No evidence? Have you seen Ann Coulter? If she isn't at least part alien, I'll eat my hat.
You don't even own a hat, do you. Then, we'll find that Ann Coulter really isn't an alien-bacterial symbiont, and you'll have deprived us of our hat-eating fun. Damn you and your loose oaths!
For more fun, Google "Hitler AND Vegetarian". Seriously, associating an idea with some of its kookier followers says nothing significant about the truth or falsity of the idea itself. For heaven's sake, Pythagoras thought that BEANS were EVIL, and yet we don't bring that up every time we try to analyze a triangle, do we?
Panspermia may be right. It may be wrong (I tend to think, gut instinct, it is wrong). However, the truth of the matter does not depend on how many kool-aid drinking idiots latch onto one side or the other.
Now, most of the food in Spain except for the ham, seafood and churros is bordering on objectively disgusting, but everyone I saw over there is very thin.
Game, set, match. I think there is a scientist in you somewhere, my boy.
I'm glad I added the qualifier on the end indicating that I understood what your main point was.[...]On a related note, I'll bet you just love "America. Love it or leave it!".
He he. Yeah, drives me crazy a little bit. But, despite the fact that I'm a bit verbose on/., I'm a pretty sedate guy in meatspace. I don't understand why people get so twisted up about the dumb stuff, and I'm doubly stuffed on why they are so sedate on the occasional moment when its actually important to care. Qualifiers are fun in cyberspace because you never know when they are needed (of if you use them, whether people will even pay attention).
The primary system is broken; on this I think everyone but the talking heads and the front-runners agree. But somehow, even with similar system-wide defects in the past (often rife with outright bags-of-money corruption) surprises did happen, and more often than most people think.
Heck, we might be witnessing the primary system self-destruct right before our eyes; the party leadership on both sides is having no success in controlling the state parties, who all seem to be smoking a special sort of crack. Who knows what will shake out of the chaos.
I like your sig. Seems kinda apropos, no? I agree with you, this WOW thing really isn't a big deal. It seems though that this whole conversation (my comments included) is predicated on an insistence that it is, and for those who believe so, I think that they could be more productive about it, is all. Knee jerk reactions that amount to "give up, run away" hurt just as much when things come up that actually do matter. My underlying contention is that such reactions are habitual, and that's really my only concern. Sure, there is a tempest-in-a-teapot danger of desensitization to petition/protest/etc. tactics being used, but that's infinitely preferable for me than people getting habituated to the solution of just going somewhere else when things get rough (or in this case, just mildly problematic).
Hey, some people juggle geese. (Baby geese. Goslings! They were juggled!) I care not what gets people off, so long as they're happy doing it and the geese are unharmed.;) God knows there is no way under the sun to predict what some people will choose to care about.
So, you're claiming that good methods for effecting change in one sphere (government and social groups) are effective methods for change in all spheres, and that's just not true.
No, although I can understand how you could get that from my comment. There is a world of difference between a similarity of mindsets and a similarity of tactics. Depending on context, subject matter, and severity of the situation, different tactics are appropriate and effective than others. However, social organization for group action works pretty similarly across many points of the spectrum, merely and predictably because regardless of whether the issue is politics or WOW, its human beings being organized.
There is more than a little overlap in the toolbox when it comes to these situations, and I think that your analogy is apt if only because one tool can't fix everything. If achieving the goal is analogous to the nail being driven, than a screwdriver is of course ineffective, but so is whacking at the nail without any control with a hammer. Hit it too hard, you might bend the nail, or damage the surface into which it is being driven. All I'm saying is that considered, measured strokes may be more effective in most circumstances to drive the fucking nail (OK, by the end of that paragraph, hammer/nail analogy got old;). It's the mindset that bothers me; individual tools relevant to the situation at hand are always preferable. In this case, since Blizzard has shown itself to be responsive to organized complaints (re: bots, cheaters), it is not unreasonable to assume that a similar tactic here might also be effective. Tool has worked in the past, maybe it's the right tool for the job now?
Not to mention that the book-video game analogy is so deeply flawed it would take more time than I have to go into it.
As I noted further down in the thread, the book analogy is an admitted simplification. Perhaps better example: person loves Stephen King books, and derives enjoyment from them. He/she discovers that Scribners Publishing does unsavory things to many of its authors, and is disquieted. Authors' work, like video game experience, is largely non-fungible (i.e. there is no writer quite like S. King to many of his readers, and no game quite like WOW to many of its players) and so telling someone to just stop buying the product and patronize a "competitor" is silly, because the competitor does not provide the desired experience. Better would be trying to get Scribners to change its practices (which is not likely to happen as a result of you no longer buying Stephen King novels in any case) by organizing people, calling media outlets, talking to authors, getting involved, etc. Again, the reasonableness of any of this is directly tied to how much enjoyment the reader/player gets out of the product, and how much based on that they are willing to go out of their way (if they genuinely care about Scribners' policies or Blizzard's scanning software and aren't just airily bitching) to try to affect change.
While my example is a simplification, so is yours, and neither are a straw man, though I think I'm hitting closer to the mark than you. The problem here is an assumption of fungibility, i.e. that the experience a WOWer gets from WOW is value-exchangeable for a comparable one from a competing product (say, EVE Online or Guild Wars). Surely MMOs are not so unique that the pleasure one gets from playing its entirely irreplaceable, but as many gamers will testify the particular game can make all the difference between one person's enjoyment and that person's frustration. If you wanted to tweak my example a little, it would be like saying to a person who enjoys Stephen King but dislikes Scribners Publishing policies that they are just gonna have to "use a competing product". Equally silly, isn't it?
Really? So, large groups have organized protest e-mails and calls to tech support and angry phone calls, etc. ad nauseum? That's news to me. If so, kudos, and if it doesn't work, have fun canceling your account; people tried, it failed, sometimes that happens, and you gotta go nuclear.
Somehow, though, I don't think that's the situation. Like you said, I'm not "in WOW" so I don't know. It's just that you're the first to mention such a phenomena (despite the many WOWers around these parts), and so without corroboration it seems a little far-fetched.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin..."; I think people are becoming very fed up with just how efficient the machinery has become. People of all political persuasions as far as I can tell don't like the feeling that someone else is telling them how they should think. Sure, they have actually been told how to think for a very long time, but now it just seems so in your face that it provokes a visceral reaction from many; i.e. they've noticed they're being played.
re: optimism...I have to be optimistic, for two reasons. One, public pessimism never did anything but make things worse, so far as I can tell. Two, if I lost my optimism, I think I just might have to start killing folk; it's the thin thread by which I hang my sanity.;)
You know, when I was writing that line, the exact same thing went through my head. It took all my self control to not quote the Beastie Boys. Clearly, I do not have a great reserve of self-control.;)
People, by and large, are not as uninformed as the media likes to portray (in a very masochistic way, I'd hazard, since the media would be to blame if it were true). There was an interesting video over at Reason today in which the use of Eminent Domain by a local city council to tear down a community gym and replace it with high-rise condos was being discussed. One of the people involved actually had the temerity to say "yeah, I bet if you talked to many of these [protesting] people, they wouldn't even know what Eminent Domain was." Which was disgustingly cynical and clearly untrue since the protesters had indeed done their homework and spoke about ED and its use competently in the case at hand.
People care when their lives are affected in a dramatic way, and become startlingly educated/informed when it is in their direct interest to do so. The lever that can move idea-driven candidates into the mainstream is that argument which demonstrates to people how these ideas matter, that they affect their lives profoundly, and that it is in their best interest to understand them. It's easier to do so when things are bad; more people are looking for solutions, and it doesn't take as much volume to get people's attention. There's a war (or two) on, people feel hemmed in by all sorts of things, and the government-related absurdities that seep into everyday life have become as a result harder to brush off. Here's a moment, yes?
The money follows the ideas. Paul got $7 million in one day. Obama raised $30 million in a quarter. The large majority of those totals did not come from deep-pockets but from people donating $20, $50 or $100, many of them donating for the first time in their lives. Sure, campaigns are expensive, but it seems that Internet fundraising may have finally provided a viable way for people to enable candidates they care about, special interest money be damned. I agree with you that money has had (and continues to have) a corrupting effect on our process, but perhaps this is a moment when grassroots money can recapture some of the value from the absurdities of our recent political past.
Now, this is "just a game", and so it is reasonable for people to only put as much effort into salvaging it as pleasure they get out of it; it's not like fighting for your rights or anything. I just have a really hard time comprehending the general attitude around here...
And this was from yours:
This is a video game. Finding another MMO to take up your excess time is a matter of $50 at worst, since just about all of them worth playing give free trial periods. Your friends that you met in WoW will still be your friends when you stop playing if they are real friends and not merely aquaintances. There is such a thing as instance messenger and voice chat. Gain some perspective.
I've got perspective (tm). It is only a game, and as such, like I said, people who have a problem with how it is provided should raise a stink only so far as the enjoyment they get from the game is worth it to them. Since, after all, it is their money, and not yours or mine. Me, I prefer to read books, watch movies, chat (in meatspace) with friends, and post to/. for my entertainment. That's what brings me enjoyment. These folks, who like WOW, like other things than I do and spend money in ways consummate with that enjoyment. If one were to look at the publishing industry with a magnifying glass, one would see all sorts of hideous warts; the way they treat most authors is abominable, their editorial policies are groupthink L.C.D. crap, etc. etc.. And yet, I think it would be plainly idiotic to suggest to a person that they should just stop reading books because there are problems with the way books are provided as a product. There are other, better ways. They are harder, less self-satisfyingly smug, and not always successful. And yet, they are the ways that actually make things better, as opposed to the prevailing message which seems only to suggest that one try to insulate oneself from the world as it goes to shit around you.
Look, the way in which people think and how they act when it comes to trivial matters reflects very well how they tend to react to important ones. People whose first reaction is cut and run from every negative thing tend to do so not just in MMO-land but also in politics. People complain a great deal about political apathy, but apathy comes from the mindset that the other methods I have been speaking about (e.g. organize, petition, complain) are ineffective and are thus never tried. Of course they fail; nobody does them. In many cases, they've forgotten how. The mindset here reflects the mindset in the wider landscape, and so if you think I fail to have perspective because it's "just a game", that may be because this attitude is corrosive wherever it appears and I find that way of thinking to be destructive in areas of life where it matters a damn well lot.
You are quite right. Politics (like many other things) has lengthy periods of mediocre equilibrium punctuated by transitory events of rapid and unpredictable change. My point is it is counter-productive and silly to complain about the same old "everything sucks the same as it always has" saw when it isn't presently true. Since we are living, right now today, in an exception where there are several viable candidates who do not follow the standard pattern, instead of doing an Eeyore impression why don't we seize the moment?
I would die a very happy man if this election people were able to choose between, say, Obama and Paul (two people with honest disagreements, real brains, and by all accounts forthright intentions) over a Giuliani v. Hillary same-old-same-old. It wouldn't be that hard in a purely practical sense; primary elections are poorly attended, and even small groups can sway them. People "say" they want it, but they have to actually suck it up and vote in a primary, ruin their lawn with a campaign sign or two, or chat with their friends about the political landscape.
Of course, the poster right above you pointed out that apathy is strong, and working for change is hard (takes work, and generally doesn't get you paid or fed). But comments like those I have been seeing regarding the "system is broken, votes are worthless, rah rah rah" are actually destructive, they feed into the received kool-aid wisdom, and become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is to say, plainly, that people who spout the line in a time when change is possible are "part of the problem". That ain't cool, it shouldn't be tolerated unchallenged by anyone who dares to hope that things can be changed as they have been many times before.
It makes sense to me too, just not as the first reaction. If a company provides you a service you enjoy, and one day they decide to change something and that change you dislike (and you have reason to believe that other customers like yourself also disapprove), there are approaches that still preserve the value that you derive from the service. Only if those fail is it "reasonable" in the practical sense to say "since you failed to heed my (and others') complaints, and it concerns something that is important to me, you will no longer have my business".
As I said elsewhere in the thread, it is "only a game" and so I'd expect people to put in only as much effort to change WOW as pleasure they receive from it, and beyond that would bail and be justified in doing so. It is the mentality behind it that seems more and more to be a common first reaction that I object to, and I find it being applied in areas as trivial as an MMORPG or significant as national politics. That worries me a great deal.
I don't play WOW, I don't get why people are obsessed with it, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the point, which is this:
1. Many people like playing WOW. It brings them happiness to play it.
2. The provider of WOW has instituted a policy that is objectionable.
There is no reason on God's Green Earth why 1 and 2 above need inevitably lead to:
3. Therefore people should give up WOW that brings them happiness because there is a problem with how it is provided.
Because, frankly, that's just stupid. Less extreme measures should be tried first, like salvaging that which is valuable by attempting to change that which is objectionable. Cutting your losses and running is, if ever, a last resort when attempts to fix the problem have utterly failed. Now, this is "just a game", and so it is reasonable for people to only put as much effort into salvaging it as pleasure they get out of it; it's not like fighting for your rights or anything. I just have a really hard time comprehending the general attitude around here being that as soon as someone (esp. a corporate entity) does something to find questionable that the only response is immediate and extreme measures(tm). Human beings who do care, if even fleetingly, about things other than money run these companies; they want people to enjoy their products, and would be fools not to listen to valid concerns even if only for self-interested reasons.
As I said above, I doubt that is the case. Bot infestations and PvP cheaters did not cause "en masse cancellations" but it did provoke complaints that led to Blizzard attempting to address the issue. Likewise, I imagine a similar level of complaints would have a similar effect in this situation; it runs against the clear self-interest of Blizzard to respond otherwise.
It's hard not to be quite so cynical these days, but there is little call for it here. Sure companies like money, but the smart ones don't go about strangling the geese that lay their golden eggs. WOW won't last forever; it will soon enough look butt-ugly and lacking in interactivity when the next generation of MMOs arrive, as is the way of all software games development. When that happens, keeping its current customer base happy and making them feel they can trust Blizzard is huge in getting the next such offering onto the market. Burning those customers and ignoring those concerns would be monumentally stupid, given that fact.
As I understand it, what Blizzard is doing now (albeit misguided) is in response to people complaining about cheats and bots that ruin the game experience for them. That is, plainly, evidence that Blizzard doesn't just care about the bottom line to the exclusion of the preferences and complaints of the customers. I imagine that if as many people complained about this rootkit-esque fix as complain about the problem it was intended to solve, Blizzard would respond accordingly.
And I know this sounds crazy in our faux capitalist "customer is always wrong" universe, but why not organize and complain to Blizzard? It's not like players aren't already organized into large social groups (c.f. Clans, etc.). They could be mobilized and if they spoke with a collective voice might have an impact. I doubt most players would be comfortable with some corp. being able to toy with their boxes at will, and if it were explained in those terms I think you wouldn't have to work hard to convince people to mass e-mail complaints to Blizzard or something similar.
Or you could pack up, stop playing, go home (or out into the sunlight as the case may be;). But why is it that the first reaction of this crowd when confronted with something good that has something bad piggy-backed onto it is this scorched earth "abandon the good" mentality? It's the same absurd attitude as those who say "you don't like our president's policies? why don't you leave the country, then?". How about instead of leave the country, work for change and reform? Things go to shit because good people leave instead of fighting to protect what is valuable to them.
One of the big drags of being a registered independent in many states is that the primaries are closed to you. However, even in many of those states where that is the case (I am fortunate I am not in one of them) it is a simple matter to affiliate for the purposes of voting in a primary and then disaffiliating afterwards. If there really is a candidate in one of the parties that you feel should make it to the final, that should be more important than the transitory or ideological discomfort that is caused by on paper belonging to a party for a little while, shouldn't it? A very few states have very silly rules that include ridiculously long lead times and cutoff dates for affiliation/disaffiliation, and there should be some serious advocacy for reform in those states and in some, there is). I think (and you sound like you are in one of those places) that is something to rightfully bitch about re: our system and the diminished value of the vote in it.
Look, I dislike the two party system as much as the next guy, and the artifact of the electoral college (which was shorn of its original intended point by the 12th amendment anyway, so they should have just killed and been done with it...ah well) creates an electoral calculus that strongly discourages third parties. But here, we were arguing about the worth of a vote, and lots of people were bitching that "since we have only two candidates and two parties our votes are worthless and the system is crap" or minor permutations thereof, and that is, as I said, a load of horse.
The two major political parties have changed greatly in their ideological stances over their lifetimes as a direct result of popular and voter pressure, from the populist revolution of the 1890-1920's which completely reformed the Democratic party, to the Christian Coalition changing the social focus of the Republican party. There are so many such examples they'd be hard to comprehensively list. All the prospective changes in these parties are embodied by a candidate who is running in the primaries, and so a change in party direction would follow only from voters participating in the process by voting and thus endorsing change. It's not like there aren't choices there; only a complete (and disingenuous) cynic would say that Paul is the same as Huckabee is the same as Giuliani, or Kucinich is the same as Obama is the same as H. Clinton.
No, you misunderstand. The context of the total discussion (look back through the thread) was that someone said that all that was ever left for people to choose from was "sycophant A" or "sycophant B". I retorted that that was not the case, that there are politicians even in the main parties (such as Paul, Kucinich, Obama, Huckabee) who are very far from the same old, same old. Then someone responded that the parties usually squeeze out such candidates, to which I responded that historically that isn't the case, and used the example of Theodore Roosevelt. To which you responded that unlike in TR's time, things like TV and first lady hairstyles and comparable trivia changed things in measurable ways (which I don't disagree, BTW). My point in response is that those same maverick candidates I was talking about way up in the beginning of the discussion (i.e. Paul, Obama, Kucinich, Huckabee) are all fairly photogenic, articulate, and play well on TV, (and one of them even has a hot wife;) so that is not a good excuse (IMNSHO) for believing that an insurgency like TR's could not occur in the present day given the candidates we actually have even given the power that TV images hold over the voters' minds.
No argument from me. One of the most insightful comments (in the real, not the/. sense) I have ever read was one in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols when he wrote that it was notable that religions and philosophers neglect the clear changes that advances in technology, moral sense, social movement et al. when these things change how we understand those so-called fundamental "gospel truths". In one amusing bit he asks rhetorically "where is the philosophy of digestion? Food is as important as anything else in the lives of men. Why do we not consider it when we examine life?" I imagine that today one might similarly ask, "What is the theology of copy machines, or nuclear bombs, or the Internet" and take seriously the spiritual consequences of the devices we use that effect how we see and live our lives in ways so pervasive and profound we cannot think apart from them.
To the theologians' credit, there have been a few (in many different religions) who have attempted to tackle such questions. When Nietzsche wrote his little nettle, Kierkegaard had already started a little revolution in Christian approaches to some of these issues, but sadly they never met up and compared notes. There was an article I read not so long ago in which an economist opined on what a Buddhist Industrial Economy might look like (that is, an economy built upon values and principles of Buddhism in the modern age of consumer production). It was fascinating, to say the least. Jewish theologians tried to tackle the theological implications of the technical automation of murder, such as it was in the Shoah, and the stuff that was written on "The Eclipse of God" out of that exploration is really funky stuff. Point being none of these insights would be possible but for the time and place in which they occurred, which differ in so many ways from the times when the prophets lived.
Yeah, I thought about that about five seconds after I posted, and probably should have used Theodore Roosevelt as a better example of what I was talking about (as I did in subsequent posts), being uncomplicated by things like the Civil War. Even still, Lincoln was chosen as a candidate for very odd reasons, and he certainly wasn't the first choice on party leaders' minds.
Slashdot Mirror
No evidence? Have you seen Ann Coulter? If she isn't at least part alien, I'll eat my hat.
You don't even own a hat, do you. Then, we'll find that Ann Coulter really isn't an alien-bacterial symbiont, and you'll have deprived us of our hat-eating fun. Damn you and your loose oaths!
For more fun, Google "Hitler AND Vegetarian". Seriously, associating an idea with some of its kookier followers says nothing significant about the truth or falsity of the idea itself. For heaven's sake, Pythagoras thought that BEANS were EVIL, and yet we don't bring that up every time we try to analyze a triangle, do we?
Panspermia may be right. It may be wrong (I tend to think, gut instinct, it is wrong). However, the truth of the matter does not depend on how many kool-aid drinking idiots latch onto one side or the other.
Now, most of the food in Spain except for the ham, seafood and churros is bordering on objectively disgusting, but everyone I saw over there is very thin.
Game, set, match. I think there is a scientist in you somewhere, my boy.
I'm glad I added the qualifier on the end indicating that I understood what your main point was.[...]On a related note, I'll bet you just love "America. Love it or leave it!".
He he. Yeah, drives me crazy a little bit. But, despite the fact that I'm a bit verbose on /., I'm a pretty sedate guy in meatspace. I don't understand why people get so twisted up about the dumb stuff, and I'm doubly stuffed on why they are so sedate on the occasional moment when its actually important to care. Qualifiers are fun in cyberspace because you never know when they are needed (of if you use them, whether people will even pay attention).
The primary system is broken; on this I think everyone but the talking heads and the front-runners agree. But somehow, even with similar system-wide defects in the past (often rife with outright bags-of-money corruption) surprises did happen, and more often than most people think.
Heck, we might be witnessing the primary system self-destruct right before our eyes; the party leadership on both sides is having no success in controlling the state parties, who all seem to be smoking a special sort of crack. Who knows what will shake out of the chaos.
I like your sig. Seems kinda apropos, no? I agree with you, this WOW thing really isn't a big deal. It seems though that this whole conversation (my comments included) is predicated on an insistence that it is, and for those who believe so, I think that they could be more productive about it, is all. Knee jerk reactions that amount to "give up, run away" hurt just as much when things come up that actually do matter. My underlying contention is that such reactions are habitual, and that's really my only concern. Sure, there is a tempest-in-a-teapot danger of desensitization to petition/protest/etc. tactics being used, but that's infinitely preferable for me than people getting habituated to the solution of just going somewhere else when things get rough (or in this case, just mildly problematic).
Hey, some people juggle geese. (Baby geese. Goslings! They were juggled!) I care not what gets people off, so long as they're happy doing it and the geese are unharmed. ;) God knows there is no way under the sun to predict what some people will choose to care about.
So, you're claiming that good methods for effecting change in one sphere (government and social groups) are effective methods for change in all spheres, and that's just not true.
No, although I can understand how you could get that from my comment. There is a world of difference between a similarity of mindsets and a similarity of tactics. Depending on context, subject matter, and severity of the situation, different tactics are appropriate and effective than others. However, social organization for group action works pretty similarly across many points of the spectrum, merely and predictably because regardless of whether the issue is politics or WOW, its human beings being organized.
There is more than a little overlap in the toolbox when it comes to these situations, and I think that your analogy is apt if only because one tool can't fix everything. If achieving the goal is analogous to the nail being driven, than a screwdriver is of course ineffective, but so is whacking at the nail without any control with a hammer. Hit it too hard, you might bend the nail, or damage the surface into which it is being driven. All I'm saying is that considered, measured strokes may be more effective in most circumstances to drive the fucking nail (OK, by the end of that paragraph, hammer/nail analogy got old ;). It's the mindset that bothers me; individual tools relevant to the situation at hand are always preferable. In this case, since Blizzard has shown itself to be responsive to organized complaints (re: bots, cheaters), it is not unreasonable to assume that a similar tactic here might also be effective. Tool has worked in the past, maybe it's the right tool for the job now?
Not to mention that the book-video game analogy is so deeply flawed it would take more time than I have to go into it.
As I noted further down in the thread, the book analogy is an admitted simplification. Perhaps better example: person loves Stephen King books, and derives enjoyment from them. He/she discovers that Scribners Publishing does unsavory things to many of its authors, and is disquieted. Authors' work, like video game experience, is largely non-fungible (i.e. there is no writer quite like S. King to many of his readers, and no game quite like WOW to many of its players) and so telling someone to just stop buying the product and patronize a "competitor" is silly, because the competitor does not provide the desired experience. Better would be trying to get Scribners to change its practices (which is not likely to happen as a result of you no longer buying Stephen King novels in any case) by organizing people, calling media outlets, talking to authors, getting involved, etc. Again, the reasonableness of any of this is directly tied to how much enjoyment the reader/player gets out of the product, and how much based on that they are willing to go out of their way (if they genuinely care about Scribners' policies or Blizzard's scanning software and aren't just airily bitching) to try to affect change.
While my example is a simplification, so is yours, and neither are a straw man, though I think I'm hitting closer to the mark than you. The problem here is an assumption of fungibility, i.e. that the experience a WOWer gets from WOW is value-exchangeable for a comparable one from a competing product (say, EVE Online or Guild Wars). Surely MMOs are not so unique that the pleasure one gets from playing its entirely irreplaceable, but as many gamers will testify the particular game can make all the difference between one person's enjoyment and that person's frustration. If you wanted to tweak my example a little, it would be like saying to a person who enjoys Stephen King but dislikes Scribners Publishing policies that they are just gonna have to "use a competing product". Equally silly, isn't it?
Really? So, large groups have organized protest e-mails and calls to tech support and angry phone calls, etc. ad nauseum? That's news to me. If so, kudos, and if it doesn't work, have fun canceling your account; people tried, it failed, sometimes that happens, and you gotta go nuclear.
Somehow, though, I don't think that's the situation. Like you said, I'm not "in WOW" so I don't know. It's just that you're the first to mention such a phenomena (despite the many WOWers around these parts), and so without corroboration it seems a little far-fetched.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin..."; I think people are becoming very fed up with just how efficient the machinery has become. People of all political persuasions as far as I can tell don't like the feeling that someone else is telling them how they should think. Sure, they have actually been told how to think for a very long time, but now it just seems so in your face that it provokes a visceral reaction from many; i.e. they've noticed they're being played.
re: optimism...I have to be optimistic, for two reasons. One, public pessimism never did anything but make things worse, so far as I can tell. Two, if I lost my optimism, I think I just might have to start killing folk; it's the thin thread by which I hang my sanity. ;)
You know, when I was writing that line, the exact same thing went through my head. It took all my self control to not quote the Beastie Boys. Clearly, I do not have a great reserve of self-control. ;)
People, by and large, are not as uninformed as the media likes to portray (in a very masochistic way, I'd hazard, since the media would be to blame if it were true). There was an interesting video over at Reason today in which the use of Eminent Domain by a local city council to tear down a community gym and replace it with high-rise condos was being discussed. One of the people involved actually had the temerity to say "yeah, I bet if you talked to many of these [protesting] people, they wouldn't even know what Eminent Domain was." Which was disgustingly cynical and clearly untrue since the protesters had indeed done their homework and spoke about ED and its use competently in the case at hand.
People care when their lives are affected in a dramatic way, and become startlingly educated/informed when it is in their direct interest to do so. The lever that can move idea-driven candidates into the mainstream is that argument which demonstrates to people how these ideas matter, that they affect their lives profoundly, and that it is in their best interest to understand them. It's easier to do so when things are bad; more people are looking for solutions, and it doesn't take as much volume to get people's attention. There's a war (or two) on, people feel hemmed in by all sorts of things, and the government-related absurdities that seep into everyday life have become as a result harder to brush off. Here's a moment, yes?
The money follows the ideas. Paul got $7 million in one day. Obama raised $30 million in a quarter. The large majority of those totals did not come from deep-pockets but from people donating $20, $50 or $100, many of them donating for the first time in their lives. Sure, campaigns are expensive, but it seems that Internet fundraising may have finally provided a viable way for people to enable candidates they care about, special interest money be damned. I agree with you that money has had (and continues to have) a corrupting effect on our process, but perhaps this is a moment when grassroots money can recapture some of the value from the absurdities of our recent political past.
This was from my post:
Now, this is "just a game", and so it is reasonable for people to only put as much effort into salvaging it as pleasure they get out of it; it's not like fighting for your rights or anything. I just have a really hard time comprehending the general attitude around here...
And this was from yours:
This is a video game. Finding another MMO to take up your excess time is a matter of $50 at worst, since just about all of them worth playing give free trial periods. Your friends that you met in WoW will still be your friends when you stop playing if they are real friends and not merely aquaintances. There is such a thing as instance messenger and voice chat. Gain some perspective.
I've got perspective (tm). It is only a game, and as such, like I said, people who have a problem with how it is provided should raise a stink only so far as the enjoyment they get from the game is worth it to them. Since, after all, it is their money, and not yours or mine. Me, I prefer to read books, watch movies, chat (in meatspace) with friends, and post to /. for my entertainment. That's what brings me enjoyment. These folks, who like WOW, like other things than I do and spend money in ways consummate with that enjoyment. If one were to look at the publishing industry with a magnifying glass, one would see all sorts of hideous warts; the way they treat most authors is abominable, their editorial policies are groupthink L.C.D. crap, etc. etc.. And yet, I think it would be plainly idiotic to suggest to a person that they should just stop reading books because there are problems with the way books are provided as a product. There are other, better ways. They are harder, less self-satisfyingly smug, and not always successful. And yet, they are the ways that actually make things better, as opposed to the prevailing message which seems only to suggest that one try to insulate oneself from the world as it goes to shit around you.
Look, the way in which people think and how they act when it comes to trivial matters reflects very well how they tend to react to important ones. People whose first reaction is cut and run from every negative thing tend to do so not just in MMO-land but also in politics. People complain a great deal about political apathy, but apathy comes from the mindset that the other methods I have been speaking about (e.g. organize, petition, complain) are ineffective and are thus never tried. Of course they fail; nobody does them. In many cases, they've forgotten how. The mindset here reflects the mindset in the wider landscape, and so if you think I fail to have perspective because it's "just a game", that may be because this attitude is corrosive wherever it appears and I find that way of thinking to be destructive in areas of life where it matters a damn well lot.
You are quite right. Politics (like many other things) has lengthy periods of mediocre equilibrium punctuated by transitory events of rapid and unpredictable change. My point is it is counter-productive and silly to complain about the same old "everything sucks the same as it always has" saw when it isn't presently true. Since we are living, right now today, in an exception where there are several viable candidates who do not follow the standard pattern, instead of doing an Eeyore impression why don't we seize the moment?
I would die a very happy man if this election people were able to choose between, say, Obama and Paul (two people with honest disagreements, real brains, and by all accounts forthright intentions) over a Giuliani v. Hillary same-old-same-old. It wouldn't be that hard in a purely practical sense; primary elections are poorly attended, and even small groups can sway them. People "say" they want it, but they have to actually suck it up and vote in a primary, ruin their lawn with a campaign sign or two, or chat with their friends about the political landscape.
Of course, the poster right above you pointed out that apathy is strong, and working for change is hard (takes work, and generally doesn't get you paid or fed). But comments like those I have been seeing regarding the "system is broken, votes are worthless, rah rah rah" are actually destructive, they feed into the received kool-aid wisdom, and become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is to say, plainly, that people who spout the line in a time when change is possible are "part of the problem". That ain't cool, it shouldn't be tolerated unchallenged by anyone who dares to hope that things can be changed as they have been many times before.
It makes sense to me too, just not as the first reaction. If a company provides you a service you enjoy, and one day they decide to change something and that change you dislike (and you have reason to believe that other customers like yourself also disapprove), there are approaches that still preserve the value that you derive from the service. Only if those fail is it "reasonable" in the practical sense to say "since you failed to heed my (and others') complaints, and it concerns something that is important to me, you will no longer have my business".
As I said elsewhere in the thread, it is "only a game" and so I'd expect people to put in only as much effort to change WOW as pleasure they receive from it, and beyond that would bail and be justified in doing so. It is the mentality behind it that seems more and more to be a common first reaction that I object to, and I find it being applied in areas as trivial as an MMORPG or significant as national politics. That worries me a great deal.
I don't play WOW, I don't get why people are obsessed with it, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the point, which is this:
1. Many people like playing WOW. It brings them happiness to play it.
2. The provider of WOW has instituted a policy that is objectionable.
There is no reason on God's Green Earth why 1 and 2 above need inevitably lead to:
3. Therefore people should give up WOW that brings them happiness because there is a problem with how it is provided.
Because, frankly, that's just stupid. Less extreme measures should be tried first, like salvaging that which is valuable by attempting to change that which is objectionable. Cutting your losses and running is, if ever, a last resort when attempts to fix the problem have utterly failed. Now, this is "just a game", and so it is reasonable for people to only put as much effort into salvaging it as pleasure they get out of it; it's not like fighting for your rights or anything. I just have a really hard time comprehending the general attitude around here being that as soon as someone (esp. a corporate entity) does something to find questionable that the only response is immediate and extreme measures(tm). Human beings who do care, if even fleetingly, about things other than money run these companies; they want people to enjoy their products, and would be fools not to listen to valid concerns even if only for self-interested reasons.
As I said above, I doubt that is the case. Bot infestations and PvP cheaters did not cause "en masse cancellations" but it did provoke complaints that led to Blizzard attempting to address the issue. Likewise, I imagine a similar level of complaints would have a similar effect in this situation; it runs against the clear self-interest of Blizzard to respond otherwise.
It's hard not to be quite so cynical these days, but there is little call for it here. Sure companies like money, but the smart ones don't go about strangling the geese that lay their golden eggs. WOW won't last forever; it will soon enough look butt-ugly and lacking in interactivity when the next generation of MMOs arrive, as is the way of all software games development. When that happens, keeping its current customer base happy and making them feel they can trust Blizzard is huge in getting the next such offering onto the market. Burning those customers and ignoring those concerns would be monumentally stupid, given that fact.
As I understand it, what Blizzard is doing now (albeit misguided) is in response to people complaining about cheats and bots that ruin the game experience for them. That is, plainly, evidence that Blizzard doesn't just care about the bottom line to the exclusion of the preferences and complaints of the customers. I imagine that if as many people complained about this rootkit-esque fix as complain about the problem it was intended to solve, Blizzard would respond accordingly.
And I know this sounds crazy in our faux capitalist "customer is always wrong" universe, but why not organize and complain to Blizzard? It's not like players aren't already organized into large social groups (c.f. Clans, etc.). They could be mobilized and if they spoke with a collective voice might have an impact. I doubt most players would be comfortable with some corp. being able to toy with their boxes at will, and if it were explained in those terms I think you wouldn't have to work hard to convince people to mass e-mail complaints to Blizzard or something similar.
Or you could pack up, stop playing, go home (or out into the sunlight as the case may be ;). But why is it that the first reaction of this crowd when confronted with something good that has something bad piggy-backed onto it is this scorched earth "abandon the good" mentality? It's the same absurd attitude as those who say "you don't like our president's policies? why don't you leave the country, then?". How about instead of leave the country, work for change and reform? Things go to shit because good people leave instead of fighting to protect what is valuable to them.
One of the big drags of being a registered independent in many states is that the primaries are closed to you. However, even in many of those states where that is the case (I am fortunate I am not in one of them) it is a simple matter to affiliate for the purposes of voting in a primary and then disaffiliating afterwards. If there really is a candidate in one of the parties that you feel should make it to the final, that should be more important than the transitory or ideological discomfort that is caused by on paper belonging to a party for a little while, shouldn't it? A very few states have very silly rules that include ridiculously long lead times and cutoff dates for affiliation/disaffiliation, and there should be some serious advocacy for reform in those states and in some, there is). I think (and you sound like you are in one of those places) that is something to rightfully bitch about re: our system and the diminished value of the vote in it.
Look, I dislike the two party system as much as the next guy, and the artifact of the electoral college (which was shorn of its original intended point by the 12th amendment anyway, so they should have just killed and been done with it...ah well) creates an electoral calculus that strongly discourages third parties. But here, we were arguing about the worth of a vote, and lots of people were bitching that "since we have only two candidates and two parties our votes are worthless and the system is crap" or minor permutations thereof, and that is, as I said, a load of horse.
The two major political parties have changed greatly in their ideological stances over their lifetimes as a direct result of popular and voter pressure, from the populist revolution of the 1890-1920's which completely reformed the Democratic party, to the Christian Coalition changing the social focus of the Republican party. There are so many such examples they'd be hard to comprehensively list. All the prospective changes in these parties are embodied by a candidate who is running in the primaries, and so a change in party direction would follow only from voters participating in the process by voting and thus endorsing change. It's not like there aren't choices there; only a complete (and disingenuous) cynic would say that Paul is the same as Huckabee is the same as Giuliani, or Kucinich is the same as Obama is the same as H. Clinton.
No, you misunderstand. The context of the total discussion (look back through the thread) was that someone said that all that was ever left for people to choose from was "sycophant A" or "sycophant B". I retorted that that was not the case, that there are politicians even in the main parties (such as Paul, Kucinich, Obama, Huckabee) who are very far from the same old, same old. Then someone responded that the parties usually squeeze out such candidates, to which I responded that historically that isn't the case, and used the example of Theodore Roosevelt. To which you responded that unlike in TR's time, things like TV and first lady hairstyles and comparable trivia changed things in measurable ways (which I don't disagree, BTW). My point in response is that those same maverick candidates I was talking about way up in the beginning of the discussion (i.e. Paul, Obama, Kucinich, Huckabee) are all fairly photogenic, articulate, and play well on TV, (and one of them even has a hot wife ;) so that is not a good excuse (IMNSHO) for believing that an insurgency like TR's could not occur in the present day given the candidates we actually have even given the power that TV images hold over the voters' minds.
No argument from me. One of the most insightful comments (in the real, not the /. sense) I have ever read was one in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols when he wrote that it was notable that religions and philosophers neglect the clear changes that advances in technology, moral sense, social movement et al. when these things change how we understand those so-called fundamental "gospel truths". In one amusing bit he asks rhetorically "where is the philosophy of digestion? Food is as important as anything else in the lives of men. Why do we not consider it when we examine life?" I imagine that today one might similarly ask, "What is the theology of copy machines, or nuclear bombs, or the Internet" and take seriously the spiritual consequences of the devices we use that effect how we see and live our lives in ways so pervasive and profound we cannot think apart from them.
To the theologians' credit, there have been a few (in many different religions) who have attempted to tackle such questions. When Nietzsche wrote his little nettle, Kierkegaard had already started a little revolution in Christian approaches to some of these issues, but sadly they never met up and compared notes. There was an article I read not so long ago in which an economist opined on what a Buddhist Industrial Economy might look like (that is, an economy built upon values and principles of Buddhism in the modern age of consumer production). It was fascinating, to say the least. Jewish theologians tried to tackle the theological implications of the technical automation of murder, such as it was in the Shoah, and the stuff that was written on "The Eclipse of God" out of that exploration is really funky stuff. Point being none of these insights would be possible but for the time and place in which they occurred, which differ in so many ways from the times when the prophets lived.
Yeah, I thought about that about five seconds after I posted, and probably should have used Theodore Roosevelt as a better example of what I was talking about (as I did in subsequent posts), being uncomplicated by things like the Civil War. Even still, Lincoln was chosen as a candidate for very odd reasons, and he certainly wasn't the first choice on party leaders' minds.