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May 11, 2024, 01:41:30 AM

we're back, baby

Didn't you write this before?

"Gonzo Journalism"

Is it really called that?

Fantastic. That made my day.

Quote from: Furiously

Didn't you write this before?

Did I? I don't remember.

I'm sure I've posted my thoughts on journalism before.

Quote from: HaemishM

The sky is still blue.

The Tool quote is, IIRC:

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Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed into a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness appearing to itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is but a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather....

Could be Hicks, but the voice sounds like the spoken voice of Tool/APC frontman (and IMO, the best vocalist in modern music) Maynard James Keenan.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

Rant sites are ideal targets for viral marketing.

It's Hicks. I should have hit teh Google for the lyrics, but I R LAZY. I've actually seen a tape of Hicks doing that bit on TV.

Quote from: Dark Vengeance

Could be Hicks, but the voice sounds like the spoken voice of Tool/APC frontman (and IMO, the best vocalist in modern music) Maynard James Keenan.

Heard an interesting Maynard story this morning. (They were interviewing Sheriff David Reichart about the Green River Killer) anyways, they told a riddle.

A woman goes to a family funeral and sees a man, who she thinks he's very attractive, but never gets a chance to talk to him. The next week she kills her sister. Why did she do it?

Maynard used shine flashlights in groupies faces when they brought girls backstage and ask them that question.

A sociopath will supposidly answer the question, "She hopes the attractive man will be at this funeral as well."

Damn, Haemish. Just...damn, you really rocked my thought process with that article. Fantastically written piece.

It is interesting, however, that even though so many gaming mags are barely more than corporate advertisement you pay money to see, quite a few people(myself included) that have the cynical view towards it still end up shelling out the cash for these bundles of toilet paper. I have a feeling it's three things working in tandem: we like "teh shinies" in the screenshots, we need something to read while on the throne(after we've exhausted our supply of gameboy games), and most of all, that same thing that keeps us stupidly paying/playing in these mmos while vehemently declaring it might just be the most awful thing since Hitler's final solution.

We're all just monkeys walking upright, I suppose...

If I had a dollar for every "OMG YER ARE TOO A NEWS SIET" posts at ltm.net, I wouldn't be sitting behind a desk right now.

But of course, self-proclaiming ones self as a 'not journalist' is not a free pass to be irresponsible, false, or in violation of law. The same rules apply once you've breached the blog threshold into 'community web portal.'

oh - and once you start doing 'reviews' - yes, yes you are a journalist on a news site. This site does tons of review content - this is a news and information site. Follow the rules or find a blog.

The word for the day is: freelancer.

That article hit on many highs and lows of journalism as a whole, and I thought you did a good job of presenting the angst that many impassioned people feel towards the corporate machine that drives the "journalistic" community. Whether it be games or world news, spin is inevitable when you let the almighty dollar dictate your coverage. After all, media corporations are just that, corporations. They are entities designed with the purpose to derive the biggest profit from the least inputs, and in the case of the world media, the inputs are often small but shocking.

Take for example the coverage of the Scott Peterson trial. Would this be above local news if it weren't already a slow news month? The answer is a decided, no. If more things were going on in the world that generated viewer interest, that would be on page 13, but it's not. I mean, it's not like its an election year or there is a war going on, right? Certainly a guy killing his wife is national news.

The answer lies in reporting more than just what is important in the historical sense, but rather to pump up the mundane into something brief and shocking. Haemish touched on this with the idea of shock factor dictating the scoops for each media outlet. The news today leaves the historical events to the historians, and it reports the daily dose of crazy with flashy graphics and hot anchors. After all, the POTUS will be documented in the annals of history, but Scott Peterson will be forgotten the month after he goes into the clink.

For MMOG players, we are all familiar with the grind of the gaming world. However, news media has invented its own form of grind. Hype it up, grind it out, exploit it quick, sell it off, and move on to newer/higher content. In the same way that the grind of gaming leaves the ellusive "fun" lost in a void of foozle-whacking, news leaves us that same void in the form of "objectivity." Haemish hit the nail on the head about 90% of stories starting with "not much interesting happened today."

I think we are entering or have been in a new form of the yellow journalism that plagued the US at the turn of the last century. For those that were unaware of how bad it got, reference the undoing of journalist integrity with the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer during the Spanish/American War. Is today's sensationalism over the war in Iraq or the war on Terror that much different? I'd say no, its just more widespread. Using yellow journalism to increase circulation isn't new, but its certainly an issue at hand today, and the pendulum has to swing back before this polarization of content goes much further. There's something wrong when I have to choose my news network based on my political affilations. That's not America, that's not even Mexico.

Quote from: Arcadian Del Sol

oh - and once you start doing 'reviews' - yes, yes you are a journalist on a news site. This site does tons of review content - this is a news and information site. Follow the rules or find a blog.

The word for the day is: freelancer.

I disagree. Any idiot can and does review everything. I attempt to make my reviews either 1) ridiculously ludicrous and therefore hopefully funny, or 2) insightful and well-written. At no time do I ever try to claim some form of critical objectivity, nor distance myself from the subject to the point where I am dispassionately critical. I think as part of the professional credo of a journalist is that they must take that viewpoint, or else label the article as an editoral. Hanzii might be able to more accurately explain how I could be wrong in that, if he isn't completely insulted by my take on professional journalists.

As for freelancing, if I were paid for this stuff, yes I'd be a freelancer. As it is, no one is handing me checks, or even free review copies of shit, so I can't even be considered that. However, I will certainly whore it up for free games that don't suck.

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free games that don't suck.

That is oxymoronic, isn't it?

Good article, enjoyed reading it. I suppose you could give yourself the title Critic rather than journalist. Or is being a Critic just a branch of Journalism? heh

Quote from: WayAbvPar

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free games that don't suck.

That is oxymoronic, isn't it?

No. These two games are pretty cool. There's limited playability, only because there's two games each with (basically) only one level. I mean, sure there's no backstory unless you've watched the movies (you have, right?), and there are no textures or omgwtfpwn particle effects, but they're fun.

I don't know if you'd consider mods/total conversions to be entirely free, but some of the most fun I've ever had in gaming has been had within Natural Selection, TeamFortress/Quake3Fortress(not bullshit "Classic") and, god help me, Counter-Strike.

There's also some real gems in abandonware, such as System Shock.

Again, though, not sure if I'd technically call these "free games".

Any publicity is good publicity on the net. The three links to PCGamer in your article actually help them out by passing on some of the Google Pagerank from the article page to PCGamer's site.