{"id":2499,"date":"2009-03-11T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2009-03-11T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2009-03-11T08:57:06","modified_gmt":"2009-03-11T12:57:06","slug":"propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2499","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Gaming Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Chalk at The Escapist<\/a> points us to a report at CBC<\/a> (the state-sponsored media company in Canada – although I’ve never had a clear picture of just what that sponsorship involves or how big of a deal it is to the average Canadian) which has an article<\/a> on “the obsessive world of gaming and its young stars”. It represents about the most willfully ignorant news item I’ve ever seen about videogames. <\/p>\n

During the whole pornogate scandal that surrounded Mass Effect we saw more than a few whoppers told by hilariously knowledge-impoverished idiots<\/a>. But that story was initiated by pundits, not reporters. This one is done under the pretense of investigative journalism, although it reads like melodramatic Matrix fanfiction written by a lonely twelve year old. No investigation took place during the writing of this report. Even a few minutes with Google would have cured this case of delusional yellow-hued journalism. <\/p>\n

Andy Chalk outlines the various crimes perpetrated by the story<\/a>, but the gist is that a kid played too much Call of Duty online, his parents took away his Xbox, he got upset and climbed a tree, fell out, tragically died, and then a reporter came along and blamed the whole thing on videogames by building a house of sophistry atop the corpse of the dead child. (It actually sounds<\/em> like his parents were teaching him restraint, and he had an unrelated accident. Good for them. I’m very sorry for their loss.)<\/p>\n

Also noteworthy is this story<\/a> on the same site, which explains to us, “What happens when someone’s virtual fantasy overtakes their real life.” The two articles next to each other look less like the work of hacks, and more like the work of hacks with a bumbling agenda. <\/p>\n

Man, it’s been rant-y around here lately, hasn’t it?<\/p>\n

Dear jerks of the world: Knock it off already, wouldja? We’re trying to enjoy ourselves here. Thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Chalk at The Escapist points us to a report at CBC (the state-sponsored media company in Canada – although I’ve never had a clear picture of just what that sponsorship involves or how big of a deal it is to the average Canadian) which has an article on “the obsessive world of gaming and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}