Gamer, LF date.

Violent and/or aggressive computer games have been demonized by the media and criticized for destroying the youth of today. They display scenes of graphic and unusual violence and encourage what is best described as 'medieval' behaviour - killing people at will to achieve something, not throwing piss in the streets and dying of the plague. Which is why women steer clear of them, pretty generally, and only a small minority of them dare venture into a world where verbal harassment can occur in the comfort of their own homes. And we, the male gamers of the world, understand this and accept it. But there's a secret that we all share, something that would probably terrify the female gender if they ever found out and believed it; it's all a big conspiracy.

Computer games on any format are no more disturbing or compelling than a violent movie or a piece of graphic literature. Hell, there are cartoons that children watch that are far more scary in their inferences and connotations than most media-criticized computer games. And men know this, but we need one thing that women have no hold over. Even sports, our previous refuge, is becoming more and more accepted by the fairer gender and they are increasingly getting involved in them, both professionally and socially. Men need time away from women where they don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing, or having an idle remark turned into a declaration or war; somewhere we can be the heartless bastards nature intended us to be without feeling bad. Pubs and bars are safe no longer, as ladette culture spreads and women increasingly find out that these palces aren't so bad.

So we created the Games Conspiracy. All those media reports, all those 'banned' games, most of the horror stories, they're nearly all a fiction. I won't deny some are true, but most of the propaganda against computer games comes from men and is written or originates from men. Women might take up the battle cry, but we are the source. We create the hatred of them, and since we know it's mostly rubbish and not true that's why the games industry, so often criticized and blamed for societies flaws, has not been shut down. Think about it people! If everything said about it was true, why in God's name would it still be there? And we do this, we go to all the effort of a global conspiracy just so women do not, under any circumstances, become part of the culture as anything more than a token presence. You know why?

We don't want girls on Xbox live! It's a safe haven from the need to talk to women, and somewhere you can rip the shit out of 12 year-olds and send them home crying without any consequence past a bad player review. We do not need women bringing their sensitivity and caring nature to what is essentially man's last refuge of disorganized, testosterone filled rampaging violence in the modern world. We need this chance to be everything women hate so when we're in 'decent' company we don't slip up and behave like 'barbarians'.

My not-completely in/sincere rant today is provided by gamecrush.com, a website that advertises itself with capitals (www.GameCrush.com) for no reason, as web-addresses are not case sensitive. I may be picking at scraps here, but this....idea upsets me. It is a website which essentially fulfills the role of a dating website using games as a gimicky medium in a slightly desperate and ill-thought through effort to attract gamers, stylized and stereotyped as socially inept and unable to talk to women in most situations. I could write a paper on the mistakes it makes, and it would look something like this:

The Obvious Problems with GameCrush.com
An essay by J.T. Chadrock

1)Gamers predominantly play computer games to have fun, not to meet women. Blindly obvious, but it must be pointed out. If a gamer wanted to meet women, they would go somewhere women classically frequent. Like, anywhere without computer games.
2)If Gamers are as socially inept or so panicked by talking to women as the stereotype leads us to believe, then having a webcam conversation with one they don't know over a game of chequers or Battleships (seriously, they advertise this as casual gaming over webcam) is not going to be any easier. Especially, and I stress this, because none of the PlayDates (yes, again I kid you not) are required to actually deliver anything. This moves on to point 3).
3)Players (yes, this is how GameCrush describes their clients) can rate the PlayDates based on their performance. The rating categories are hotness (supposedly obligatory but subjective and, if I'm honest, unnecessary), flirtiness (the novelist and writer in me seethes with distaste for that non-word) and gaming ability (something that could be much easier recorded by a simple record system of wins-losses. Like, say, most games use.) The categories help little and realistically a girl's gaming ability is not what appeals to me. If I wanted to date a serious gamer I'd find her on Xbox Live or WoW or whatever I preferred because the PlayDates are paid to play computer games and don't necessarily have that avid an interest.
4)It costs. Like any dating website, I'll admit. But only the Players are charged; PlayDates date for free. This, I feel, is a rather sexist and unfair method as if the PlayDates truly enjoy games for gaming's sake they are getting paid to do it while the male Players must pay for the same service. Better would be a dating website where Players are both male and female and can search for profiles of other Players who share an interest in the same games, and then they can arrange PlayDates. Monthly subscription fees are something most Gamers are familiar with anyway and it would be a whole lot fairer.
5)It costs about $8 a PlayDate, apparently as much a drink with in an American bar. The website managers claim that when you buy a girl a drink you are paying to talk to them so their website is no different. However, most girls take longer than 6-10 minutes (PlayDate length depending on the game played) to finish a drink, especially if talking to you and halfway enjoying it. Also, I don't think most places charge $8 for a drink. Maybe $4, so enough for one each, but then you get a drink out of it too, right? Yes, you get the game out of a PlayDate but you could do that for free. And, importantly, if things go well between you and a girl at a bar you could get more than conversation. Much more, in some cases. Not so with GameCrush.
6)PlayDates don't have to be single. "What?!" you cry, "A dating website that encourages cheating and adultery?!" No. GameCrush is not a dating website, as pointed out before. It is in fact much more akin to those websites not talked about in public that let you chat to a girl via webcam for thrills at an regular rate that is fairly reasonable when compared with GameCrush. PlayDates can even have their boyfriend present, and while this may gift them with bad reviews they still get paid. I don't think it's encouraged but it can still happen.


And so on and so forth. For the full paper, email me. I'd apologize for the length, but this is actually quite a sensitive issue to me. I AM a Gamer, and a geek. I'm proud of it. I still go out, have a social life (yes, I'm expecting some kind of remark hear from someone but if you don't know me then what can you really say?) and have friends. And yes, I talk to girls. I've done nearly everything possible with some of them too. I do not play games to meet women, and when I want to meet women I don't do it by playing games. GameCrush is a bad idea that could have worked if it had been thought through properly. While I don't doubt it will have a following - stereotypes are, after all, there for a reason - I don't think it'll have anywhere near the success the designers hope for.

My advice to Gamers wanting to meet GirlGamers is this; stick to games. You meet girls who like to go out when you go out, and you'll meet girls who like to game when you game. It may take longer, but it's the better way. Better than paying a large fraction of the XboxLive subscription fee to talk to a girl for ten minutes while playing games.

If all else fails, try WoW for gaming's sake; it has a huge population and girls play it quite frequently. Just don't run around as a half naked Draenei female trying to tempt them into emote-sex.

Life as we know it is not that bad.

I hate it when people tell me that their lives are terrible. Their lives are never that bad.

I was thinking about this the other day while on a very slow escalator outside my local Sainsbury's eating an M&S sandwich. This is an unusual event for me, since I only very rarely go to M&S, and the last time I did it was because I was in desperate need of a public toilet. Most of the food in M&S is far too expensive for me to afford on a budget, and when I feel like indulging - as I had done - I find most of their flavours involve fish and unusual mixtures of vegetables. This is off putting for me normally, but I'd quite happily found one that suited my tastes. Fie to Jeremy Clarkson.

Coming up the escalator in the opposite direction, just as slowly, was a young girlfriend and boyfriend. You could tell they were very much in 'love' by the way they were ignoring each other and arguing while holding hands. Or what is classed as 'love' by people of a certain age and social class in England nowadays. They definitely didn't have jobs, from the overly-loud details about their benefit claims and lack of employment. They had two kids, although they were no where to be seen so maybe this was a lie, or perhaps just proof that people without proper upbringing, education and gainful employment should be parents. They were complaining about how terrible their lives were.

No, I'll grant you, I would never trade places with them. EVER. I'm infinitely happier in my social station than there's. But their lives were not terrible. My (friends') tax-paid monies are going towards this example of dysfunctionality as per our flawed government system to keep everyone alive whether or not they're useful, decent or in fact entirely human any more. And they seemed quite happy in their designer-trash clothing and were probably going to buy a host of branded, over-priced items that are completely superfluous to their actual dietary needs. SO while they themselves are terrible examples of human beings, their lives are not terrible.

While returning my trolley (that's right, I ate my M&S sandwich is Sainsbury's while shopping there. I'm not proud, but I was hungry) I then had to use the tragically slow escalators again, which gave me another wonderful opportunity to bear witness to another person's 'terrible' life. She was probably 17ish, I don't know exactly because asking would be weird and borderline paedophilic. She was complaining about how her mother always did all her washing and helped her with her homework, and her teachers were always trying to encourage her to go to university and how she just felt so much pressure on her. Oh my God people! I wish my folks had helped with my homework. And encouragement? Wow, people. Pain.

So next time you think your life is terrible, think about it really. You life is probably pretty good, it's just - for one second - not quite as good as you would like. I have no job, dwindling funds, student debt and financially obsessive parents. But I have good friends and I'm getting work done AND having fun, importantly. If my life is not terrible, nor is yours. Unless you're a starving African child born with aids into a harsh and unforgiving world of crime and violence with little or no chance to escape but all the while you retain the knowledge that you will almost certainly die before you've completely lived. Then, I have to admit, you have a valid case for claiming a terrible life.

Still, it could be worse, right? Right...?

New Plot Proposal

So I had a really weird dream last night, kinda like one of those teen-romance-comedy movies, where I was at a university reunion (don't ask) and was telling a friend why I hadn't been back before; I had proposed to a girl at the end of our university lives with a large salmon and a note explaining why I loved her and how she was similar to the aforementioned fish. Suffice to say, that didn't even work well in dreamworld and after she (quite rightly) chastised me for doing it while saying if I'd used a ring she'd be much more inclined to say yes, I irrationally stormed off out of the university and we never saw each other again.

Then the friend told me that she was doing a speech before the reunion meal, and I could go see her then and win her back. Logically, this is an idiot move and wouldn't work. In dreamworld, this seemed like a great idea, so we set off to find her lecture. On the way we gathered up a number of our old school friends until we found where the room we were meant to be going was. At this point, we were late and had to run and it is here, I feel, that I should have figured out it was a dream; I was wearing slippers. Upon this discovery, I traded them with a passing student so I could run faster.

We got to the lecture room only slightly late, but as the girl I proposed to with a fish was also late another talk was going on about neuro-physics. I actually made the mistake of pushing a 'pull' door in my dream, so even there I suffer from uncontrollable bouts of idiocy, and then we all sat at the back. Where we proceeded to play beer pong and normal ping pong because none of us new about, nor wanted to be introduced to, neuro-physics.

Then I woke up. So I never got a chance to re-propose to the girl, minus fish. If I told a therapists that dream, I wonder what they would say?

Mainly, I was going to talk about how my lack of organizational ability means I haven't got a chance to blog and how I envy my house mate, from here on known as The Rebel, for his ability to motivate himself to start his final essay-project thing while my dissertation sits rather unhappily at the 0 words mark. It doesn't even have a greatly defined title; Empire Strikes Back: American Imperialism in Cuba. Fun in theory but since my reading pile is getting bigger as I find more sources but decide against using them I am not looking forward to the eventual late-night cram sessions actually writing my dissertation will entail. That's my own fault really, so I can't complain.

I'm pretty sure The Rebel will read this and be mildly entertained by it - if he's confused I'll tell him here that it's an ironic name, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. For now though, I have to go read about Guantanamo Bay. And not the interesting part, the legislature and legal documentation. Academic ecstasy? Probably not, especially as I've managed to retain my illness through the Lent period after giving up alcohol. I think I may have an actual problem. I'll hope to lose it in my reading somewhere.