Reporter writes goofy column about consoles: bumpkin or brilliant satirist?
Mainstream reporters often get eaten alive by the Internet, which is as dense as it is savagely incisive. This eternal recurrence goes something like this:
1. Write an incendiary column about the future of a technical and unpredictable subject. For example, declare Sony the inevitable winner of the console war, offering as evidence the opinion of your child, who "always tells me the latest trend."
2. Publish a "My Oh My!" letters-to-the-editor follow-up about the criticism and hate mail you get as a result. Pro tip: Anoint the nastiest and stupidest as the "best."
3. Finally, write that the original column was a joke and that the readers cannot understand your subtlety. Alternatively, declare victory.
Jane Wells, welcome to the information superfanboyway!
A brief recap of the story: Sony secures victory in the console war when 16-year-old master Wells switches allegiance to it. His sudden discovery of a months-old saturation-marketed title leads him to an awareness of the "other PlayStation exclusives in the pipeline and the awesomeness of Blu-ray." He then gets swindled by GameSpot, swapping his collection for a PS3 and a single used game.
The best part is that Wells' blog is called "Funny Business :)." The presence of an emoticon in its name perfectly telegraphs its stone-faced opacity. It hovers in that ambiguous netherworld between the jocose and the actually funny (e.g. "Am I the only one who thinks Radovan Karadzic, the "Butcher of Bosnia", now looks like Santa Claus?") — that makes it hard to tell whether she's a brilliant satirist exploring the systematic absurdity of commodity fetishism through the sharp lens of a youngster's callow whims, or a bumpkin.
There must be some kind of test we can apply.
the latest
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Hmmm... voting vapid tart.
my god......the world's greatest troll
Perhaps she iz takin ova for the Icy Hot Stuntaz in the 2G+8.
You BBG folks have been in top form today. Well done, you folks manage to keep things smart, critical, and fucking funny.
Who gives a toss what her son likes? I want to put my joystick all up in that.
She's an idiot.
NEXT!
Her first sentence made it clear that the whole story was tongue-in-cheek. "Forget the analysts. Forget the NPD sales figures. Forget the CEO’s. I live with the ultimate expert on the video game industry—my 16-year-old son." The title oozed with the same irony by calling his opinion "The Ultimate Proof." I don't think the fact that she was being ironic could be more clear.
When did Debra Norville change her name?
I think this MILF needs a job at Kotaku NOW.
Haha! That best email was a genuine winner of the title "BEST." Believe it or not, there are a handful of geeks like myself who see that correspondence as exemplary behavior typical of hardcore, dyed-in-the-fucking-wool gamers! Because it's a market that sways and engorges according to the phallic whims of schweatty boyz.
My 'sensei' tells me that desperate defense against opposition only serves to validate further opposition.
BTW, I'm not hatin'. My current favorite video game is a mini-game anthology by Robinson Jeffers. The graphics are awesome and my console's processor is much faster, yo!
She makes me uncomfortable. The content of her writing is akin to the chuck-full-of-bullshit videogame journalism I'm used to seeing, but, for lack of a better way to say it... she speaks my language.
She is either a very stupid, talented writer, or a very with-it, mediocre satirist.
Dangit, I was willing to chalk this up to stupidity or a simple inability to write something actually funny, but now this post has got me thinking about the original column and now I'm thinking that it's an onion-like satire of gamers. If she really has a 16 year old son who just spent a lot of money on a console then I know exactly what kind of crap she's hearing from him because I used to be that guy. He probably has been declaring the greatness of Sony and their assured dominance because it's to calm his cognitive dissonance and convince himself that he doesn't want an Xbox 360.
Really it does read like a third person version of the innumerable blog comments and forum posts that explain why a console will be "the winner" for the same reasons that the poster chose to purchase it.
If that's the case I'd call it poorly executed satire. A rework casting the son as an authority and written in the style of a factual news report would probably get the basic idea across a lot better.
would the crate test work in this scenario?
I think I'm confused
I think she's wearing a suede pant-suit. She looks like a character from 'Cyborg'.
The GameSpot/GameStop lysdexic typo is a common one. GameSpot is a videogame website, GameStop is the store where people feel ripped off trading in games even though they know the full terms of the deal before the transaction is made.