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EVE Online CSM and Diplomat Killed in Libyan Consulate Attacks
New submitter overmoderated writes first with news of an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. From the article: "The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad."
An anonymous reader adds: "Sean Smith, a.k.a. Vile Rat, an EVE Online CSM member, and diplomat for the GoonFleet corporation, was one of the four killed in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya last night. He was 34. A fundraiser is being organized for his children by the Something Awful forums."
Update: 09/12 21:28 GMT by U L : Ozma from Something Awful mailed in a link to the memorial thread on the SA forums (including details on the memorial fund).
'Nuff said.
rip vile rat.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
So, an EVE Online CSM 'got what he deserved'... how exactly? You have some major rage issues against EVE? Read the article, Sean Smith was the EVE CSM... Chris Stevens was the ambassador. Even then, how would an AMBASSADOR at a consulate deserve to die over anything? Did he set policy? Did he do ANYTHING to these people? Again with a lack of reading... this was in response to a bunch of insecure religious extremists going, as quoted above, 'bat shit crazy' over a movie they didn't like regarding their reverred Prophet Mohammad. So, here's your reasoning in a nutshell. Because a Libyan Christian living in California made a movie supporting his belief that the Muslim faith is a dangerous cancer (his words), these men deserved to die. Hopefully these same folks never see any of these movies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_about_Muhammad Or we may just have WW3 on our hands....
He was a "diplomat" in EVE Online. In real life, he did IT work for the consulate -- he wasn't a diplomat nor any particularly wealthy, privileged person. He's just an ordinary guy doing IT work.
...sounds like he was pretty involved in the game.
It also sounds like he was well-loved. Choice notes from the forum thread:
And probably my favorite:
Supercar Gautier:
coding is life
"they believe innocent individuals need to suffer "
Often, radicals believe there are no innocents.
They feel that either you must be as militant as they are, or you're just a tool/ally of those they feel are opposing/oppressing them.
In the former case, you're a fighter for their cause and thus a martyr if killed.
In the latter case, you are a part of the problem that needs to be disposed of.
First it was Afghanistan. You thought that everyone fighting against authoritarian Soviets was automatically pro-democracy and pro-human rights; and what's wrong if they speak of Islam and jihad occasionally? Clearly it's only against the bad guys. And so you gave them money and guns and trained them, and the end result was a country where most schools (build by those very Soviets) were demolished and replaced by madrassas, and secular if authoritarian government replaced by fanatics who were stoning women on football stadiums for adultery after they were raped.
(Oh, and don't say that you didn't support Taliban. This guy was no better, and most of his troops ended up in Taliban anyway.)
And what do you get for it in the end? A whole country turned into a giant terrorist training camp that's now working against you, and using those very weapons that you've supplied them to kill your soldiers, and workers that you send to try to rebuild the country. The training camp that produced those people who committed the biggest terrorist act ever in the history of this planet, against the USA.
Then there was Kosovo. Again, "freedom fighters" against a totalitarian regime and all that. Again, a decade afterwards it's slowly growing to be another place where Wahhabism spreads, only this time in the middle of Europe (and also a major drug transit center to boot, to finance the operation). And, again, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Now there's Libya. It's only been a year since the downfall of the regime - thanks largely to heavy NATO military backing of the rebel "freedom fighters" - and we've already seen genocide of the black population, widespread persecuting of Christians, and now this act of outright hostility towards USA and the murder of its citizens and representatives. You can go on at length about how the real, democratically elected government of Libya is liberal and all about human rights and such, but what this incident clearly shows is that they're not a government. They're simply not in control of the country. And people that are in control, because they have guns (that you gave them) and troops and determination - people like this - hate democracy and human rights with a passion, and hate you because you are representative of that. And you can't even say that they haven't warned you if you were only willing to see and listen...
But, hey, that's still not quite enough jihadis, right? Let's create another breeding ground for them in Syria as well?
It touches something everyone who plays online games wonders about.
How deep is that connection with your friends you know only in a virtual way? Does their impact on the virtual world you played in matter in any sense? Is changing a game world that 300 000 people play in and enjoy a real accomplishment? If he coaches little league or his kids football people would talk about that, even though it impacts a lot less people and is not all that important in the grand scheme of things. Hundreds of thousands of people have been touched, in a small way, by this guy, he was part of their little special society.
It's also strange, how our relationships with friends are changing. My friends who I play online with at least, are more likely to remember the far too many hours we spent trying to kill the first entrance trash in molten core, on the first night there were 40 people on our server who could even get in than some event where people went bar crawling and didn't quite make it home. We raided molten core, other people broke into an abandoned cement factory.
I'm 32, 4 years ago a friend of mine from public school passed away due to brain cancer. I had known him for 23 or 24 years in total (from junior kindergarten until he passed away). We did lots of stuff as kids, riding around parks on a bike, trying to meet girls, failing miserably with girls, we sat around his house and played games, we went to universities, fell in a river at a yearly university party etc. That stuff, when people gave speeches about it at his funeral is something everyone could relate to and laugh about. Including that time we accidentally set fire to our old school, his father sold school equipment and after graduation he was working for his dad and someone botched an installation... Know one really knew (or was inclined to talk about) how he'd spent the last couple of years of his life trying to help organize a guild in a video game. He couldn't be around people IRL a lot of the time due to treatments, but he could log on and help organize 40 or 50 people to get their shit together and have fun. I guess that's important, insofar as having fun is important. But it's not something people in their 40's and 50's and older can really understand or relate to generally.
Eve particularly makes this a story because it's a single world. Whatever my deceased friend accomplished was confined to one server of a cluster of servers of hundreds of thousands or millions of people all doing the same thing, in their own little instances walking past each other. But in Eve, one person can change the world for everyone, good or bad.
Notice how there's no story about the other 3 people who were killed, 2 other staffers and the ambassador. The ambassador is getting lots of coverage on the MSM. That was his 'clique' so to speak, and that will be his mark on the world is as an ambassador trying to manage US business. This was an IT guy, who played games with his friends. There's nothing wrong with that, but how we think about peoples contribution to the world is changing, this poor guy has the unfortunate distinction of getting a lot of press for it, but he's certainly not the first.
When George Lucas or Hironobu Sakaguchi, or Sid Meier pass away people on the outside of their properties (Star Wars/Indiana Jones, Final fantasy, Civilization) will understand them as the creators of those things, even if they never played the games or watched the movies. Game worlds are different, because the people who created the rules of the world, and the people who make the world aren't the same. This guy made part of the world that was created by the people at CCP, and that 300k other people play in. I don't think society has quite figured out how, if at all, it wants to try and recognize that.
Agreed. This is just one of those many threads that bring out all the folks that'll start quoting that Godless piece of bigotry that is www.thereligionofpeace.com, and get modded up by others who insist on believing that all 1.4 BILLION Muslims around the world are terrorists, which makes about as much sense as equating all Protestants with the Klan. I'll probably get modded down just for posting this, but I really don't care...that sort of crap makes me ashamed to be an American.
It's blowback. From assets used to achieve para-political military aims, then discarded by the would-be puppet masters.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."