5 posts tagged “blog”
Why do you blog?
Submitted by Syafira.
'CAUSE I GOT NO PLACE ELSE TO GO.
Back in 1996, I started using the Internet. There were chat rooms, message boards, personal web pages, online profiles, usegroups, journals and lots of other ways for people to communicate online - regardless of how technically limited they were.
There was no fancy catch-all term like "social web" or "social networking"; nobody called themselves a "blogger", and none of these things had fancy names like Twitter or Facebook or MySpace, but they worked: hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of people around the world were able to communicate.
Working in the Internet, and specifically in "online community" as we called it, I don't remember there being articles about it in every single newspaper and magazine. Heck, we were lucky if nerd magazines covered things. And if you mentioned it in public? Oh boy, what an outcast you became. Especially if you (GASP!) met these people in real life and formed relationships with them.
And now? Now message board memes that would have gone unnoticed have articles in Time (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1877187,00.html); bands put their MySpace URL on CDs; my dad is on Facebook; I can't go five minutes without an eHarmony or Match ad on telly... it's crazy. In just a few years, using a computer to talk to and meet people has become entirely legitimate.
So what's next? What other interest of mine is suddenly going to become cool and popular? I'm hoping it's beard growing.
... came from this song. This is a nice acoustic version performed for PRI's Fair Game, a radio show I discovered recently with a funny host called Faith Salie. The original version is on the album Heresy & The Hotel Choir.
The racism debate presses some nasty buttons. Recently, a blogger named Kym Platt posted to the Black Looks blog about forthcoming video game Resident Evil 5 - the latest in the popular survival horror series from Japanese publishers Capcom.
A self-confessed non-gamer, Platt attacked the game for what to her was overtly racist content: the game's white hero, an American special agent named Chris Redfield, can be seen attacking black "inhuman savages" to use Platt's term. To the casual, uninformed onlooker with zero context, this might appear racist and in that regard, I fully understand her initial reaction. However, simple research would have stopped her from blogging about it and starting a train wreck of epic proportions that continued when fellow Black Looks blogger Sokari entered the fray in a follow-up post today.
The Resident Evil series focuses on the effects of a virus created by an all-powerful corporation (Umbrella) that turns people and animals into savage zombies, typically taking place in fictional American towns. The last game in the series, Resident Evil 4, took the lead character to a European village whose Spanish-speaking residents were infected by a parasite. It is not known what affects the characters in this new installment, but the ethnicity of the infected is consistent with the location (which is speculated to either be an African state such as Kenya or Uganda, or Haiti - all predominantly populated by black people). Previous titles had the player defending themselves from zombies of a variety of ethnicities, mostly white due to the American locations.
When asked if she would prefer that the zombies were white in this game, Kym replied:
"Yes… I am more comfortable with the zombies being white. In fact, ALL zombies should be white from this day forth."
While I fully understand that the historical prevalence of white on black racism is far in excess of the reverse, and that a black person has every right to be more sensitive toward racism as a result, nothing justifies racially-motivated hate speech. I don't care who you are.
Given the violent content, these games are not marketed towards children as Kym suggests - the Entertainment Software Rating Board has given every game bar two in the series (17 titles including remakes and spin-offs) an M rating. The two games that received the lesser T rating were both for technically-limited handheld platforms on which the gore and violence could not be rendered in a realistic fashion.
Just like movie ratings, game ratings are provided to inform parents whether or not a title is suitable for their child. If a parent is allowing their child to play an M rated title, either they believe their child is mature enough or, as is almost always the case, they just don't give a shit. You know, like Kym's brother or sister. When a poster suggested she play one of the games to get a better understanding, Kym's response was:
"I would love to play Resident Evil 4. I’ll go borrow it from my 10 year-old nephew."
With Kym holding her own in the face of what was frankly a barrage of disgusting, spiteful drivel from gaming morons (who, I assure you, do not represent all gamers), she didn't really need defending. Which makes you wonder why Sakori bothered, especially when her defense was simply to post further ignorance:
"Doesnt take much of a brain to figure where the 'resident evil' lies - Like Kym, the only game I play is the occasional solitaire on my pc and have no interest in playing video games of any kind however given the response from gamers… I think we should all be very afraid. Many of these folks seem like the type who would try to reenact scenes from Resident Evil 5. Can you say Columbine?"
Racism, like that displayed in the responses, is born of ignorance. Combating that ignorance with even more ignorance will get none of us anywhere. If you want to enter the debate on video game violence, you need to understand video games rather than regurgitating the ill-informed opinions of mainstream news media.
The Village Voice post that Kym and Sakori both refer to is actually a better read if you want to really understand the potential racist undertones of the Resident Evil 5 trailer. As well as providing context for the series instead of just ranting blind, they also talk about the current social and political climate that might have subliminally informed the decision to set this game in Africa. Reading it made me feel uncomfortable about the game:
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/runninscared/archives/2007/07/zombies_in_afri.php
What are the positive and negative associations that you and those around you have with blogging? Have attitudes changed over time?
Blogging is a horrible, horrible word. As are related words such as blogger, blogosphere and blogonomics. I also find many of the better known blogs hit or miss.
That being said, when you find a Go Fug Yourself, an I Can Has Cheezburger or a Four Four (whose America's Next Top Model recaps make my Monday), all is forgiven.
