Making a Point

Dave! Watch the Ice Pat......Nevermind!

Normally I am a very patient person, I have what I consider a very well-defined sense of humour. I am aware that something I do not find funny may be hilarious to others (the office for example). So the actions I have taken today are not a knee jerk reaction to me not getting a joke.

Earlier today a story broke in the general news –PlayStation gamer Mark Bradford, 46, throttles schoolboy in Call Of Duty revenge attack | Mail Online – This is a terrible story and the reason I have linked to the version on the Daily Mail, is that I have made my hatred for how they handle their gaming news clear on many, many occasions. So my linking to them I wish to further emphasise my disgust at what happened next.

What that man did is deplorable, there is no excuse for his actions at all. I hope that the kid is okay and that when the case is finally before a court properly he has the book thrown at him for his actions. Nobody could read that article and come down on the side of the attacker…….

Or so I thought!!

Cue Joystiq, a large and rather popular gaming blog. Naturally they would have to cover this story, so they did but how they chose to do so actually made me ashamed to have used that site as a source for stories in the Drinky Talky Thingy podcast.

They chose to run the article with this headline Guy chokes a kid after being made fun of in Black Ops, we’re … upset – Now I have deliberately not linked the article as i don’t want to drive any more traffic to it that I have to, but obviously you need to be able to find it if you want to see for yourself.

The basic gist of that article is that basically the kid got exactly what he deserved, that the guy was fully justified in having gone round and choked a 13 year old for giving him some smack talk over voice chat & that he should be seen as a hero for doing so. They even compare the guy to Batman at one point!

When I read this I was appalled, I could not believe what I was actually seeing. How this could even have been written is mystery one, Mystery two is how the hell this managed to get approved and published by the editorial staff of the site.

Obviously I was not the only one dismayed by it, I have followed a very long conversation on Google+ about the whole thing. (https://plus.google.com/117068783534087330802/posts/GaEQwMc2ikY?hl=en)

I personally decided that I would be removing Joystiq from my RSS feeds, I will no longer be using them as a source for the podcast. Also I wanted to let my opinions be known directly at Joystiq so I sent an email to the sits tipbox account (due to not being able to find a complaints one).

Now I have yet to receive a response – however Blogger Stephanie Morrow (aka Stargrace) of MmoQuests.com & Nomadic Gamer has and this is what they had to say in response to her complaints

Actually, readership is up, but thanks for theconcern. I hope you realize that thearticle in question was a work of satire. No, we don’t condone CHOKINGKIDS and most of our readers read the story with the right frame of mind. Ingeneral: kids act like monsters online and choking people is bad. While thehumor in the piece is evident to me, I’m sorry you read itdifferently.

Satire? That is your defence?

When I read this I made up my mind that simply not using them as a source for the podcast any more was simply not enough. For that reason I have made my removal of Joystiq retroactive – All links to their site have been removed from the show-notes of the last 10 episode of the Podcast, The rest will be deleted during the weekend.

Now I know this is only a very small site, so wont even show up on their radar, but I refuse to drive even a tiny amount of traffic to a site that works with that kind of attitude. This as the topic of the post states is me making a point, even if they do not notice it – I will!

So if your looking back over the last few Podcasts and the show-notes look a little odd – this is why.

</rant>

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