After our sabbatical in an ashram in Dwarka, we returned at peace with the universe, ready to begin anew with less rage over the worlds ills. ONLY TO HAVE DC PULL SOME BULLSHIT.
As many know DC has two toys lines. One called "DC Direct" and one called "DC Universe". Why the two opposing lines? To rip you the fuck off, that's why!
The Dc Universe line has garnered much acclaim in its 16 runs, with it's detail, obscure characters, and build-a-figures, BUT has been criticized for sometimes repeating some figures by DC Direct. So, what does DC do to quell this type of chatter? Just run with it, copy an entire fucking line, and hope you're too stupid to realize that you already bought it.
Many a loyal customers have anxiously awaited Series 17. Hoping to see their favorite characters, curious to see which c-list heroes get a shot, and excited about the NEW build-a-figure. Well over this holiday weekend those hopes were dashed like a kid at Christmas who just got the same present as last year.
Take a look.
We admit it's hard to mess up Wonder Woman, but why does The Atom look like a tribal elder one minute, and then a 70s disco club dancer the next? Or Lex Luthor who smiles like hes possessed by the crystalline orange ring of avarice, only to then look like a jello mold with a dolls head stuck on top. Though, our "favorite" is Scarecrow, who goes from looking creepy and awesome to looking like he just got tazed. So yeah, thanks DC, for half-assing it all the way to the bank. Pricks.
Zevo-3 Skechers Cartoon: FCC Asked To Block New Series
NEW YORK — An advocacy group on Tuesday asked the Federal Communications Commission to block a soon-to-debut TV cartoon show starring characters first created to market Skechers footwear to children.
Unless banned, the group said, the show could pave the way for Ronald McDonald, Tony the Tiger and other iconic cartoon pitchmen to become stars of their own series – potentially inundating children's television with what amounted to full-length commercials. (were these group members Amish before and just NEVER saw a TV until they saw this cartoon commercial?)
The complaint was filed with the FCC by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, targeting a series called "Zevo-3" that's scheduled to premiere Oct. 11 on the cable network Nicktoons. Its three teenage, super-powered heroes – tasked to save New Eden City from evil monsters – have previously appeared in comic books and TV ads promoting Skechers' line of children's shoes.
The main characters "are walking and talking advertisements for specific lines of Skechers shoes," said the complaint. It depicted "Zevo-3" as "the first children's television program starring characters that are known to children only as commercial logos and spokescharacters."
Specifically, the complaint said the half-hour show would violate a federal requirement in the Children's Television Act that that no cable TV operator shall air more than 12 minutes of commercial matter per hour during children's programming. The show also would violate the FCC's requirement of a clear separation between commercial content and programming matter, the complaint said.
Kristen Van Cott, co-executive producer of "Zevo-3" and a senior vice president of Skechers Entertainment, said she and her colleagues had worked hard to ensure the show conforms with FCC provisions and were confident it would air on schedule.
"Skechers Entertainment is tremendously proud of 'Zevo-3,'" she said in a statement. "It's a fun, action-packed and beautifully animated series."
There are no overt pitches for Skechers' products in the cartoons, and Van Cott said the plot lines "often reflect issues that kids deal with on a daily basis – from peer pressure and bullying to relationships with family and friends."
A spokesman for Nicktoons, David Bittler, responded concisely to the complaint: "This show does not violate the Children's Television Act."
Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, said she did not know what timetable the FCC might set for considering the complaint.
"It's our hope they'll act quickly and decisively," she said. "We believe that the show violates several of the few existing rules we have to protect children from over-commercialization." (more like protect parents from nagging kids. So lazy.)
According to background in the complaint, there were plans back in the early 1990s for children's TV shows based on commercial spokescharacters – one that would have featured Chester Cheetah, who pitched Frito-Lay products, and another that would have starred Cheesasaurus Rex, a cheese-colored dinosaur who appeared in ads for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Plans for both shows were dropped after an advocacy coalition raised objections with the FCC. (WTF! I could have been watching a badass cheesasaurus rex cartoon! You Bastards!)
"Now Skechers and Nicktoons are attempting to escalate commercialization on children's television," the complaint said. "If they are successful, we can expect other companies to follow suit. (So. Deal with it. Its spelled N.O. Try it, unless you just GIVE your kids full access to your bank account?)
"A McDonald's show featuring Ronald McDonald, a Burger King show featuring the King, a Kellogg show featuring Tony the Tiger these are just some the possible children's television programs we may see in the future." (I used to have the Ronald Mcdonald cartoon halloween special on VHS and you know what? I STILL get excited when happy meal trick or treat buckets come out every year.)
The three heroes of "Zevo-3" – Z-Strap, Elastika and Kewl Breeze – were created by Skechers several year ago to promote sales of shoes to children, and each is linked to a particular shoe.
"For children, these characters have become the embodiment of the shoe lines they represent," said the complaint. "So much so that retailers report that kids often ask for a shoe by character name rather than the shoe model." (Yes PLEASE U.S. Government, Its not enough to save them from junk food and uneducational cartoons, you must also save them from the SHOES!)
Back in the olden days, cartoon characters used to hawk their advertisers products right on air. PLUS really popular characters got their OWN products. I used to eat super mario/zelda cereal. It was two cereals in one box separated right down the middle. It is bsolutely abhorrent when parents do this. They pull this defenseless, "woe is me" garbage, because if the government doesn't ban something, then OMG their kid might ASK for whatever that something is! Then what on earth will the parents do?! Hmmm how about SAY NO!”
This post has little to do with the news of the day but more so to do with the issues we face internally here due to what I consider to be a bane to the existence of humanity itself; Apple. Now I as current President of The V.P.A.R. used to work for the company and so every time they come out with a new product, I'm reminded of those days when we would spend countless hours trained on how we were the best and everything else was shit. That's the Apple model. If its not Apple, its not worth wiping your ass with. Pretty egotistical but that's how they like it. But I digress.
Some of our Action Rangers are fervent Apple supporters, while others are vehement Apple detractors. This argument has raged since our group was founded and never more so has the argument gotten so heated as when the iPad debuted. Now as current president I have pulled rank and have posted in the past on how Apple, especially the iPad, suck.
Despite the post, I choose not to get into arguments with fellow Action Rangers on the topic because as Ive told them, they treat Apple like a religion. When they ask to clarify I make this point, a point I have made ad nauseum, including just recently in relation to this story.
“Religion is simply defined as having a strong belief or faith in something that can not be proven. Faith is described as belief in something that normal reason would stand against. Apple cultists buy apple products when normal reason and fact tell them that there are better, less expensive, and less imposing products available. So it is absolutely right in stating that Apple super fans are religious.”
Despite this argument, my fellow VPAR, who are apple-ites, disagree. Well here for my own pleasure, thanks to the rank I hold, are some more bits of evidence that Apple-ites are infact, cultists. It's nothing big, nothing spectacular, just some back and forth on a news item about how Steve Jobs emailed Gawker writer Ryan Tate and the two got into it over the future of technology.
Myself:
“the iPad is just a gimmicky piece of junk that is nothing more than another way for you to buy stuff from itunes and the apps store. It doesn't have the functionality or power of a laptop, or the mobility of a 4G phone. It's literally in a class by itself because its a class that doesn't need to exist. There's a reason why similar tablets have been getting canceled left and right. The only thing it revolutionizes is a new way for you to be fooled into buying more stuff from Apple and deluded into thinking your on the cusp of technology. Piece. Of. Junk.”
Reply from cultist 1:
“Name a book reader that comes close.”
My response:
“Your argument is based on the idea that book readers are something wanted, akin to that of laptops and high end cell phones. They absolutely are not. Phone and laptop technology moves forward regardless. Book readers are a choice. One many people wouldn't ever want to make at all because there wasn't really anything wrong with the design of the book. Its not like millions of americans were dying under the weight of their vast libraries. Try again.”
Reply from cultist 2:
“Gee...then don't buy one. But the people who have bought one don't really give a s.hite what you think.”
Ooooh, smarmy little fucker isn't he? My reply to Apple-ite 2:
“Of course they don't care. Obviously anyone who buys one is either not smart enough to know they've been had, or are apple cultists who don't have the ability to see reason. My problem is with Steve Jobs and how his push forward is pointless, consumerist garbage. He is literally making technology, the future, and the world, worse. But your a fan his and his junk so like you said, you wont care because like I said, your not too smart and can't see reason.”
Lets see what happens now when my fellow Rangers read this absolutely benign, self serving, inconsequential, nerdgasm of a post. In conclusion, I get it. Apple products are like childrens toys. Bright and shiny and sleek and futurist looking. They are designed that way. Designed to feed your base instincts for something "better", even if it only LOOKS better. If I had money to waste I might pick up a macbook, or a G5. But most people don't. In the end my point is this. To all of the die hard Apple cultists. It's a fucking handheld store. Get over it, and yourself, because it's not the future.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled posts. Hazza!
My time flies when you try and change the course of the world. Some of the things going on have been so overwhelming some of our members wonder, why bother? Even I succumbed to this feeling of dread. Between the inaction by our government, Obama being middle to right on most of this policies, including supporting offshore drilling before AND after the BP spill, and Net neutrality taking a gut punch. It's been a tough road. But then something, snapped. Something made us realize that letting it weigh on us is lame, as we many Action Rangers gather for the very reason of not just taking it, but rather of standing united and saying, "Oh thats how you SAY its going to be? Well fuck you too!" Our voices will be heard and we start again today! Our linchpin was a fucker over at Huffpo named Danny Shea. Now so incredulous and bullshit ridden were Danny's comments that we just couldn't take it anymore. It literally was the last pile of crap we were willing to shovel our way through. We wrote a letter to the editor so to speak and we will place it here for you now. First though, some backstory. Danny "Im a Lying Asshole" Shea posting a "winners of the week" section on the Media Tab of huffpo he edits in which he wrote this about Conan O Brien,
Conan O'Brien Finally able to make his case, Conan broke his silence on "60 Minutes" — and delivered ratings to boot. And he effectively got his message across: he's a good Catholic boy who would never have done that to Leno.
Can you sense the tone Danny Shea is setting? Oh but it didn't end there. Danny Shea also thought it prudent to get some help from a fellow misanthropic tool named Daniel Frankel who posted some information on the ratings concerning Conans 60 Minutes interview.
Conan O’Brien’s post-“Tonight Show” whine on “60 Minutes” helped spark CBS to a win in total viewers Sunday night, but it was the buoyancy of “Desperate Housewives” that gave ABC the victory in the all-important adults 18-49 demo.
Here’s a look at the ratings highlights:
‘HEARTBROKEN’… BUT WITH $32 MILLION: O’Brien’s exclusive interview bumped “60 Minutes” 38 percent week to week to a 2.2 rating/8 share in adults 18-49 and 13 million viewers. That was still 12 percent below “60 Minutes’” season average, however.
Notice it being called a whine, and the headline making a point to note that I guess its impossible to be heartbroken when you have money? Obviously Shea doesn't like Conan but this next bit of fake bullshit takes the cake. Somehow Conan also makes the "Losers of the Week" and with literally NO facts behind it other than what Danny Shea pulled out of his ass. Read on.
"Yes, he made his case on "60 Minutes" — but it may have backfired. The more time he spends complaining about how Big Bad Leno stole the "Tonight Show" from him, the less America remembers why they loved him on it...and the less they look forward to his launch this fall on TBS. Plus, NBC made a splash by saying that he lied during the "60 Minutes" interview."
This was the "Are you fucking kidding me?!" moment here at VPAR headquarters. Which prompted this letter to Danny Shea and Huffpo on his job performance, to say the least.
Why are you so impossibly bad at your simple job of editing a web page? I am seriously asking you that. On what basis do you think that Conan's one interview may have backfired? What poll numbers do you have that show people won't look forward to his TBS debut because of his ONE interview? How can people possibly be tired of hearing him talk about it after one interview to begin with? Who told you America loves him less, the more he gives insight on one of the biggest entertainment stories of the year? You literally have to be making this up as you go along and I'm asking at what point did you decide that being a huffpo editor meant you didn't have to do your job well.
What proof do you have, as a supposed journalist, that it wasn't NBC lying to save face and not Conan who was? Also, why the mean spirited dig at Conan's religion? What is it you have against Conan anyway? Because of how much money he made? Are all you "media" writers so jaded that the concept of someone in show business standing up for something more important than themselves is lost on you? Does it make you uncomfortable that someone isn't as petty as you, so you have to tear them down?
What I love is how you completely ignore Jay's role in all this. Jay wouldn't have stood by and let NBC try to bump the Tonight Show when he wasn't doing well. For a year Letterman beat Leno when he debuted The Late Show, and NBC never once tried to bring Johnny back for a half hour. Even if NBC did, Johnny wouldn't have taken it, because he wasn't the type to cut off a guys knees like that. Conan made the mistake in believing that the previous Tonight Show host would stand with him in not letting the Tonight Show be shuffled around like some mid-season sitcom. Leno took it without any regard, and then played it off like nothing is his fault. Like I said, I love how you seem to ignore all of this.
As far as the late night mess, what happened happened. Nothing can change it now. But when I go to a trusted news site I want news, not your made up speculation garbage, so I ask again, what about Conan makes you want to purposefully be bad at your job? Huffpo is moving quickly into being the number one online news source and if you can't act like a professional then why be there?
We hope this finds Danny well and that the next time he decides to make up garbage for the sake of his own pathetic ego, he'll remember hes a journalist and should act accordingly. Until next time, we remain your guide to all things awesome and the light on all things full of crap. <3
The VPAR has been on vacation as of late, and while traversing space and time we came across this. The Hubble Telescope decided to celebrate its own 20th Birthday with a photo of what is now called the Carina Nebula.
Our shock comes from the fact that something so gorgeous can exist. We asked each other could it really be real? As its vivid colors look like something a digital artist would whip up with CS4, but no dear Rangers, this is absolutely genuine.
So Whats a Nebula you ask? Well its basically the name for a cloud in space made up of dust, different gases and plasma. What makes nebulas special is that they are the birthplace of stars. They can be so because they are huge, and the Carina Nebula is 3 LIGHT YEARS TALL. Expect this gorgeous dream of color and creation to effectively retire the Eagle Nebula from the many posters, t-shirts and geek tailored products it adorned.
We have long been fans of the artists Faile and Bast both together and on their own and now they have teamed up again to make our dreams come true like none could ever have imagined. What is it that has the entire VPAR complex in an uproar of excitement? Take a look.
Yes those glorious bastards built an arcade with function cabinets that play specially made mini-games. GOD EXISTS SAY I! *whew* Sadly the piece has ended its run but expect it to show up elsewhere as the games weren't just destroyed by any means. Check out the website dedicated to the show and wish it travels to other galleries. We will that's for fucking sure.
No sooner do we post bail for punching the judge in the isohunt case in the nuts, than an appellate court decides he wants to know the feeling of fucking the entirety of modern society. But the judge alone can't be blamed for this, no he can't indeed. For he is but a pawn working towards the vile machinations of one empire who since they oozed their way from the depths of hell, have been our arch nemesis. I call the out into the light Demon! Back to the bowels of Hell with you and take thine greed and shitty broadband speeds with thee! Cursed be the day when satans poison tongue first spoke the name, COMCAST!
Since John Adams first created our noble order to ensure the well being of all things kickass and awesome, prophecies were foretold of a dark beast that will test not just our league of Action Rangers, but humanity as a whole. It seems now those warnings have bore fruit. The future is grim my fellow rangers. Isohunt has gone lite, Mininova is a husk of its former self, Piratebay nears its last days and Demonoid is in the crosshairs. Now not only are the tools we use on deaths bed but the whole of internet existence hangs in the balance.
At this rate internet service in this country will operate like cable television. You pay for website packs. The more you pay, the faster CERTAIN websites will go, and the websites that don't pay comcasts strongarm fee's to be included in said packs, will see loading times slow to a crawl. It's a sick, sick dystopia we march towards and something must be done.
Below is the news piece in full, and below that are links to save the internet.com and how YOU can help yourself in making sure you don't get royally screwed. Europe and Asia are laughing at us with broadband speeds 30 to 50 times faster AND cheaper too. Lets agree were all tired of being fucked with by private corporations who literally just want to rape us of as much money as they can for as little service as possible.
WASHINGTON — A federal court threw the future of Internet regulations into doubt Tuesday with a far-reaching decision that went against the Federal Communications Commission and could even hamper the government's plans to expand broadband access in the United States.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.
Supporters of network neutrality, including the FCC chairman, have argued that the policy is necessary to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain Web sites and online services, such as Internet phone programs or software that runs in a Web browser. Advocates contend there is precedent: Nondiscrimination rules have traditionally applied to so-called "common carrier" networks that serve the public, from roads and highways to electrical grids and telephone lines.
But broadband providers such as Comcast, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. argue that after spending billions of dollars on their networks, they should be able to sell premium services and manage their systems to prevent certain applications from hogging capacity.
Tuesday's unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel was a setback for the FCC because it questioned the agency's authority to regulate broadband. That could cause problems beyond the FCC's effort to adopt official net neutrality regulations. It also has serious implications for the ambitious national broadband-expansion plan released by the FCC last month. The FCC needs the authority to regulate broadband so that it can push ahead with some of the plan's key recommendations. Among other things, the FCC proposes to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.
In a statement, the FCC said it remains "firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans" and "will rest these policies ... on a solid legal foundation."
Comcast welcomed the decision, saying "our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation."
The case centers on Comcast's actions in 2007 when it interfered with an online file-sharing service called BitTorrent, which lets people swap movies and other big files over the Internet. The next year the FCC banned Comcast from blocking subscribers from using BitTorrent. The commission, at the time headed by Republican Kevin Martin, based its order on a set of net neutrality principles it had adopted in 2005.
But Comcast argued that the FCC order was illegal because the agency was seeking to enforce mere policy principles, which don't have the force of regulations or law. That's one reason that Martin's successor, Democratic FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is trying to formalize those rules.
The cable company had also argued the FCC lacks authority to mandate net neutrality because it had deregulated broadband under the Bush administration, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005.
The FCC now defines broadband as a lightly regulated information service. That means it is not subject to the "common carrier" obligations that make traditional telecommunications services share their networks with competitors and treat all traffic equally. But the FCC maintains that existing law gives it authority to set rules for information services.
Tuesday's court decision rejected that reasoning, concluding that Congress has not given the FCC "untrammeled freedom" to regulate without explicit legal authority.
With so much at stake, the FCC now has several options. It could ask Congress to give it explicit authority to regulate broadband. Or it could appeal Tuesday's decision.
But both of those steps could take too long because the agency "has too many important things they have to do right away," said Ben Scott, policy director for the public interest group Free Press. Free Press was among the groups that alerted the FCC after The Associated Press ran tests and reported that Comcast was interfering with attempts by some subscribers to share files online.
Scott believes that the likeliest step by the FCC is that it will simply reclassify broadband as a more heavily regulated telecommunications service. That, ironically, could be the worst-case outcome from the perspective of the phone and cable companies.
"Comcast swung an ax at the FCC to protest the BitTorrent order," Scott said. "And they sliced right through the FCC's arm and plunged the ax into their own back."
The battle over the FCC's legal jurisdiction comes amid a larger policy dispute over the merits of net neutrality. Backed by Internet companies such as Google Inc. and the online calling service Skype, the FCC says rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from prioritizing some traffic or degrading or services that compete with their core businesses. Indeed, BitTorrent can be used to transfer large files such as online video, which could threaten Comcast's cable TV business.
But broadband providers point to the fact that applications such as BitTorrent use an outsized amount of network capacity.
For its part, the FCC offered no details on its next step, but stressed that it remains committed to the principle of net neutrality.
"Today's court decision invalidated the prior commission's approach to preserving an open Internet," the agency's statement said. "But the court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end."
Its nice to see these pervs passing as artists brought to task. Especially Richardson. The article below forgets to mention another such skeez Merlin Bronques. For a long time they both have been indie-darlings and for no other reason than they wore old clothes and convinced young girls that not only does that make them cool, but that fashion apparently starts with no clothes at all. Lets make one thing clear. Shooting in black and white, simple nudes, or with a polaroid camera doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you lazy. And constantly taking photos of girls nude for a "point" you've made 100 times over, DOESN'T make you cutting edge, it makes you a pervert.
There is nudity in photography. Fashion is about whats new and provocative and both done well can inspire you and take your breath away. But then sleazy a-holes like Richardson, Bronques, and Charney use that as a line to get your shirt on the floor. So though they deserve to be called out, The VPAR asks please don't use this as a railroad against truly inspired fashion photography. Instead remember pervs in fashion is much like what Catholics said about pedos. "The problem isn't that all priests are pedophiles, its that pedophiles are becoming priests."
Skeezy Guy Syndrome: Where Porn Meets Fashion
Early on Friday, Page Six reported that photographer Terry Richardson found himself at the wrong end of a tongue-lashing from supermodel Ria Rasmussen at a March 8 fashion event in Paris.
Rasmussen, upset that she’d been featured in Richardson’s 2004 book “Terryworld” alongside young-looking (and just plain young) women depicted in compromising and sexually implicit positions, told the photographer she found his work “utterly degrading.”
“I told him what you do is completely degrading to women,” she recounted to Page Six. “[I said] I hope you know you only [bleep] girls because you have a camera, lots of fashion contacts and get your pictures in Vogue.”
As far as I’m concerned, Rasmussen is not wrong. Richardson is part of a particularly insulting subset of the fashion industry — a group I like to call: The Skeezy Guy. In an industry known, if not quite lambasted for its overuse of underage girls, The Skeezy Guy is an unfortunately prevalent phenomenon. Generically identified as middle-aged modelling agents who take advantage of impressionable and barely-teenaged girls who are often countries away from home, The Skeezy Guy actually comes in many different forms — one perfect example of which is Terry Richardson.
Richardson is known for his over-saturated, Polaroid-esque and often very provocative images featuring beautiful young things in varying states of undress. (Sometimes props are involved; Richardson seems to have a particular fondness for ice cream cones. Also: bukkake.)
While provocation certainly falls under fashion’s purview, provocation with no purpose — or, worse yet, at the expense of dignity — is just cheap and often offensive.
Richardson’s styling as well as his choice of subject, which Rasmussen describes as “girls who appear underage, abused, look like heroin addicts,” are becoming more and more ubiquitous. The most obvious doppelganger is, of course, American Apparel, whose founder Dov Charney just so happens to bear an eerie resemblance to Richardson.
This thing looks like that thing: Terry Richardson and Dov Charney
American Apparel’s in-house advertising team (art-directed, naturally, by Charney) equally blurs the line between pornography and fashion photography — so much so that a recent ad was banned in Britain for “sexualizing a child.” The “child” was, in fact, a 23-year-old model, but it was no accident that she looked younger than 16.
Charney, who at one point faced more than five sexual harrassment lawsuits in a three-year period, often argues that he’s empowering women and celebrating their sexuality. (“Some of us love sluts,” he once claimed during a legal deposition.) Richardson does the same. And these two are not alone. Joining them in my personal Skeevy Guy Hall of Fame is Purple magazine editor Olivier Zahm.
To me love and sex is the most beautiful thing on earth, you know. It’s more beautiful than a landscape, so I love to keep pictures of the girls in these private moments because they are giving you the most beautiful side of themselves. It’s like a gift from God. It’s beautiful. I’m not New Age, I’m not mystical, I just really love it, and it’s so beautiful to capture with a camera that I really want to share that, you know…And also, Purple is a lifestyle. With my magazine, what I want to do is personally to be more free, and I want people to be more free, to open their possibility of contact, of sex, of love. I want that. This is important to me. I consider that Purple is a free lifestyle. Not in a stupid way, not in a childish or immature way, in a mature way now because I’m 45, 46. So the blog is also this vocation to see what constructs a lifestyle, to see what could be. If my life would be perfect, it would look like the Purple Diary.
While it’s wonderful that these men are so madly in love with women, I just can’t help but wish they’d want to celebrate more than just the female form — or, barring that, celebrate it in a less degrading way.
Unfortunately, one of the key attributes of The Skeezy Guy seems to be cowardice. When confronted by Rasmussen’s ire, Richardson chose to just run away. The next day, Rasmussen’s agency received phone calls from the spurned photographer claiming he’d been slandered in front of his “clients.” As Rasmussen put it, “It was the most cowardly thing I have ever seen.”
But the fault (and cowardice) doesn’t only lie with these men; until the rest of the industry realizes that blow jobs, though perhaps effective, aren’t necessarily the best way to sell products, men like Richardson, Charney, and Zahm will always have a home in fashion.
18 days since the last post?! Unforgivable. This will be rectified immediately. As we speak Action Rangers responsible are being discharged, their badges taken, their jetpacks confiscated, and their 20% discount at Chipotle revoked. Our apologies. Now back to work.
An article ran recently about how video game developers are no longer striving towards making the best game possible, but making the most addictive game possible. It can come off as almost blasphemous in our circles, but it WILL make you uncomfortable.
5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted
What the hell? Look, I'm not saying video games are heroin. I totally get that the victims had other shit going on in their lives. But, half of you reading this know a World of Warcraft addict and experts say video game addiction is a thing. So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it?
Oh, hell yes. And their methods are downright creepy.
"Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players."
Notice his article does not contain the words "fun" or "enjoyment." That's not his field. Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want."
"...at this point, younger gamers will raise their arms above their head, leaving them vulnerable."
His theories are based around the work of BF Skinner, who discovered you could control behavior by training subjects with simple stimulus and reward. He invented the "Skinner Box," a cage containing a small animal that, for instance, presses a lever to get food pellets. Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box.
Gaming has changed. It used to be that once they sold us a $50 game, they didn't particularly care how long we played. The big thing was making sure we liked it enough to buy the next one. But the industry is moving toward subscription-based games like MMO's that need the subject to keep playing--and paying--until the sun goes supernova.
Now, there's no way they can create enough exploration or story to keep you playing for thousands of hours, so they had to change the mechanics of the game, so players would instead keep doing the same actions over and over and over, whether they liked it or not. So game developers turned to Skinner's techniques.
This is a big source of controversy in the world of game design right now. Braid creator Jonathan Blow said Skinnerian game mechanics are a form of "exploitation." It's not that these games can't be fun. But they're designed to keep gamers subscribing during the periods when it's not fun, locking them into a repetitive slog using Skinner's manipulative system of carefully scheduled rewards.
Why would this work, when the "rewards" are just digital objects that don't actually exist? Well...
#4.
Creating Virtual Food Pellets For You To Eat
Most addiction-based game elements are based on this fact:
Your brain treats items and goods in the video game world as if they are real. Because they are.
People scoff at this idea all the time ("You spent all that time working for a sword that doesn't even exist?") and those people are stupid. If it takes time, effort and skill to obtain an item, that item has value, whether it's made of diamonds, binary code or beef jerky.
There's nothing crazy about it. After all, people pay thousands of dollars for diamonds, even though diamonds do nothing but look pretty. A video game suit of armor looks pretty and protects you from video game orcs. In both cases you're paying for an idea.
Happy anniversary, honey.
So What's The Problem?
Of course, virtually every game of the last 25 years has included items you can collect in the course of defeating the game--there's nothing new or evil about that. But because gamers regard in-game items as real and valuable on their own, addiction-based games send you running around endlessly collecting them even if they have nothing to do with the game's objective.
As the article from the Microsoft guy proves, developers know they're using these objects as pellets in a Skinner box. At that point it's all about...
#3.
Making You Press the Lever
So picture the rat in his box. Or, since I'm one of these gamers and don't like to think of myself as a rat, picture an adorable hamster. Maybe he can talk, and is voiced by Chris Rock.
If you want to make him press the lever as fast as possible, how would you do it? Not by giving him a pellet with every press--he'll soon relax, knowing the pellets are there when he needs them. No, the best way is to set up the machine so that it drops the pellets at random intervals of lever pressing. He'll soon start pumping that thing as fast as he can. Experiments prove it.
See? Proof.
They call these "Variable Ratio Rewards" in Skinner land and this is the reason many enemies "drop" valuable items totally at random in WoW. This is addictive in exactly the same way a slot machine is addictive. You can't quit now because the very next one could be a winner. Or the next. Or the next.
"Holy shit! We almost won."
The Chinese MMO ZT Online has the most devious implementation of this I've ever seen. The game is full of these treasure chests that may or may not contain a random item and to open them, you need a key. How do you get the keys? Why, you buy them with real-world money, of course. Like coins in a slot machine.
Wait, that's not the best part. ZT Online does something even the casinos never dreamed up: They award a special item at the end of the day to the player who opens the most chests.
And that's hardly the most ridiculous aspect of the game.
Now, in addition to the gambling element, you have thousands of players in competition with each other, to see who can be the most obsessive about opening the chests. One woman tells of how she spent her entire evening opening chests--over a thousand--to try to win the daily prize.
She didn't. There was always someone else more obsessed.
So What's The Problem?
Are you picturing her sitting there, watching her little character in front of the chest, clicking dialogue boxes over and over, watching the same animation over and over, for hour after hour?
If you didn't know any better, you'd think she had a crippling mental illness. How could she possibly get from her rational self to that Rain Man-esque compulsion?
BF Skinner knew. He called that training process "shaping." Little rewards, step by step, like links in a chain. In WoW you decide you want the super cool Tier 10 armor. You need five separate pieces. To get the full set, you need more than 400 Frost Emblems, which are earned a couple at a time, from certain enemies. Then you need to upgrade each piece of armor with Marks of Sanctification. Then again with Heroic Marks of Sanctification. To get all that you must re-run repetitive missions and sit, clicking your mouse, for days and days and days. Boobies be damned.
Once it gets to that point, can you even call that activity a "game" anymore? It's more like scratching a rash. And it gets worse...
Keeping You Pressing It... Forever
Now, the big difference between our Skinner box hamster and a real human is that we humans can get our pellets elsewhere. If a game really was just nothing but clicking a box for random rewards, we'd eventually drop it to play some other game. Humans need a long-term goal to keep us going, and the world of addictive gaming has got this down to a science. Techniques include...
The easiest way is to just put save points far apart, or engage the player in long missions (like WoW raids) that, once started, are difficult to get out of without losing progress.
But that can be frustrating for gamers, so you can take the opposite approach of a game like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where you make the levels really short so it's like eating potato chips. They're so small on their own that it doesn't take much convincing to get the player to grab another one, and soon they've eaten the whole bag.
Somewhere in that bag is an angry dinosaur and a kidnapped princess.
By the way, this is the same reason a person who wouldn't normally read a 3,000-word article on the Internet will happily read it if it's split up into list form. Are you ignoring boobies to read this? I've done my job!
Play It Or Lose It:
This is the real dick move. Why reward the hamster for pressing the lever? Why not simply set it up so that when he fails to press it, we punish him?
Behaviorists call this "avoidance." They set the cage up so that it gives the animal an electric shock every 30 seconds unless it hits the lever. It learns very very fast to stay on the lever, all the time, hitting it over and over. Forever.
"Get back to Excitebike!"
Why is your mom obsessively harvesting her crops in Farmville? Because they wither and rot if she doesn't. In Ultima Online, your house or castle would start to decay if you didn't return to it regularly. In Animal Crossing, the town grows over with weeds and your virtual house becomes infested with cockroaches if you don't log in often enough. It's the crown jewel of game programming douchebaggery--keep the player clicking and clicking and clicking just to avoid losing the stuff they worked so hard to get.
All Of the Above:
Each of those techniques has a downside and to get the ultimate addictive game, you combine as many as possible, along with the "random drop" gambling element mentioned before (count how many of these techniques are in WoW). They get the hamster running back and forth from one lever to another to another.
If the levers are far away, they may drive their adorable cars from one lever to another.
So What's The Problem?
We asked earlier if the item collection via obsessive clicking could be called a "game." So that raises the question: What is a game?
Well, we humans play games because there is a basic satisfaction in mastering a skill, even if it's a pointless one in terms of our overall life goals. It helps us develop our brains (especially as children) and to test ourselves without serious consequences if we fail. This is why our brains reward us with the sensation we call "fun" when we do it. Hell, even dolphins do it:
This is why I haven't included games like Guitar Hero in this article. They're addictive, sure, but in a way everybody understands. It's perfectly natural to enjoy getting good at something. Likewise, competitive games like Modern Warfare 2 are just sports for people who lack athleticism. There's no mystery there; everybody likes to win.
But these "hit the lever until you pass out from starvation" gaming elements stray into a different area completely. As others have pointed out, the point is to keep you playing long after you've mastered the skills, long after you've wrung the last real novel experience from it. You can't come up with a definition of "fun" that encompasses the activity of clicking a picture of a treasure chest with your mouse a thousand times.
This is why some writers blasted Blizzard when WoW introduced a new "achievement" system a couple of years ago. These are rewards tied to performing random pointless tasks, over and over again (such as, fishing until you catch a thousand fish). No new content, no element of practice, or discovery, or mastery was included. Just a virtual treadmill.
Or a hamster wheel.
Of course, game developers (and various commenters, I'm sure) would correctly point out that nobody is making the players do it. Why would humans voluntarily put themselves in laboratory hamster mode? Well, it's all about...
#1.
Getting You To Call the Skinner Box Home
Do you like your job?
Considering half of you are reading this at work, I'm going to guess no. And that brings us to the one thing that makes gaming addiction--and addiction in general--so incredibly hard to beat.
As shocking as this sounds, a whole lot of the "guy who failed all of his classes because he was playing WoW all the time" horror stories are really just about a dude who simply didn't like his classes very much. This was never some dystopian mind control scheme by Blizzard. The games just filled a void.
Why do so many of us have that void? Because according to everything expert Malcolm Gladwell, to be satisfied with your job you need three things, and I bet most of you don't even have two of them:
Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);
Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);
Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).
Notice that pants are not necessary for job satisfaction.
Most people, particularly in the young gamer demographics, don't have this in their jobs or in any aspect of their everyday lives. But the most addictive video games are specifically geared to give us all three... or at least the illusion of all three.
Autonomy:
You pick your quests, or which Farmville crops to plant. Hell, you even pick your own body, species and talents.
Annoying your Facebook friends with updates is a really annoying talent.
Complexity:
Players will do monotonous grinding specifically because it doesn't feel like grinding. Remember the complicated Tier Armor/Frost Emblem dance that kept our gamer clicking earlier.
Connection Between Effort and Reward:
This is the big one. When you level up in WoW a goddamned plume of golden light shoots out of your body.
This is what most of us don't get in everyday life--quick, tangible rewards. It's less about instant gratification and more about a freaking sense of accomplishment. How much harder would we work at the office if we got this, and could measure our progress toward it? And if the light shot from our crotch?
The beauty of it is it lets games use the tedium to their advantage. As we discussed elsewhere, there's a "work to earn the right to play" aspect of World of Warcraft, where you grind or "farm" for gold for the right to do the cool stuff later. The tedious nature of the farming actually adds to the sense of accomplishment later. And it also helps squash any sense of guilt you might have had about neglecting school, work or household chores to play the game. After all, you did your chores--the 12 hours you spent farming for gold last Tuesday was less fun than mowing the fucking lawn. Now it's time for fun.
The terrible truth is that a whole lot of us begged for a Skinner Box we could crawl into, because the real world's system of rewards is so much more slow and cruel than we expected it to be. In that, gaming is no different from other forms of mental escape, from sports fandom to moonshine.
Heroin: It's pretty much WoW in a syringe.
The danger lies in the fact that these games have become so incredibly efficient at delivering the sense of accomplishment that people used to get from their education or career. We're not saying gaming will ruin the world, or that gaming addiction will be a scourge on youth the way crack ruined the inner cities in the 90s. But we may wind up with a generation of dudes working at Starbucks when they had the brains and talent for so much more. They're dissatisfied with their lives because they wasted their 20s playing video games, and will escape their dissatisfaction by playing more video games. Rinse, repeat.
And let's face it; if you think WoW is addictive, wait until you see the games they're making 10 years from now. They're only getting better at what they do.
TO THOSE WITH BRAINS BEYOND THEIR OUTFITS, TO THOSE WHO LOVE BOTH NEW AND OLD, TO THOSE WHO THINK THAT 8-BIT GAMES ARE THE SHIT, I CALL UPON YOU MY ACTION RANGEEEERRS!
