Category Archives: Living Outside the Body

At First I Was All, But Then I Was Like… (Social Networks for Two)

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Too Many Little Social Networks Popping Up

Another thing that seems to fall into the “we don’t need it, and we should kill it with fire” category: social networks for couples. .

It’s just funny enough to forward to someone, and possibly to download or sign up for as long as everyone knows you’re doing it “ironically.”

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So, there's like a real girl sitting right next to you! What the hell are you doing?

If this were a real thing, relationship-obsessed, self-absorbs teens would be the obvious market. But since it’s not, adults are more likely to pay money for something that’s “ironic,” and have a much harder time figuring how to delete crap from their phones or computers. So it makes sense that these things have (or pretend to have) more adult content.

Swapping Chores for Sexual Favors?

How could anything like this not be a joke:

Snuggle Cloud is the answer! We not only alert you when your partner is online and provide a Couple’s Dashboard for you to post anything and everything, but we also send reminders for special dates and moments, and help spark interesting conversations through daily questions and quizzes.

Kahnoodle goes the extra mile:

Intended for committed couples over the age of 21, Kahnoodle lets partners administer “love taps” – like Facebook pokes, except they refer to nookie.

Really?

There’s a Fine Line That Separates Brilliant and Stupid

But wait! Here’s the opening paragraph in the Globe’s article:

Nauseated by lovey-dovey couples plastering gushy missives on each other’s Facebook walls? Sick of reading all about their wedding plans on Twitter? Fear not: A new brand of social media networks is on the way, designed for couples to celebrate their love privately online.

Getting PDA’s off Facebook and Twitter! There’s a cause many of us would join.

I no longer want to make these things disappear, I want to make them mandatory.

Supreme Court Did NOT Say That Kids Have Right To Violent Videogames

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That would be stupid. Yet some newscasters seemed to say it, and this columnist appears to believe it, though since she’s really just using that as a hook to argue for feeding kids, we’ll give her some slack. What it did was strike down a badly written law, in which a State tries to regulate the sale based on content of the game.

In fact, the Entertainment Software Industry already regulates sales of games to minors. Much like the Motion Picture Association, which rates movies and prohibits minors from watching certain ones, an industry association IS given the power to limit what kids can buy. Though there is not criminal or civil liability for violating the age-restrictions, studies show that it’s harder to buy a mature game than it is to get into an R rated movie.  The Supreme Court did not change that. One might hope they discouraged the writing of vague laws aimed at non-problems that they couldn’t possibly affect even if enforceable, but that seems unlikely.

Red Dead Redemption: The Game I’ve Been Waiting To Play Since I Was Six

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Well, at least since 1975, when I first played “Gun Fight.”  It wasn’t the first video-game I played.  I played the original Space War at Magic Mountain, and of course Pong.  But others may feel nostalgic about those games, or Pac Man, Asteroids, Space Invaders, or even Centipede.  But the first time I played Shoot Out, I was completely immersed in the game.  I can’t say I saw the future of video-games, but I knew they would get better.  And then Star Trek, with it’s Holo-Deck, promised they would get really awesome.

Everything else got better.  Racing games moved up to Burnout Paradise.  RPGs evolved into Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, and Oblivion.  First person shooters became Modern Warfare, Halo, and Bad Company.  But Westerns failed to go anywhere.  Too vast, too lonely, guns that don’t reload quickly, stereotypes that often just stare, putting all their wisdom into nearly un-readable eyes.  Great movies, bad video games.

But now there’s Red Dead Redemption.  Rockstar, who can afford to spend $100 million dollars to make sure all that open space is filled, all those guns feel right, and all those stereotypes have a place and a story, did it.  I love this game, so far.  I love wandering around, forgetting what my mission is, and just exploring.  Hunting feels real. (and I did hunt in the desert as a teen).  Not realistic, there’s just too much game running around, and things attack you.  Cougars and coyotes, even wolves.  In the real desert, these animals mostly hide.  But in this kind of archetypal American fantasy desert, they will jump you, and they should.  That’s real, the way it should be.

I’m still a long way from finishing (or even really starting) the story elements.  But the world is beautiful and, after oh these many years, I’m playing the game I was promised.

The World of Red Dead Redemption

Why Realtime Television is Still Good

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It seems like we’ve been waiting a long time for Hulu.  Or Netflix, Tivo, or YouTube.  I don’t have to watch my favorite shows when they’re on anymore.  I can watch whatever I want, when it’s convenient for me.  Yet I watch Battlestar Galactica on Friday night, at 10p.m.  I let other things pass so I can go home and watch it.  This week I even sat through Dollhouse because it was on before BSG and seemed interesting.

I love Battlestar Galactica, mostly because it’s the best television show, ever.  But would it really make a difference if I watched it the next day?  It’s not like watching football later, the show isn’t actually happening right now.  It was shot last summer and will air many times.  I partly watch it because I enjoy the ceremony of having a certain time.  Partly it’s because the show is so compelling I don’t want to wait any longer than necessary.

But there’s also a new reason for watching the show at a certain time.  Twitter and Facebook allow me to interact with other people watching the same show.  Twitter and Monitter allow me to see what other people are saying, and I can publish my own comments.  It’s like watching the show with a bunch of like-minded smart people.  This is good, because a lot of my real friends fail to understand why the show is so awesome.

Twitter also makes watching a mediocre show like Dollhouse more of an adventure.  Nobody knew what to expect, and as the show started revealing its flaws, all of us could talk about it.  By the end of the show, there were some redeeming features, and there was room to hope that Joss Whedon might make something of it.  But more importantly, watching it with everyone else was a good time.

The other reason I like watching television in real time is that it’s less of a committment.  Sometimes I like having the television on in the background, or I like to watch it for a short time.  But if I start a show on demand, or put a DVD in, then I’m prepping for full attention, and probably setting aside a full period.  So I’ll click over to bad Sci-Fi Channel movies or something else that requires little attenion.

Washington Post Endorses World of Warcraft!

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Since the mainstream media is often anti-gaming, it’s good to see the Washington Post join the ranks of publications such as Business Week in pointing out that World of Warcraft players really are learning valuable business skills. The Post takes the position that, if it didn’t alarm people so much, you could totally list some of your gaming accomplishments on your resume. Raids, PvP successes, getting into a guild, and just leveling all require management of resources, tracking of tasks, coordination with others, and in some cases, selling yourself.

On the other hand, this guy has decided that World of Warcraft is a religion. I’m going to say that I think his definition is a little too loose. Any avid grouping might fall under it.

Twitter Dee, Twitter Dum

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So I twittered the other day, while watching Saturday Night Live, that the McGrubber segment should just stop.  It’s never been funny, and adding McGuyver and Pepsi, all at once, hasn’t helped.  Actually, I Twittered.  Capital T to indicate the use of the Twitter social posting service that is gaining on pretty much everything.  Turns out that when you Twitter, people listen.  People you don’t know.  The next morning I was notified that “Pepsuber” was following my Twitter feed.  Who is Pepsuber?  Well, it seems that McGrubber is sponsored by Pepsi, and the actor is Twitting away under this new name.  To people who complained or mentioned McGrubber on Twitter.  He was suddenly following over 900 people that morning.  By “he,” I really mean some Pepsi marketing intern, I’m sure.  There are a number of genuine celebrities on Twitter, but since this smacks you every which way with “marketing campaign”, I’m thinking interns.

Business Week Approves of my World of Warcraft Addiction

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Turns out that all the time I spend in World of Warcraft is honing my management skills. Business Week did an article on how all the skills used in WoW also apply to making the workplace better and more efficient. I think this is probably true, but have admit that my WoW performance, as well as my performance in other video games, reflects the meandering way my career has gone so far.

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Serious World of Warcraft players create a character, optimize the heck out of it, and march their way to level 80. They join a guild and do complex 25-person raids on high-end dungeons. Some have more than one level 80, and alt characters who have specific roles, such as farming or banking.

I’ve been playing for a year now. My highest character is level 40, but I have a bunch of them. I have wandered all over the place, and have a host of unrelated achievements. I have yet to find a guild I really like, and don’t really want to be in one where they dictate my schedule or tell me how to “spec” my character.

I have this problem with a lot of games. I like to explore. I’ll spend way too much time on non-essential quests that let me go all over the map. I usually load up on quests, but don’t efficiently drive to the conclusion. Maybe if I focus more when I’m playing World of Warcraft, this will carry over into real life.

Note: I found the article on Business Week while perusing Chainsaw Buddha.

Make Lovecraft, not Warcraft?

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My favorite virtual world, right now, is the World of Warcraft.  Because it’s so popular, naturally some people will hate it.  I don’t mind that, I sometimes hate people, movies, television shows, whatever, mostly because they seem way more popular than they deserve.  I understand.  But the reasons people give for hating are sometimes instructive.

One of the silliest World of Warcraft haters has to be the Timothy Plan family of funds.  Ostensibly an investment fund for people who want to invest only in “moral” companies, the plan caters to the over-protective yet inattentive parent who can’t read the description on a video-game but gets all their information from the ever-inaccurate Fox News.  The Timothy Plan released a document that supposedly rates “offensive video games”.  The document doesn’t seem very useful as investment guidance, but seems intended more as a warning to parents.  However, since most of the games are already rated “M”, you might wonder why an additional warning is required.

Then there’s the research.  If you’re investing in and kind of “family of funds,” you probably want solid research.  In fact, the descriptions they give of games seem to be frequently inaccurate.  They have identified WoW as a game where “many attacks cause enemies to bleed.”  Believe me, there are no gaping, bleeding wounds in WoW.  Characters don’t particularly change when you’re beating on them until they make some sighing noise and die.

Then, they claimed there was a lot of sexuality.  Maybe a little, but not as much as in, say, a soft drink commercial.  But this is a claim a number of reporters seem to be making lately.  That there are places in WoW where you can find naked characters having sex.  Which would be awesome.

One of the podcasts I listen to took up the challenge.  None of the podcasters had seen it, but they thought, maybe if they went to a certain Roleplaying server, it would be there.  They proposed that listeners go to a particular town, on a particular server, at a particular time.  Naked.

Naturally, I not only rolled up a character and went along, a let a friend of mine in on the deal.  She not only showed up, she made the biggest splash.  You can read her take on it here.  My take was that 25 people showed up, had a lot of fun, and basically streaked through two capital cities.  A lot of the server residents thought it looked fun and joined in.