Saturday, April 30, 2016

Borderlands 2 Follow-Up

Before leaving on the trip that I'm currently on, I was able to finish up my playthrough of Borderlands 2. Since I did an in-progress commentary back in March when I was a bit over halfway through the game, I thought it would be good to come back and give a follow-up post with my final verdict on the game. In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I played through the main game a single time, used the Commando class, finished the game at around level 36, completed all side quests except for the endgame raid boss, focused most of my skill points into buffing my turret and increasing weapon damage, no DLC was purchased, and that I played almost the entire game offline by myself.


My thoughts on Borderlands 2 are essentially the same as the ones I gave in my in-progress commentary. However, now that I've finished the game I can add a few more. If you've not read the in-progress commentary I suggest you do so before reading any further.

The way Borderlands 2's story wrapped up was in line with what I expected. You more or less know what the final mission will be by the halfway point of the game but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment of everything you experience before that. Despite knowing where the game was going, I still had a good time meeting and interacting with the various characters, completing their side quests, and advancing the game towards its inevitable conclusion. The main villain, Handsome Jack, remains the best character in the game from start to finish, and his dialogue stands head and shoulders above everyone else's. Just as a side note, I allowed Lilith to kill him at the end rather than shooting him myself. How could I kill such a lovable jerk?

The loot issue I mentioned in my in-progress commentary remained through the end of the game. Even though I got faster over the course of the game at evaluating, organizing, and managing the loot I was picking up, I still felt I had to spend too much time on it. I do hope any future Borderlands game refines the way the loot system works. One other issue related to the loot is that it would have been nice to have a few extra slots available in the storage vault. I'm not the type to get too attached to a piece of equipment and normally when I get better gear I just sell off the inferior stuff, but there were some items I wanted to hold on to purely for nostalgia purposes, and there were not quite enough slots in the vault to hold all of them. However this is a minor complaint, and given that Borderlands 2 is a videogame and everything in it is purely fictional, there were no tears shed when I sold off some of the equipment I had hoped to keep.

Before completing the final story mission, I dabbled a bit in online multiplayer and joined a few other peoples' parties to experience cooperative play. None of the groups I joined had anyone using a microphone, so we could only do the most basic of communications, but everyone seemed to know what they were doing and I didn't have any major issues when attempting to complete missions. The one thing I stood out to me about online cooperative play is that it seemed that the loot from fallen enemies could be picked up freely by anyone in the group. I imagine that if you had a team of friends who were talking then you could find an agreeable way to work out who gets what from the loot, but at the same time there's also the risk of a single jerk grabbing everything for himself. Thankfully I didn't have this problem because the missions I played with other people were ones I had already beaten, and I already had pretty good equipment so I was fine letting other people go first in inspecting the loot.

At the end of my in-progress commentary on Borderlands 2, I stated that, baring a sudden turn for the worse, I expected to finish the game with a positive review overall. Now at the end of the line I can confirm that Borderlands 2 is a good game and fun to play, aside from my personal issue with the loot system. If you like silly first-person shooters and you have a PS3, Xbox 360, or a PC capable of running it, Borderlands 2 is worth checking out.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 1

My friend over at Free Refills was originally going to do a few writing pieces on Game of Thrones this week, but due to unforeseen circumstances he hasn't been able to do so. These are dire times indeed, but never fear Internet, I am here and ready to step up to the plate and quench your immeasurable thirst for Game of Thrones commentary. I feel like Batman and the Bat Signal has just been lit. Just be forewarned, this Batman has no training in martial arts or detective skills, has no cool gadgets, is completely unfamiliar with Gotham City, and generally has no idea what he's doing.

This past Sunday I watched my very first episode of Game of Thrones with the Season 6 premier. Yes, you read that right. The first episode of Game of Thrones that I watched was Season 6, Episode 1. Putting that shocking truth behind us, let's recap what happened, as best as I can remember it. There was guy lying dead in the snow, some conspiring went on, a few people died, a blind girl got whacked with a stick, some people are running away and had to cross a river, a bald guy and a short guy walked around town and talked for awhile, a white-haired girl has been captured by marauders, two guys on horseback are looking for her, some lady's daughter is dead, and a woman in red decided to strip naked and then looked in a mirror and somehow turned old and decrepit. I also vaguely remember a dragon somewhere in there. Maybe it was just the recap or preview of the preceding or next episode.

Right off the bat, let me say that Game of Thrones has done something that up until now didn't seem possible in my mind, namely that we have a show that has so much murder, intrigue, and nudity, that, by comparison, dragons aren't that big of a deal. Normally when a TV show or movie has a dragon in it, the first reaction is "holy @#$% it's a dragon!" but in Game of Thrones the reaction is more like "yeah, yeah, whatever, tell me more about that person who just killed the other person." Moving on to other things, I don't know why, but I found it strangely hilarious that a man named Jon Snow is dead in the snow at the start of the episode. The rest of the show had lots of short scenes with lots of characters, which was fantastic for my first experience with Game of Thrones because it loaded me down with a ton of people who I don't know anything about, but thankfully a few of them died so my list got a little shorter by the end. The episode felt a bit odd, in that a lot happened, and yet it feels like almost nothing happened. That said, I'll concede that this is probably just my ignorance of everything that is going on in the show. I'm sure that seemingly random murder of the wheelchair guy and his son has big implications for something, somewhere, but I have no idea why. I finished the episode sort of interested in everything that was going on, though some of the storyline fragments were better than others. The full-body reveal at the end struck me as unnecessary and I suspect that Game of Thrones suffers from the pointless nudity that modern entertainment often succumbs to.

Am I going to watch any other Game of Thrones episodes? Right now I'm not sure. Given that the show is in its sixth season, I would have a lot of episodes that I would have to watch to get caught up with it and I'm not sure I have the time or interest to do that. It might be better for me to just stick with being the incompetent substitute for whenever Free Refills is unable to give a proper discussion of the show.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Is there a place for me in modern games media?

Yesterday while on Twitter, one of the people I follow re-tweeted a tweet from a person at Kotaku, a major video games media website, that stated their firm had an opening for a writing position and had a link to the job description and application. I took a look at the link and thought about it for some time. Jobs at major video game websites are hard to score and openings don't come often, so anytime I read about them I take a look to see what's being sought. If you've read this blog for awhile, you know that I enjoy both playing video games and writing about them, so a career in games media sounds like something right up my alley, but part of me wonders if there actually is a place for me in modern games media. The reason I ask this is because I'm not too keen on doing a number of things that seem to be common in games media, and the internet in general, such as instant reactions, fake internet outrage, click-bait articles, and vacuous Youtube videos. I don't want to do any of that, however it's clear that these things exist because they generate web traffic, so apparently this is what people want.

If staying on the bleeding edge of each day's hot conversation, being angry all the time, generating sensationalist content, and creating time-wasting videos are off the table for me, what is left in games media? One option might be the old-school basic journalism. Strictly facts-based games journalism, (what a game is, when it comes out, etc.) will always have a place in games media but that sort of career would get boring for me real fast and these days a lot if it appears to have been outsourced to freelancers so that websites can cut down on their staffing costs. Another possible path is game reviews, which I sort of already do with my commentaries, though I don't think of them as actual reviews and I never assign any sort of a score to games I talk about. The major downsides I see to being a professional games reviewer is that I'd probably have to play a lot of games that I'm not interested in and I suspect that many of my views are frequently minority opinion, so I don't think I'd be a good judge of what most people like in games. A third option would be the Internet Personality route, which has a certain appeal to it, but a hyper-introvert like myself who is really bad on camera and says stupid stuff when put in situations that require quick thinking is a recipe for disaster. I would need weeks if not months of coaching before I was ready to appear on a podcast or video and even then I would be limited on what I could offer.

Even after much thinking I'm still not sure where I would fit in games media, but the more I write about games the more I think I understand what I want to do with regards to them. I want to talk about the games that mean something to me, and in a way that's hopefully more thoughtful than the knee-jerk reactions that have been becoming increasingly popular online. That means not talking about every game. That means focusing on just certain aspects of a game. That means taking time to think over and marinate on a game before discussing it. That means doing a lot of things that simply aren't going to cut it in today's internet society, and I think I'm ok with that, even if it means I never find a place in games media. I may toil away in obscurity, but at least I'll be doing what I want to do and staying true to myself.

Circling back to that original tweet, I'm thinking that if I have the time, what I might do is try to prepare an application for the job at Kotaku and see how it looks. My resume is currently not structured to reflect my gaming and writing experience, so that needs to be overhauled. I'll also need to draft a cover letter that somehow details why I would be fit for such a job. When it's all done, I'll take a look at the tweet again and see if the job application page is still open. Though I probably don't stand a chance of getting the job, and I might not even want to do what they have in mind, if the spot is still open maybe I should click the submit button, and see what happens.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Schedule for the next two weeks

Just FYI, for the next two weeks (starting today) I am going to be out of town and I'm not sure if my schedule will allow me to maintain my normal publishing routine. I will publish when I can, but there will definitely be days between now and my return where nothing goes up. Please understand that I will have a lot going on and will be unable to produce writing pieces like I normally do. My goal is to return to the regular publishing schedule within a few days of my return on May 10th, but regardless of what happens that week, I should be back in the routine by Monday, May 16th.

Monday, April 25, 2016

Airplane Conversations

Flying in an airplane means being packed into a pressurized metal tube while in transit to your destination. Sitting so close to so many people, you invariably overhear other peoples' conversations. Some are mundane, some are interesting, and some you wish you could not hear. A year or so ago I remember being on flight to somewhere and overhearing a conversation that's stuck with me since then. Two guys in the row in front of me were talking about their families, and at one point the conversation turned to how one of the guy's children were doing spiritually. The guy clearly held to some version of Christianity, however he had not given his children much instruction in it and had let them go off on their own to come to their own conclusions. I know it's impolite to butt in on what other people are saying, but when I heard this I wanted to scream because of the sheer level of insanity that had just flown out of that guy's mouth. What he had said was madness. Absolute madness. If you really think that your belief system is true, especially one with such stark truth claims and massive consequences as Christianity, then why on earth would you not do everything in your power to convince your children of it as well? According to his own beliefs, his children's' spiritual condition is not some trivial thing like what kind of car they drive or which restaurant they choose to go to, but rather a matter of infinite importance and eternal consequence. There is nothing loving about what he had done, if what he believes is true. His actions sound real nice in our western, individualistic, libertarian-inclined society, but if heaven and hell are really on the line, then he has done them an incredible disservice, by failing to give them the one thing they need more than anything else.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Late to the Party - The Order: 1886

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've had the time to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is The Order: 1886. Today also sees the debut of the first few screenshots that I took while playing the game. They're not as good as the sort you'll find at major gaming websites, partly because Blogger compresses the images when I upload them and thus reduces the quality, but they're mine and you'll be seeing the game the same way I saw it.


Thursday, April 21, 2016

Full Bag Chips

I've had a number of business ideas during my life. None of them will likely ever come to fruition, but there's one that I want to make happen more than any other. This business will solve one of the great injustices of our day - bags of chips that are only half full. I am sick and tired of buying a bag of chips, opening it, and finding that it's only fifty to sixty percent filled with chips. The rest of the bag is just air. This problem is particularly common with bags of sweet potato chips, which I love and would buy regularly if I didn't feel like I was getting ripped off every time I bought them. To solve this First World Problem, I want to create a company called Full Bag Chips and the selling point will simply be that the bags are filled up to the top with chips. Creating such a company would be difficult and who knows if it could ever be profitable, but it's not about the money, it's about justice. Actually, "It's about justice" would be a great tagline for the front of the bags.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Batman v Superman

A week ago I went and saw the movie Batman v Superman. I had been interested in seeing it since it was announced, but when it first came out and reviews starting being published my curiosity spiked. Batman v Superman was getting some of the most bipolar reviews I had seen for a movie, with some people loving it and others absolutely hating it. With such a discord of opinions I knew I needed to see the movie for myself, and now here I am adding my thoughts to the cacophony of voices on the internet.

Having seen Batman v Superman, I find myself on the more positive side of the review spectrum. The movie has a few issues, but I still enjoyed watching it. In particular I really liked Ben Affleck's performance as both Batman and Bruce Wayne, which is a tricky dual-role for an actor to pull off. The movie has plenty of fun action sequences and a genuinely badass moment when Wonder Woman arrives during the final battle. Wonder Woman herself has only a supporting role in the movie, but then again the movie is called Batman v Superman, so that shouldn't be surprising. As someone with only a basic basic knowledge of Superman lore, I can't say too much about how he is portrayed in the movie but I didn't have any problems with it. The one character that could have used a little more work was Lex Luthor, who is a bit unhinged at the start of the movie and by the end is doing his best Joker impersonation. My guess is that the movie is implying that his behavior is tied to him having some sort of communication with or knowledge about Darkseid, but I would have liked a scene or two to give some more development to his degeneracy. Other than Luthor, my one major problem with Batman v Superman is that it's a little too long. The movie is roughly 2.5 hours in length, and I think about 20 minutes could have been cut out for a tighter experience. Still, even though it probably should have been a little shorter I had a good time watching it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Nose Hair

It's interesting the things our minds retain. Back in my senior year of high school, I participated in my school's annual Senior Takeover Day, whereby seniors could, with the approval of the instructor, teach a class for a day. I, along with another student, volunteered to take over for one of my school's math teachers. We taught his AP Calculus class and for lunch he took us both to Quiznos. During lunch we had a long chat, but I only remember two things from it. One was that he told us there was "a lot of nonsense in the world." The other thing I remember was that he had a single, long nose hair coming out of one of his nostrils. I mentioned the nose hair near the end of our lunch at the other guy with me stated that he too had been distracted by it during the entire conversation. There were probably some great life lessons that the teacher was trying to impart to us during that lunch, but a single, long nose hair is what I remember most.

Monday, April 18, 2016

Garlic Challenge

New health fads, cleanses, and diets pop up all the time these days. I have a friend on social media who has a habit of posting these sorts of things, and normally I ignore them, but recently I decided to give one a go. The particular eating habit I tried involves garlic, which is well known for having a number of health benefice. I don't know if it has a name, so I refer to it as the Garlic Challenge. The basic idea is that you're to eat a bit of chopped, raw garlic, mixed with honey, each day for a week. You're supposed to eat the garlic about ten minutes after you chop/crush it and on an empty stomach so it's not drowned out by other foods in the digestive system. With a bottle of honey already sitting around at my place, all I needed was some raw garlic from the store and the challenge could begin. I followed the rules, and though I didn't feel noticeably different when the week was over, I did learn three things. First, raw garlic doesn't taste very good, even when combined with honey. Second, it leaves a nasty aftertaste in my mouth that can last for hours. Third, trying to get rid of that aftertaste with milk or any sort of dairy product is a big mistake.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Late to the Party - Halo 5: Guardians

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've had the time to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Halo 5: Guardians. Like with Call of Duty, I don't care about Halo's multiplayer, so this commentary is strictly limited to the singleplayer campaign.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Electronic Reading

I like to think of myself as a prolific reader, though not in the traditional sense of having read hundreds of books. Rather, my reading is predominantly of the electronic sort, done by taking in an extensive amount of material found online. Each day I find myself scouring and devouring content on various subjects that interest me, so while I don't read tons of books each year, it feels like I'm reading the equivalent of many books each year. This isn't to say that electronic reading is better than paper reading, and I will gladly affirm that there is something special about the feel of a book in your hands. I am also not abandoning physical media completely - the fifty or so books on my bookshelf and my subscription to The Economist are a testament to that. However, electronic reading is undeniably more convenient than traditional reading, and for the foreseeable future it's how I'll be doing most of my reading.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Free Refills

Last week I mentioned a friend of mine who is also a writer, and a much better one than me. I'd be remiss if I did not at least mention his website so that the curious can take a look and enjoy some of the writing he produces. If you're so inclined, go over to www.freerefills.net and give my friend a little extra web traffic.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Going Alone

I don't go to movies or concerts very often, and when I do go, I normally go by myself. This is partially a reflection of my personality and partially a result of the stage of life that I'm in at the moment, in that most of my friends simply don't have the time or ability to get out much these days. I don't mind going to a movie by myself, and in one sense it's nice because I don't have to talk about the movie until I'm ready to do so. But sometimes I do wonder if I'm missing something. Is there something inherently better about sharing that sort of experience with another person?

Back in January I read a short writing piece by a guy who contemplated the same question. He is a guitar enthusiast and had gone to see a performance by a world famous fingerstyle guitarist. However, none of his guitar-appreciating friends were able to attend, so he went by himself. He didn't have any friends to laugh with, discuss the artist's selection of music, or commiserate about how hard it is to get a right hand thumb to function independently from the right hand fingers to properly play a song. He missed the enjoyment of his friend's enjoyment of music, and the conclusion he came to was that friends are needed to really appreciate excellence (emphasis his).

For that guy, the answer the question of whether going to a performance with friends is better than going alone is a resounding yes. For me, I'm not so sure. When I go see a movie I am focused on the movie and I don't normally interact with others in the theater, and that might be why it seems to feel the same whether I go with friends or not. I guess for me the answer to the question is no, but still, I wonder.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Game Commentaries

Currently I'm playing through a section of my gaming backlog, and this means that over the coming weeks and months I'll be posting more game commentaries than usual to this blog. Since I'm not a professional games journalist or critic, I have a fair amount of liberty on the format of these commentaries and I want to be clear ahead of time that they will not all be the same. For example, the post that I published last Friday related to Call of Duty Ghosts was a more extensive commentary that covered most of the facets of the singleplayer campaign, but the post that I will be publishing later this week on Halo 5 will look very different. With Halo 5 I'm going to briefly discuss things like gameplay and visuals, but the bulk of the post will focus on the game's narrative, as I think that is the part of the game that deserves the most attention. The length of future commentaries will also run a wide spectrum. Similar to books or movies, some games can be adequately discussed in 200 to 300 words, while others require 1,000 words or longer. There may even be a few games that I completely skip over doing a commentary for, but in those cases I will at least try to make a mention of them in some fashion.

Oh, and one last thing I want to mention is that one of the benefits of the current videogame console generation is that both the Xbox One and PS4 have the ability to take screenshots and short videos of the games you play, so at some point in the future I will finally be able to include screenshots and/or videos from games that I took myself. I'm not sure which commentary I'll do this with first, but I can finally stop being completely dependent on a Google search for media related to the games I'm playing, though the one thing I may still need from an image search is the game's logo, which I like to put near the top of my commentaries.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Blog Format Update

Special Saturday Edition!

Some of you may have noticed a slight update to the look of El Progreso Del Peregrino. I've added a new gadget on the right side that I've titled "Featured Post of Last Month." Lots of websites have a feature like this, and in my case what I'm going to try to do is highlight a post from the preceding month, meaning there will be a different featured post each month. It's a minor thing, but I think it's a nice addition to the blog and I hope you like it too.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Late to the Party - Call of Duty: Ghosts

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've had the time to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I though I'd create a new series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is on Call of Duty: Ghosts.



Thursday, April 7, 2016

2016 Writing Project - What Is This?

Last week I had dinner with a friend of mine and one of the topics that came up was my 2016 Writing Project. He's been writing a lot longer than I have, and he's a lot better at it than I am, so I consider him well qualified to review the writing that I've produced. I gave him some of the basic details of my project and sometime soon I hope to show him what I've created so far, but it occurred to me that before I tried to explain the project to anyone else, I needed to make sure I could explain it to myself. With that in mind, I've created a new file in the folder where I keep all the files related to the project and titled it "What is this?" In it I've typed out, as best I can, what the story is about, the approximate arc of the plot, who the characters are and how they fit into everything, and some other important details related to project. The document is very rough and not totally complete, but it's been helpful to write it out and come up with a somewhat coherent explanation of what I have in mind.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

The King of America

I was walking back towards the locker room after finishing up a workout. Near the door there was a man sitting on the floor, next to the water fountain. He asked me if I knew the origin of the song "We Shall Overcome." I was familiar with the song, having heard it being sung in video clips from the Civil Rights era, but I did not know the origin, and I told him as much. He did not know the origin either, but this launched a conversation between the two of us that was mostly him saying things and then me giving a brief comment or question in response. It was clear to me from early on that this man was not the most rational person around, and I would even go so far as to say he was delusional. He referred to himself as the King of America and laid out his plans for a better nation, which included a trained marksman to be present during all police encounters in order to make potential suspects think twice about trying anything. In his mind, he was the only person who saw society and the world as it really was and it was his task in life to awaken others from their intellectual slumber. He was indeed one of those people that I think we've all met at some point in our lives - the type who think they've got the entire world figured out, but are somehow completely blind to some of the basic facts of reality. At the same time, he was not completely wrong in everything he said. Even the irrational possess some level knowledgeability and there were chunks of truth amongst the sea of nonsense. After fifteen or so minutes I came to the realization that the conversation wasn't going to conclude until I took the initiative and ended it, so I found a way to amicably wrap it up and I wished the man well as I went into the locker room. In the locker room a guy nearby me asked what was going on with the man by the water fountain. I explained that the man I was talking to was delusional, but having lived in Boulder as long as I have, people like that no longer weirded me out.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Mr. Sanders

No, this is not a post on Bernie Sanders. Sorry to disappoint you.

Allow me to tell you the story of a man, whom I will refer to as Mr. Sanders, that I remember from my younger days. Mr. Sanders was in a number of my childhood classes and served as a volunteer. Though I don't recall him doing too much, he always had something to say about whatever was being discussed. A lot of people, when discussing influential people from their childhood, talk about that one person who was a shining light of uplifting encouragement and positivity. Mr. Sanders was not that person, at least not from my perspective. On the contrary, I hated Mr. Sanders. When we were having class discussions that he was a part of, so often I felt my own knowledge and intelligence (and that of everyone else in the class) was being demeaned. He was always right, we were always wrong. I couldn't stand that aura of smug superiority that he gave off and wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong in something, anything, just to take that confident smile off his face. True, I was just a child, and he probably did know better than me most of the time, but the way he communicated his higher level of knowledgeability seemed to be by making me feel like a fool. However, my chance to outwit Mr. Sanders never came. He went on to other things and I grew up. Awhile back I saw Mr. Sanders again for the first time in many years. Now an old man, he looked so gentle and serene, and nothing like what I remembered as a child. I didn't talk to Mr. Sanders - I doubt he even remembers me - and I realized that I didn't hate him anymore. Whatever grievances I had with Mr. Sanders had faded with time, and I had learned better than to hold a grudge. I forgave Mr. Sanders in my head and moved on with my life. The humiliation he had inflicted on me was in the past, and that was where it was going to stay.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Welcome to the Club

It is now the month of April. If you're still staying consistent with your fitness-related New Years Resolution, you're doing well. In fact, you're doing very well. I don't have any data to back this up, but from my own experience, the people who make it to April while sticking to their new exercise routine are the ones that normally make it all the way to the end of the year. At my own gym, each January there's a bunch of new faces and in my head I try to guess which of them will still be there later in the year. By the start of February, a lot of them are gone. By the start of March, even more are gone. But by the start of April the herd has been thinned down to the few who are truly committed. If it wasn't so socially awkward, I would walk up to those persons and pat them on the back to congratulate them for getting this far. They have joined the club of familiar faces at the gym.

UPDATE: This post proved strangely prophetic, as I walked into the exercise floor of my gym this afternoon, and it was nearly empty.

Friday, April 1, 2016

Online Slander

Today, April 1st, is April Fools Day. Sadly, this story is no joke.

One of the most disheartening aspects of today's social media is the mass of persons whose sole purpose in life is to malign others. About two weeks ago I was on Twitter and saw a tweet from one of the people I followed, noting with alarm the amount of racism he was seeing from other people on Twitter that day. The tweet seemed innocuous enough, and I thought nothing of it. Towards the end of the day, however, I was checking Twitter again and it was clear that something had exploded, as the guy who posted the tweet was getting an avalanche of hateful and accusatory tweets being thrown at him. This immediately caught my attention. It didn't make sense that a guy who had tweeted his concerns about racism was now being accused of being a racist himself, so I decided to wade into the fray and do some searching to see what had happened. A few days prior to the tweet, this same guy had done a status update on Facebook, wherein he had posted a brief video from the dashboard camera of his car. In the video, his car is waiting at a stoplight, and a teenage boy crossing the street flips off a passing police vehicle. Below the video the guy had written a short, two-paragraph statement in which he commented on some of the social issues facing young people in our society and pondered why he had not behaved that way when he was a teenager. I read through the whole post and I while I could see there was a generalization or two that could maybe be construed as questionable, nothing about it struck me as racist. Somebody, however, had taken this post, edited it to make it look like he had said blatantly racist things, and then posted it to Twitter. Sure enough, it didn't take long for social media to take note of the edited image and then the onslaught began. Nobody bothered to check the source of the slanderous Twitter post or verify that the image was unedited. No, social media did one of the things it does best - automatically assume guilt and heap scorn upon any supposed wrongdoer. It took a day or two for the truth to finally come out and slander to be exposed. I was glad to see some people on Twitter apologize for their remarks, but I highly doubt that most of the people who piled on the hate had bothered to follow up on the situation, or even cared for that matter. There were still some people attempting to make accusations from the original Facebook post, and the guy did a few responses to them over the following days, though it was clear that the persons still on the attack were not particularly interested in reasoning with him. When the storm had died down, the guy who had been the victim of this social media assault announced that he was going to be curtailing his Twitter participation, as he had come to the conclusion that the platform had too many vitriolic individuals and he was wasting his time trying to interact with them. Worse still, the individual who created and posted the edited image that started this whole incident had the gall to claim that in fact he was the victim of slander. Internet trolls had again draw blood, another voice had been muffled, and once more a testament to the sheer gullibility of our supposedly enlightened modern society had been put on display.