T w e n t y S i d e d

Way back in January I had a rant about signing up for Gamespot and getting spam from the one-time email I gave them. I also had a follow-up post in February. I linked to someone else who was experiencing the same thing. I just got a comment on that five month old post indicating that this is still going on: Everyone who signs on with Gamespot gets this rotten scam email.

Visitor Bethany wrote:

Me too.

So we are led to believe that Gamespot is a bunch of Spammers. They have the same M.O. as FilePlanet: Secure a bunch of popular files, offer them for download, and then make visitors who want the files run a gauntlet of ads, culminating in a forced sign-up. Gamespot seems to have taken the extra step of selling (or being careless with) that sign-up info. They can no longer claim to not know about the problem. People have been complaining about this for over half a year now. The accusation is easily provable: Just create a new account with a virgin email and you’ll get a letter from Joseph Ngoho.

So which is it Gamespot? Are you frauds, or imbeciles? Your choice.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

As a follow up to my previous post about absurd uses of the word “addiction”, I present the latest in a very long parade of frauds and goofs: Computer Addiction Specialist Maressa Hecht Orzack, Ph.D. I would suggest that in this metaphorical parade, she is driving the biggest float.

Is there an alternate usage of the word addiction that means, “Something people do which annoys me and I wish they would do less”? Because that’s how the seems to be employed now. A computer is a tool, one of the most versatile ever conceived. To suggest that its ubiquity is due to some sort of weakness or disorder and not because of the utility of the thing is madness. Did nineteenth century people worry about “horse addiction”? Did people in the last century talk about “car addiction”? This wouldn’t be so silly if this woman were just some researcher who’d drifted off the path of science, but this person is selling a cure, which makes the whole thing particularly risible.

Note also on this page that this woman has three entries in her BIBLIOGRAPHY, and one two of them is a letter she wrote to the editor.

Hat Tip: The Rampant One.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.