Showing posts with label eloquent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eloquent. Show all posts

Monday, July 5, 2010

On Protesting

While I admire and approve of the protest as a method of getting your voice heard, whether it be by the government, your employers or the university which you attend, I simply cannot outline enough that you must be prepared.

1. Know what you want out of the protest; know what you want changed, know what you want those who you are angry with to do - a list of demands or a charter is usually helpful.
2. Organize! I know that sounds similar to the previous, but I can't state this enough. Everyone should be on the same page for your reasons and what you want out of it.
3. Don't be an asshole. Violent protests never really got anybody anywhere. Peaceful is not only the way to go physically, but going around calling the people you're dealing with "fucking snakes" or "fucking liars", etc. simply won't help add credence to your cause - it will remove it. Eloquent negotiations are important.
4. Know the laws and regulations which govern the area you're in. If you start throwing around words like "you can't do [blank]" and "we have the right to [blank]", know for a fact that this is the case.

While I feel the only person who is remotely intelligent in this video (among the protestors) is the cameraman, despite his desperate yelling of "don't use brutality!" to hopefully catch something nice on camera, his point of "we have to be civil...we may be angry, but we have to be civil" I think make up for it a little. The asshole in the group can be heard yelling a lot in the background, with cameraman telling him to be quiet repeatedly.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

A Gaming Adendum

I think this needs to be stated outside of my earlier post about Activizzard and StarCraft 2. Let's face it, as gamers, gaming companies have us by the balls. They create the games that we want to play, we buy them and that's it. They dictate the rules, the code of conduct and the fashion in which it is to be played and, outside of official patches and unofficial fan creations, the game more or less stays the same. And they always will have the same formula.

We may, as gamers and internet users, sit idly in front of glowing screens and rant about the things that are important to us - this is the only power we have to change ANYTHING. This is important to note. The only way things get changed is by speaking out - whether this be as a protest on the street or a well-meaning blogpost to and about the right people or thing.

What will NOT get things changed is flame wars. We need to be more eloquent with our anger, explaining WHY this kind of things simply won't do anymore. More eloquent than, "yur a fag lolz" and "this is fucking shit, ffffffuuuuuuuu blizzard!11!!!" These outbursts of nonsensical jabbery won't get you anywhere. In fact, they will set back the cause.

The world already sees gamers as ineloquent, infantile, useless leeches of human decency, and when I look at some of the bastards on forums and MMORPGs, it's hard to not agree - sometimes. Most of the time, however, when you have people like my friends or Husky and HD and the professional players they host in their StarCraft tournaments, or just that one nice guy in World of Warcraft who helped you find your way to Orgrimmar rather than shouting at the top of his virtual lungs, "NOOB FAG! ORGRIMMAR IS EASY TO FIND LOL".

Gamers are, actually, intelligent and thoughtful folk but they are often the quieter ones. The louder gamers, the ones Jack Thompson and the angry media latch on to like leeches at a blood party, are the ones who do not represent us. I don't know if I can stress any of that enough. If we want gaming companies to take us seriously when we ask for change, we need to do so not only en masse, but eloquently and thoughtfully. Then, and only then, will they take what we have to say seriously alongside their educated and competent game designers. Mahalo.