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Gaming Memories Helping to Heal Katrina Wounds
waterlogged writes "Lara Crigger writes a compelling account of the effects of hurricane Katrina on a person's sense of videogames in The Escapist. From the article: 'Hurricanes destroy more than just property; they destroy the sense of property, as well. They smash that universal belief that objects intrinsically carry some emotional gravity or weight. Acts of destruction remind us that physical substances are only equal to the exact sum of their parts: Plastic and cotton, metal or wood. What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.'"
Because, in my mind, games can heal katana wounds.
All this is a good thing. Eventually you'll realize that even you don't exist. That'll be even better.
If they had any of the original controllers they could have climbed on them and floated to safety.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Deep. It makes me think that the lawless, gangbanging aftermath of Katrina in New orleans would make a compelling Grand Theft Auto scenario.
an ill wind that blows no good
I'm almost getting nostalgic for a Jon Katz article in this post Columbine^WKatrina world.
So I stomped on his foot.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And that is why I play NetHack.
so it's a new thing that deriving your life's worth from your material possessions leaves you lacking in the long run? Don't feel sorry for these people whose stuff was destroyed: at least they have a chance at gaining perspective. Feel sorry for the guy that's still got his XBox and wastes all day, every day on it, or the guy that has a bright shiny car but no sense of personal worth.
Sounds like someone took the red pill...
"It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're free to do anything."
Which is why if a hurricane comes and crushes my console and sweeps away my games, I've lost nothing. The atoms don't matter -- I can buy another plastic console, and buy another piece of plastic and aluminum with some bits on it. I've lost nothing. The long numbers (a DVD with a game on it is just a multibillion-digit-long number) that, when read into a properly-configured piece of plastic and ceramic (say, an XBox or PS2), come to life as video games are of no consequence because they're easily replaced.
But if a hurricane sweeps away my only copies (and my not-remote-enough backups) of the somewhat shorter numbers (million-digit-long strings of bits) that represent my digital photo archive, and then we can talk about pain.
All numbers are unequal. But some are more unequal than others.
It's called a reality check. Believe it or not, stuff doesn't last. Not even big stuff. Life goes on...it's good to be reminded of what's important; we all need that from time to time.
Why did Katrina destroy PS2 and Xbox consoles? We know why.
It's because George Bush doesn't care about black game consoles.
The whole article is like that!!!
wow. seriously someone should tell this chick that not everything is an emotional rollercoaster. I get it, hes stoic marble man and your the sensitive girl that brings out his soft side, while probing his mysterious ways. just wow. This puts some of those homoerotic slashdot trolls to shame.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose"
--Janis Joplin
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Consider me insensitive, but how does it take a hurricane to realize this? You can get the same effect from having an SNES cartridge battery die, losing a memory card, or looking at a 200 hour FF7 game save years later and thinking about that lost excessive time. At least that's how I reacted to all of the above. I also don't understand how this is a specific to games. Any person who has survived a catastrophe (hurricane, fire, car collision) can realize the insignificance of material posessions when they walk out of wreckage with the important stuff, like their life and health.
Oh, give her a break, our little girl is growing up
.you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless.
/.?
.you can just make yourself new stuff.
. .
But she's not quite there yet.
What the hell is this crap doing on
The current crop of geeks think that stuff is the stuff that matters.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but lay up treasures of knowledge so that even though moths and rust doth corrupt and theives break in steal. .
KFG
I'd think any geek would have rationalized this. Why is it on Slashdot?
Wait, have we gone so far into materialism that this becomes a wake-up call -- holy crap, my copy of Halo 2 doesn't matter in the long run!
...but if you vote for CowboyNeal in the slashdot polls -- that, my friend, can lead to the cure for cancer. Keep that in mind next time you click on the other options.
Sure, I guess we all need that reminder one way or another and great disasters have a way of giving us that reality check...but Katrina linking us to reality through ownership of Video Games? How frickin shallow are we?
Just to get it over with, here are a few things to remember:
Material posessions don't mean jack in the long run.
Your SAT score doesn't mean jack in the long run either.
Your high score in Tetris, your Super Mario Brothers speed run, and your 100pct completion rating for San Andreas...all insignificant.
Really, when it comes down to it, stuff doesn't matter much at all.
the only entity that really survives is you.
Michael Gentili
- He's just some guy, you know?
What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.
:)
I dunno why, but I get this same sort of feeling thinking about nuclear war, or just any war really...thinking that the auto shops, the supermarket offers, the little gadgets etc...all completely useless to anyone in the absence of cars, crops and electricity. Just a weird thought I have sometimes...depressing, maybe, but that's just me
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
You get really good at a video game, then an alien coallition recruits you as a pilot. Then its life or death, the video game mattered, but no longer. Sounds strange? Metaphorically, it's not too far off my life.
God spoke to me.
We'd up the tempo, to make sure it wasn't us again. But I only live here folks, and I'm only one person. I'm not saying what I would or could do, just reporting what I think is an extrapolation of the attitudes around me.
Buy TWO copies of all your favorite games and store the second copy "off-site" in case of a natural disaster. This goes for memory cards as well.
Then once you get your life back together from the hurricane you can pick up where you left off in God of War.
Backups. The lesson is backups.
isn't that the whole point? having a good time with friends?
i remember realizing this some time during my ROM collecting phase -- it didn't take long before i realized that it wasn't the gameplay i craved but the memories of that time of life (childhood).
tell me how one's fond recollections of videogame playing--with brothers, sisters, neighborhood friends--are different from your grandparent's stories of fort building and crayfish hunting?
You know, written by some "artsy" chick who takes pictures of her feet.
The parent post was a quote from Bill Hicks.
You really should credit your quotes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So, video games aren't really that important when your personal Maslow Hierarchy goes Jenga.
Big. Fucking. Revelation.
Boy, I was drowning this one time and I sure needed air and not video games. Makes you think LOL!!111
"- You can do whatever you want!
... :-)
- It's been so long since I heard those words, I don't know what they mean
anymore. [...] Gambling no longer have any appeal for me, when every day
is a risk, cards and dices are not quite as interesting as they used to be"
- Vir & Londo, B5:"Darkness Ascending"
I'd like to see more of these articles on slashdot. Linux don't matter by itself, Macs don't matter themselves, Games don't matter by themselves. It's the ideals and values behind the actual physical incarnation that matters. The voyage is as important as the destination. Nothing is really yours, property is a convenient human invention. This is your life, ending one second at a time. What do you want? Who are you? And why do I keep reading slashdot many times a day?
Animoog.org
X-box is HUGE!!! LORFL! Insightful!
First the disclaimer: I'm not an American, I'm not in the USA, I don't even have relatives there or anything. And I'll be the first to bitch and moan about contemporary American politics and about the occasional chest-thumping redneck. But this... you, sir, are a fucking lunatic and it's people like you that are the problem with the world today. Seriously.
For starters even if you make everyone who voted for Bush personally responsible for all of Bush's idiocies, only slightly less than half the votes went to Bush. So what's your problem with the other half, then? You're willing to dance on someone's grave just because they were born in the USA, or what? How fucked up is that?
And at that point, how does it make you any better? If you're willing to cheer for destruction and suffering inflicted upon civilians, just because they're in the USA, then how does that make you better than those who wish the same on people just because they're born in Iraq? No, seriously. What moral high ground can you claim, from which to look down on them, when you're as big an idiot as the most retarded bible-thumping rednecks they have?
And I'm serious about the "people like you" part. The whole vicious circle of inflicting nasty stuff upon each other is based on people taking the whole Us-Vs-Them thing too seriously. People willing to wish you a flaming death just because of where you were born or who your grandparents were. It's _precisely_ such people who thought it would be a great idea to fly an airplane full of innocent civilians into a building full of innocent civilians, or anything of that calibre. All the way back into ancient history, when an army entered a city and proceeded to rape, kill and enslave just to show them who's the new boss, it was just that mentality that was the problem. That it's "Us" vs "Them". That if you happen to be born in Carthage, you're personally to blame for what Hannibal did to Rome. Or that if you were living in Jerusalem, you're personally responsible for the Muslims' being in command there. (See the Crusaders slaughtering a ridiculous number of the very Christians they were supposedly trying to save.)
And you're willing to cheer for... what? For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, i.e., for permanent psychological damage? Because under the whole bullshit philosophy angle in the summary, that's the cruel reality. It's not that those people had a flash of Nirvana-like enlightenment that material possessions are worthless. It's that those people had the trauma of seeing everything they owned turned into junk or washed away, and went through some hell just keeping onto their very life. A lot of them are probably _affraid_ to get attached to any item any more, and are looking forward to a life spent in fight-or-flight mode, and of waking up in cold sweat after a nightmare about it.
PTSD is a bitch. Your brain gets switched into a semi-permanent mode of trying to learn how you should have dealt with the horror where you actually had no control and no way out. There is nothing to learn, but that's the only thing that would naturally end it. So you're stuck re-living it over and over again. And yet avoiding anything that reminds you of it. So, yes, a lot of them will be stuck fearing the very notion of ever getting attached to something or someone ever again. It's not just their gaming life that's taken a change, it's that their whole _Real_ _Life_ is fucked up now. Including any hope of a meaningful family life, social life, etc.
Yes, it's not fun for the people who got it in Iraq. (Both American soldiers and Iraqis.) But it's not fun for the poor buggers that got it from Katrina.
And frankly, I find it distasteful to use someone's hell to make some personal political point with. That goes for both you, and the pseudo-philosophy in TFA. Those people didn't reach some Zen enlightenment, they were scarred for life. And if all someone can think about is how it affects the gaming habbits, that someone is either a prick or completely out of touch with reality.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It is actually not surprising that disaster situations tend to change people's priorities when it comes to physical possessions and property. Would you rather have your intact XBOX (w/working controllers) but no power OR MREs, Jeep Wrangler (or other four wheel drive vehicle), jerry cans w/fuel, waterproof matches, and your trusty sidearm (w/box of ammunition)? Actually, getting Americans to be more self-sufficient in a survival situation is probably a good thing as opposed to the throw away, outsourcing, let someone else do it society that we live in today. It is unfortunate that people suffered and in some cases lost their lives, but perhaps this will remind people that the government is not responsible for the survival of any one citizen, but rather society in general. You have to be prepared to take matters into your own hands because the police, government, coast guard, etc...will not always be there to help you.
Lara Crigger.
aka Jon Katz?
This article is refering to games. Not just games, video games which are by nature very easy to replicate. If a hurricane hit your home to the point where compact disks did not survive, you shouln't be worring about video games.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
According to you, 'stuff' doesn't matter. According to you abstractions like 'high scores' also mean nothing to you. It seems to me that you must live an incredibly meaningless and valueless life.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I wrote The Sims 1 Crowd Sitter to simulate the effects of Bush's (lack of) response to Hurricaine Katrina.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
"even when a person has an abundance his life does not result from the things he possesses" - Jesus, in Luke 12:15.
...this chicks prozac was destroyed by the hurricane as well. *sigh*
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me. That condo was my life, okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed, it was ME!
Didn't the author of the article ever see, or read, Needful Things? Where's a Satanic Max von Sydow when you need him?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
And the glorious Brittish Empire did no wrong - ever. Genocide is great when you can ignore your own history I guess. In the meantime enjoy your taxes, and keep buying our crap and entertainment.
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." -Henry David Thoreau
This idea goes at least as far back as the Greek stoic philosophers, and probably further. It didn't make it's debut in Fight Club, and no, the hippies didn't invent it in the 60's either.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
"I love you, you love Free,
We're best friends as friends should be!"
- Richard M. Stallman
Of course it sucked! It was a low pressure weather system, after all.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
Aaand we have a winner. The Mr Insensitive prize goes to noidentity (188756).
Now on a more serious note... Dude, do you even have a fucking clue what you're talking about or asking for there? Some people got psychologically scarred for life with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. You think you can just tell someone "fuck, get over your goddamn self" and their psychological trauma will heal just like that? What else? Go tell people in a wheelchair, "fuck, get on your goddamn feet" and see them miraculously healed? Are you Jesus, or what?
PTSD is an actual brain dysfunction, complete with a change in hormone and mediator balance. It's not something someone chose as a lifestyle. It's a primal instinct of desperately trying to learn how you could have avoided a situation where you barely escaped with your life. Except there's nothing to learn, so it goes on for ever. How the fuck do you expect someone to just heal an actual dysfunction of their body? No, seriously, I'm curious. Please enlighten me. How is that supposed to work?
No, seriously, it cracks me up seeing people thinking you can just tell someone to heal, just because it's a psychological problem. As if someone had consciously decided to have a hell life with PTSD, and they only need your superior logic to see the flaw in that. In most cases they know they have a problem, and they alread know it's not logical, so pointing it out -- especially that distastefully -- achieves nothing more than being a slap in the face. In the worst case, it actually makes the problem worse: someone with depression will just get more depressed, someone with PTSD will get more stress than they already had, etc.
In a nutshell, the idiotic notion that you can just give someone a mental slap to get them out of PTSD or depression, is as stupid as thinking you can poke a finger into someone's wound to convince them to just heal. That stupid.
Plus, I don't know what Mr Tough facade you're going for, but something like that isn't "some trivial event". If seeing your whole life destroyed before your very eyes and going through a hell time of just staying alive for the next weeks counts as "some trivial event" for you, then who the fuck are you? Rambo? Do you get that happening to you every day? Do you routinely fend off psychos in a lawless city and dive into flooded ruins just to get something to eat or clean water, to the point where it's become trivial and normal? Or what?
Or lemme guess... you're just a self-centered idiot, sitting comfortably in your middle-class home, and decreeing someone else's tragedy as trivial just because it's not yours. As long as _you_ still have _your_ fridge full of fresh food and bottled water, it's "trivial" if someone _else_ had to drink mud.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Every self is a part of something else. A self is a member of a family, which is a citizen of a state or country, which is also a member of a species, a church, a club or fraturnity, or anything else a person connects to. So a person is more than just a self, and no self is truly independent, we are inter-dependent on other selves, our habitat, other life and other entities. Of course a selfish individual may act like the universe revolves around them.
Now think about how many of those 21.53 percent of people actually agreed with what Bush was saying and didn't just vote on party lines (i.e. check the "Vote All Republican" box). That makes it even more depressing. Democracy doesn't really work the way we'd like it to because many people can't be bothered to vote, and even less of those can be bothered to become informed about their decisions and not just vote on partisan lines.
If you read the article, the more important thing is that once you have a town to rebuild, or something really serious happens/has happened, you no longer seek the distraction of a video game. You have something more important to do, and games lose their appeal, due to some deep survival instinct.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Screw you commie, we have done a million times more good than harm. Flame away haters, it wont change the fact.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
At the risk of being labeled as offtopic, or flamebait, there is an old saying by Christians, "Only two things will survive this world: The Word of God, and the souls of men." The more I live, the more I come to realize this is so true. The material things of this world that we hold on to are so pointless.
Okay, back to work....
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
I guess in situations like these virtual properties, like ones in MMORPGS or a licence to download hl2 again, or other steam games(or similar systems) can really be of more value, since you don't lose it if everything in your city even, gets destroyed.
Right and of course you've shown your concern over Dafaur in the Sudan's genocide for the last 3 years. No wait - no you haven't, you don't give a shit about genocide at all - you just want to bash the USA. Cry me a fucking river.
No you're not, you're just an ass who doesn't give two shits when there's actual genocide happening right now. Why not spam a plea for the hundreds of thousands being killed in Sudan / Darfur? Oh wait - the US has nothing to do with that. Too bad - it's been going on for what, 3 years now? Nice double standard you have there liberal prick.