and find a website which lists hundreds of said inanities for the sole purpose of allowing people to Like them on Facebook. There's a kind of "distancing" involved. Anyone can click "Like" on something. As soon as you write it yourself, it becomes more personal, and harder to do.

Trouble is, the word "Like" is being used so much that it stops making sense sometimes. Or its context is completely inappropriate. Take the latest "check-in" craze, GetGlue, which is actually a pretty neat idea. Users tag the things that they, yes, like as well as the things that they dislike and can then get suggestions of other things they might like based on other users' tastes. Fair enough. However, when a site offers you the opportunity to not only "Like" ebola but also check into it, you have to question if the correct terminology is really being used in this instance.

And where's the opportunity to dislike things? GetGlue is unusual in that it does specifically allow people to say "I don't like this". There's no opportunity to do that on Facebook. If a friend posts a status update that informs everyone that, say, their leg has fallen off and their family are dead and not only that, someone posted a bag of poo through their letterbox then the only things to do are to "Like" it, which seems rather tactless and inappropriate, or to actually leave a comment which will probably start with "I wish there was a Dislike button" and end with too many exclamation marks.

Perhaps Facebook is attempting to make us all more positive. Instead of writing "I'm so sad. My family are dead, my leg has fallen off and someone posted a bag of poo through my letterbox" which, let's face it, no-one is going to click "Like" on, perhaps you should put a positive spin on it. "My family are dead, my leg has fallen off and someone posted a bag of poo through my letterbox. But at least I found 76p in small change in my jacket pocket, Snickers later ftw!!!"

aplenty from there on, I feel.

#oneaday, Day 114: Social Peril

My good friend Mr George Kokoris had this to say about people and social media earlier. Go read it. He has some very valid concerns, especially in light of Facebook's increasingly cavalier attitude towards personal privacy.

I used to like Facebook. I used to like it because it wasn't like MySpace – I remember saying this to several people. I tried MySpace and didn't really get it. It seemed to be a friend-collecting competition with some of the most hideous web design you can possibly imagine. Facebook used to be different, though. It used to limit you to people you actually know. In fact, you used to have to say how you knew the person you were adding as a friend, much like immensely boring but practical professional networking site LinkedIn still does. As a result, it became a great way for keeping in touch with family and friends. Everyone felt confident and secure in the fact that your information was yours, and that the only people you were sharing it with were people you had specifically approved. In short, it felt like a secure means of communication. I liked it for this.

As time passed, we all know the story. Groups. Applications. Pages. A dwindling sense of security. Employers using employees photographs of drunken nights out as grounds to mistreat them. Until we reach today, when a large number of people I know are seriously considering ditching their Facebook accounts altogether in favour of alternative, more secure means of communication. Or, ironically, Twitter, one of the most open and public means of communication there is.

But at least on Twitter it never claims to be anything other than public. Your profile on Twitter consists of your avatar, your username and 140 characters of "bio". Your conversations are public (unless you specifically choose to protect your tweets, which kind of defeats one of the main objects of the service) and anyone can chip in at any time. It's a simple, effective means of asynchronous communication which means that people speak frankly, briefly and candidly.

This gets people in trouble. Sometimes, a lot of trouble. Paul Chambers found this out the hard way.

"Robin Hood airport is closed," he tweeted as his trip to Ireland to meet a girl he'd been talking to on Twitter looked threatened by the UK's complete inability to deal with a bit of snow. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

A flippant, offhand remark. But a flippant, offhand remark that recently landed him with a thousand-pound fine and a criminal record on the grounds that his message was "grossly offensive, or of indecent, obscene, or menacing character". A flippant, offhand remark that gave him the dubious honour of being the first person ever to be convicted of a "crime" (and I use the term loosely) in connection with remarks made on a social networking site.

I mean seriously. His comments weren't in the best taste. But by successfully prosecuting this case, it sets a dangerous precedent that has made everyone rather more conscious of what they say. In effect, it's stifling free speech, a concept the Internet is built upon – not to mention the fact that the life of Chambers, who was training to be an accountant, has now been devastated.

See also: Gizmodo's behaviour with regard to the new iPhone that was left in a bar. Gray Powell, the engineer who misplaced the phone, lost his job, perhaps understandably, given that he left an immensely valuable trade secret just lying around. Gizmodo reported on the new iPhone. They ripped it open and looked inside it. Perhaps not the best thing to do when Apple were already pissed off. Then they ripped open Gray Powell's life, using information from his entire Internet presence to make him a global laughingstock. Was it not enough that the guy fucked up and lost his job because of it? Apparently not.

George points out that there are people out there who hate success and will do anything to destroy the efforts of people with ambition. It makes me sad to think that in a world where our exchange of information should be free and open that incidents like the above can happen. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. The fact that we can communicate instantaneously with anyone in the world should be a wonderful, life-affirming thing that brings the global community closer together, builds bridges and draws us closer to a peaceful sci-fi utopia. But instead, shit like this just gets people paranoid and worried, until we're going to find ourselves even more closed off and isolated than we were before the whole social media thing started. And that's sad.

Is it just human nature to use things that should be positive for evil, deceitful purposes?

#oneaday, Day 59: Social Mobility

So social games are here to stay. So say the people in the know, particularly the outspoken Brian Reynolds from Zynga who has commented on the subject at great length. Understandable, really, given that his company are behind some of the most successful social games in history.

I have to say, though, that I don't understand them. And it's not through lack of trying. I've played Mafia Wars. I've played Epic Pet Wars. I've fired up Farmville a couple of times. But the elephant in the room seems to be that these games are dull, uninspiring and boring. People used to joke that Championship Manager on the PC looked (and played) like a spreadsheet. Mafia Wars looks like an Access database – and plays like one too. I haven't done much with Farmville but from what I've seen (and heard from others) it's not much better, just a little more "visual".

These games market themselves on their "social" capabilities. They call themselves "MMORPGs" and they clog up the iTunes App Store RPG section something chronic with their various denominations of microtransaction space dollar bundles. But, from what I've seen, there is little to no socialising involved. You add people to your friends list to let them "be in your mafia" or "be your neighbour", but besides increasing your stats or occasionally sending you an item they can't use (not one that they don't want, it's always one that they can't use because it's set aside as a special "gift" item) there is no interaction with others. Sure, in Mafia Wars you can attack another player but there's no strategy or interaction there, either – whoever has the best stats wins.

Brian Reynolds commented to developers at the GamesBeat summit that "shame" is a powerful motivating factor for players. "No one wants to be caught letting their crops wither and die," he says. But does it really matter when you have four thousand people on your friends list, none of whom you've ever spoken to? That's not socialising, that's MySpace-style "friend" collecting. It doesn't help that anything even vaguely related to these games – iTunes reviews, Facebook reviews, Facebook groups, comment threads, blog posts – always degenerates into a swarm of several hundred people all going "ADD ME! 9932569!" with absolutely no conversation going on whatsoever. I would mind it less if the "social" aspect of these games was something more of a metagame, where people actually talked to each other and then added each other. But the amount of friend-whoring that goes on by people is just ridiculous, and it strikes me as completely against the spirit of what these games are supposedly trying to achieve – bring people together to play.

Maybe I'm missing the point somewhere. Maybe these social games really are the next big thing. It's true that some games get the whole thing absolutely right – PopCap's wonderful Bejeweled Blitz is a fine example – but for every little gem (no pun intended) there's a billion and one identikit Mafia Wars clones. And they're all devoid of any gameplay whatsoever.

Games for people who don't like games. I guess that's something – bringing the medium to the masses and all that. But is someone reared on Mafia Wars and Farmville ever really going to graduate to games that are actually, you know, good? I'm not so sure.

#oneaday, Day 55: Communi-what?

A while back, I wrote a post about communication online. If you're extra-good, I'll link to it tomorrow when I'm not typing this on my phone in bed because I forgot to earlier.

Anyway. The gist of it was that I was rather pleased with how my then-early Twitter addiction was proceeding, with the service making it particularly easy for me to keep up with my numerous buddies from around the world. Prior to this, Facebook had fulfilled a similar function.

Here's where the paths of the two services diverge. While Twitter has remained relatively "pure", with little in the way of gimmicky new features, Facebook has taken the opposite route, adding more and more noise to the mix until it's almost unbearable.

Of course, there is the flipside to both services – Twitter has its spammers (bad) and Facebook has Facebook Connect (good) – but I know where I have most of my online conversations these days. Twitter may have its own noise, but it is WAY easier to avoid.

Facebook's problem is that it wants to be everything to everyone, so it added the applications, and the fan pages, and the various redesigns… and now I find myself wishing it was back the way it was when I first started using it. Simple. Clean. To the point.

It's certainly not that any more. Now, one's news feed is likely to be as full of notifications from applications and announcements that Bartlebas McFartington has become a fan of "Not Being Able To Sleep Because Your [sic] Thinking About Crap" (yes, that was real, and no, no-one knows how to use "your" any more) as actual things that people have written themselves.

The ironic thing is that all this sharing is taking away from the original point of the service – communicating. When people would rather copy and paste "Bob" into your comments box so he can "travel around Facebook" than actually write a message to you, one can't help but think that the point has been lost along the way somewhere, (While we're on, people who just say "First" in an attempt to get the first comment – without actually commenting – can go to hell and sit on a spike, too.)

So next time you hover over that "Like" button, why not take those extra few seconds to actually write a message? The recipient will probably appreciate it, and time isn't as precious as you think it is.

The Hate List (September 2009)

Hello!

Here's the official September 2009 edition of Things That Piss Me The Hell Off That I Can't Do Anything About So Might As Well Ignore Them But Can't.

Irrational rant and much sarcasm ahead.

In no particular order:

People who cough, then gob on the floor.
If I can cough and then either swallow my own phlegm or spit it into a tissue just to maintain some amount of public decorum, you can too. You're not a pirate. Or a cowboy. You're an idiot.
Casual lawbreaking.
"Ah, it doesn't matter if I speed/park here/drop this litter/break this thing that doesn't belong to me/steal this thing/let my dog shit there/threaten someone. Everyone else does it." That's right. And that's why driving means you take your life into your own hands, you can never find a parking space (and when you do, it's blocked by someone who has parked where they shouldn't), our streets and parks often look more like rubbish dumps, kids whinge that there's 'nothing to do' because it's all broken or stolen or covered in dogshit, and people are afraid to step up and stop people from doing these things. Everyone hates the idea of a nanny state (myself included) but by doing all these stupid things you just encourage those in charge to put tighter and tighter controls in place in an attempt to stop you behaving like a self-obsessed bellend.
Cyclists who don't understand the Highway Code.
If you are cycling, you are a road-based vehicle. Granted, a very small one that is mostly person-propelled, but you're still a vehicle. Don't swear at me if you come screaming down the pavement and nearly ram into me when there's a perfectly good road with no people walking down it. Also, red lights mean stop. You massive twat.
Car drivers who don't understand the Highway Code.
Quick recap: Blue sign with white arrow means "one way". Red sign with white stripe across middle means "don't go this way". Stop muddling the two up.
Lorry drivers who overtake on the motorway.
You have an acceleration of 0-60 in 3 years. The thing you're trying to overtake also has the same acceleration and there is a difference of 0.01mph between the two of you. Overtaking it will likely take you a very long time and get you into a position where you're stuck behind another lorry that is going the same speed as the one you just overtook. Why not – here's a thought – not bother?
People who absolutely have to get where they're going faster than you.
Subject of the second ever entry on this blog, fact fans. Travelling around London is a sure-fire way to see this. You know the whole point of an escalator is that it's a moving staircase that you don't have to walk down, right? So pushing past to get to the bottom two seconds faster than everyone else achieves nothing except annoying the people who are patiently waiting. Also, standing behind someone who has a large suitcase that takes up a large step and tutting isn't going to make the suitcase magically get small enough for you to get past.
Mercedes/BMW/Audi drivers. (Except my Dad, who drives a BMW in the most non-BMW-driver way I've ever seen.)
Those flashing orange lights on the side of your car are not "parking lights". They do not mean you can park anywhere. Similarly, if you are in a traffic jam, weaving between lanes actually slows everything down rather than allowing you to get anywhere faster. Also, if you come up behind me and flash your headlights when I'm driving at the speed limit in the fast lane, overtaking things in the slow lane, I will slow down just to annoy you.
Fat exhaust pipes on shit cars.
Your car is loud! It sounds like the exhaust is broken! You'd better get that looked at. In the meantime, why not drive like you think you're in a Mercedes?
Using the word "fucking" as punctuation.
When considering whether it is appropriate to use taboo language in conversation, consider 1) your audience, 2) the context and 3) whether it will help your message to be heard. "Ah went dahn the fahkin' shops and bought some fahkin' bread" is an example of the word "fucking" not being used to enhance the sentence in the slightest. "People who do this are fucking idiots" is a good example of using the word "fucking" in one of its primary uses as an intensifier. A "fucking idiot" is more of an idiot than an "idiot". However, the "fucking shops" are no more or less a shop than the shops. Also, bread.
T-shirts with slogans about being drunk.
Oh! You like to drink! You're so wacky! "Take me drunk, I'm home!" That's clever! That's so clever!
T-shirts with slogans about having a large penis.
If you need to shout about it, it's probably not worth shouting about.
T-shirts with swear words on them.
I'm not averse to using bad language in a situation where it is appropriate and/or acceptable, but to walk around town where there are often young children and also people who don't particularly want to see your T-shirt imploring them to "FUCK OFF" present marks you out as being 1) inconsiderate and 2) a massive tool.
Men who wear too much aftershave.
If I can still smell you a minute after you've walked past me, that's too much.
Smokers who smoke underneath "No Smoking" signs.
Ooh, you big rebel. Get you. Now take your stinking cancer-sticks and shove them up your arse where I can't smell them but you can feel them. Preferably lit.
Beauty fascism.
Eyes age in two ways! (So you must fix them!) Wrinkles appear on your body! (So you must Polyfilla them!) Your teeth are dirty! (So bleach them!) Your skin is pale! (So paint it orange!) Your hair is not quite blonde enough! (So dip it in Domestos until it's just right!) Your clothes suck! You're a failure! A FAILURE! WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE, YOU PATHETIC BAGGY-EYED, PALE-SKINNED FAILY FAILURE FAILINGTON?
Confused.com's advertising. (YouTube)
Are you really expecting us to believe that people voluntarily sat down in front of a webcam and talked about their experiences buying home and/or car insurance so you could put their gurning Everyman mugs all over our TV screens every five seconds? Because I've bought both home insurance and car insurance. Both experiences made me want to kill myself. Maybe I should go on cam and say that. Apparently the emo-looking kid in the purple top ("Phil") is quite well-known on YouTube. Sell-out.
GoCompare's advertising. (YouTube)
No-one sits in a coffee shop saying things like "Car insurance, eh? What can you do?" – even floppy-haired douchebags like the ones in the advert. Also, if a singing twat burst in encouraging me to "Go Compare" I'd tell him to "Go Fuck Yourself" and punch him in the neck.
Compare the Meerkat. (YouTube)
Almost funny once. Not funny the five hundredth time. In fact…
Insurance advertising.
Just sod off and stop trying to make one of the most boring things in the world look exciting.
McDonalds' advertising.
You have a recognisable jingle. Well done. Would it kill you to put it in the same key as the rest of the music in the advert?
People who use the word "unfortunately" when they don't mean it.
You don't care that I can't do that thing I'm trying to do. It's no skin off your nose. So don't patronise me by bemoaning my poor fortune.
Unnecessary layers of management.
The most extreme example of this I've seen came while I was temping for a loss adjustment company. An insurance company hired a firm of solicitors who hired the loss adjusters who hired some surveyors who hired some building contractors who hired some builders who charged the building contractors who charged the surveyors who charged the loss adjusters who charged the solicitors who hired some cost recovery specialists to recover the costs from the insurance company who hired their own cost recovery specialists to recover the fees from the person whose fault it might have been (but they weren't sure). Unsurprisingly, the whole case (which was incredibly boring, something to do with a little crack in someone's living room wall which may or may not have had something to do with a tree outside the window) took several years to resolve, by which time the crack had probably gone all the way up the wall and broken the house.
Spar.
Why is it I can go into Tesco Express, buy lunch, dinner, toilet roll and a few household essentials and spend approximately £10, while I do the same in your rotten little shop and have to spend £20 for inferior products? Also, one of your cashiers needs to buy some deodorant.
The X-Factor.
Simon Cowell was quoted this week (in the Star, admittedly, but I'll let that pass for the sake of this rant) as saying "The Beatles wouldn't have won the X-Factor". Good. That means they actually have a future and won't ever do a duet with Flo Rida. Speaking of whom…
Flo Rida.
You can rap in triplets. Well done. Now try writing your own songs instead of pinching other peoples'. Which reminds me…
Cover versions that aren't cover versions.
Sugababes recently covered Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy". Badly. Pussycat Dolls recently put out a song which wasn't "I Will Survive" but inexplicably breaks into it completely incongruously halfway through. Flo Rida… ugh, just make him go away. If you're going to cover a song, show it some respect and/or creativity.
Radio 1.
There are more than ten songs in the world. Some of them aren't even done by floppy-haired idiots or women with shiny legs. Please play them.
There/Their/They're.
You learned this in primary school. I can still remember it, so why can't you?
Your/You're.
You also learned this in primary school. I still remember it also.
Basic punctuation.
Capital letter at the start of a sentence. Full stop at the end. No need for kisses. "[Anonymous] is pleased today over it really should be better paid for all the hassle going to enjoy a bottle of wine and a good catch up x" is a sentence that makes fairies cry.
Apostrophes.
Apostrophes denote possession, a missing letter or being pretentious. (People know what a "bus" is now. We don't really need to call it a "'bus" any more. Same for the phone. Or the 'phone.) "Flower's for wedding's" (seen on a road outside Fareham) is not correct. "Please do not use mobile phones or personal stereo's in this area" (seen on South West Trains) is not only incorrect, it is inconsistent. "All reasonable offer's will be considered" is similarly not correct. "Pete's last entry sure was full of vitriol" is correct. "Fish 'n' Chips" is correct.
Facebook games.
No, I don't want to join your Mafia or adopt your stupid spastic black sheep that "turned up" on your farm. If it turned up on your farm, you take care of the little bastard.
Facebook.
Facebook is full of noise. It's like trying to be heard while standing in the middle of a ball pit filled with drunken giggling teenagers at the local Happy Eater while a man shouts "MAFIA WARS! FARMVILLE! AAAAAH!" at the top of his voice. (This has now been allayed somewhat with the launch of Facebook Lite, aka We Wish We Were Twitter.) (Additional note: I still like and use Facebook. But it is getting noisy.)

That's nearly 2,000 words there. I think that's probably enough for now! If you have any pet peeves of your own you'd like to share, please do make them known in the comments.

If all that depressed you, let Maru cheer you up:

Fuck the Internet

Okay… the irony of saying "fuck the Internet" on a blog post isn't lost on me, but bear with me. There's a rant and a half coming your way right about now about, paradoxically enough, people moaning. However, I feel rather more justified in my meta-moaning than the whiny little sods I will be discussing throughout the next few paragraphs.

But first, a little history lesson, if you'll indulge me for a sec.

My family had been online junkies since before the Internet was a widespread global phenomenon. An irregular "treat" for us was to be able to use our Atari with its mighty 300bps modem to dial up to a local bulletin board system, read some messages and maybe download some BASIC games to play. At the time, I thought this was incredily cool. Looking back, at the time, it was incredibly cool. I mean, being able to use your telephone line to dial into someone else's computer and do stuff with it? Neat.

A few years later came CompuServe, which was a step closer to the "real" Internet, at the time still very much in its infancy for consumers. CompuServe offered a service that was essentially hundreds of these bulletin board services, called "forums" along with news, entertainment and real-time chat services. Again, it was something of a "treat" to be able to go online and look at stuff and to actually be able to communicate with other people. As a matter of fact, as a result of a message exchange between myself and another chap on the CompuServe Gamers' Forum, ten levels that I had created for Wolfenstein 3D made their way onto the official Apogee "Super Upgrades" expansion pack for Wolf3D, netting me a cool $200. I still have a (now very faded) photocopy of the cheque as I thought that was so awesome.

A while into the "CompuServe Age", I read an article in PC Format magazine discussing this new and interesting-sounding thing called the Internet. The article was awash with buzzwords like "telnet", "FTP" and curious sounding things with lots of dots and coms in them. But it was still quite some time before CompuServe actually offered full Internet access.

Now here we are, some ten-to-fifteen years later. Web 2.0 in all its self-publishing, self-expressing, lower-case logo glory is upon us offering anyone with a pulse the opportunity to spill their guts on the Internet and share their innermost thoughts and feelings on a whole variety of topics.

This, on the surface, is a great thing. Never before have people had such an opportunity to self-publish anything they like – be it creative writing, academic research, odes to the fit girl in class 3B or simply waffly old bollocks like this place. Why, then, do so many people feel the need to use this great medium to batter down anything around them?

I have two recent examples of this, though these are by no means isolated examples. They are merely the most recent things where this issue has cropped up. Firstly, we have the "new Facebook". Secondly, we have EA's new game Spore. Let's take these two things in turn.

First up is Facebook. Facebook is such a global phenomenon that I heard on the news this week (on the radio, how old-school of me) that they're planning on making a movie (presumably of the docu-drama variety) on the site's rise to success.

For the unfamiliar… actually, balls to that, even my Mum has a Facebook account. You all know what Facebook is. Let's not forget that it's a free service supported almost entirely by ads that anyone can sign up for and use and never have to pay a penny. It's a social tool that's allowed millions of people across the world to connect with one another and rediscover old friendships after many years, in some cases. In short, it's a pretty marvellous thing that both Facebook themselves and numerous third parties keep adding new features to.

So recently Facebook redesigned their site, changing the way the functionality of the site works and, to me, making it rather more streamlined and clean. It also uses more of the browser window which, when you're working on a 1920×1200 screen, is most welcome. They've obviously worked hard on this site redesign and are still tweaking things even as we speak – each time I log on I see some new little feature that makes navigation and use of the site even easier.

So how does the community at large respond? By creating "OMG 1 MILLION PEOPLE MUST JOIN THIS GROUP AND STAND UP FOR OUR RIGHTS! NEW FACEBOOK SUCKS!". You'd think that Facebook had summoned the spirit of Hitler and then allowed it to rape all the world's children before taking a chainsaw to them, while the shareholders sat in the background wanking and laughing. But no – they've done what any good website does every few years, they've had a refresh and a redesign – and, compared to many websites' complete overhauls that I've seen over the years, this has been a fairly minor one in the grand scheme of things. You can still do everything you used to be able to, and more so in many cases.

So why bitch and moan? It escapes me. Do these people seriously think that getting a million people together in a group that is HOSTED ON THE FUCKING SITE THEY ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT – the site they aren't paying a penny to support yet are happily cluttering up bandwidth with their photos and videos – is going to achieve jack shit? Why bother? Fuck the Internet.

Why bother complaining about the complainers? It makes me feel better. One may argue that all these people are doing is "making themselves feel better" also, but the fact is, it is Facebook's prerogative to change their site as and when they want to – whether it is from the perspective of improving the users' experience (they must be sitting around thinking "Those ungrateful bastards" right now) or from the perspective of increasing advertising revenue (which for a site that doesn't make much money from its users is perfectly reasonable).

Next rant. Spore.

Spore's a great game that came out this week. From Will Wright, creator of the Sim games (and the The Sims games, natch) it allows you to… again, I'm sure you all know about Spore already, so I'll cut to the chase.

Spore ships with some security software by Sony called SecuROM. SecuROM is a system that is designed to protect discs against being copied and installed by hundreds of people… i.e. piracy. As such, it limits a purchaser of a copy of Spore to installing it on three separate machines. That's not, as many people have assumed, three installations and then it's all over… that's three machines.

Who has three machines? How many people, apart from people with more money than sense, buy a new PC gaming rig often enough to make this an issue? I buy a computer roughly once every five to seven years and it serves me fine in that time, unless I want to run something like Crysis – which fortunately I have no interest in whatsoever.

EA released a statement quoting usage and activation statistics from the Spore Creature Creator, released some months prior to the full game. While Creature Creator's stats may not necessarily reflect exactly the same userbase as Spore, the figures were telling. Most users activated the product on one computer. A few did it on two. And about 1% tried to activate on more than three. I'm often loathe to believe company hyperbole, but in this case those figures certainly seem a reasonable assumption in my experience at least. I don't think I know anyone who has more than one computer for gaming purposes. Sure, I know some guys who have PCs for gaming and Macs for professional/creative work, but even then, that's still only two computers.

The nonsense with Spore went way overboard. Amazon.com was bombarded with over 1700 one-star reviews of the game, very few of which commented on the game at all. Several users bandied the word "draconian" around and many promising to go and pirate the game rather than purchase it – indeed, the main argument that many people were throwing around was the fact that somehow Spore had been leaked, cracked and torrented even before the game's street date, thereby, to these people, making the DRM pointless.

The fact is, were there not such wanton levels of piracy on the Internet today, these measures wouldn't be necessary – and the people on Amazon who claimed that pirating the game was "making a stand" are simply adding to the problem, not making a point. EA's a big company and they have to be seen to be doing something more than plugging their fingers in their ears and going "lalalala" on the subject of piracy. While DRM clearly doesn't work as it should at present, at least it represents a symbolic gesture on EA's part to help tackle the problem.

The fact is that Spore's actually a great game, but all this nonsense has put lots of people off playing it, for completely unjustified and ill-informed reasons. It'd be lovely if just, for once, people on the Internet could sit down, appreciate what someone else has done for them, pay for it if it's a paid-for service (like Spore) and appreciate it being free if it's a free service (like Facebook) without bitching and moaning any time some tiny little change to the "norm" comes along. I'm sure there's something Orwellian in there somewhere…

Anyway. Rant over. Assuming no-one else pisses me off my next few posts will be about Spore and other games I'm playing at the moment!