The World Still Has Too Many Reporters

I don't really care if CTV or CNN reports this trivial stuff. They are big boys and pay their own way.

The problem I have is CBC, owned by tax payers, actually has a paid staff covering this. As well, I can't find any subsequent coverage, on CBC or CTV, about McCallum's accusation of war crimes against the military.

When will this madness stop?

Harper wants to cut the deficit, $1 billion is a good start and I know where it can be found.

At the Red Star's blog when they were going ape over the anti-prorogation FB group and its "huge" 136,000 membership, to put things in perspective I pointed out...

From the CP about another Canadian online phenomenon:

"Canadians appear to really dig FarmVille, an online farming simulation that boasts more than 73.8 million daily users worldwide just six months after it was launched.

Canada is the sixth biggest country in terms of the number of visitors to FarmVille, the most popular social game among Facebook's 350 million users. The United States is number 1, followed by Turkey, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and Italy. [...]

A Facebook group called Not Playing FarmVille has more than 1.9 million members..."

Some online roleplay at being farmers, while the Star's workers online roleplay about being journalists.

I wonder how many Canadians play farmville versus how many have signed up for Anti Prorogueing...my bet one exceeds the other by many times.

From that CBC comment section:

"Imagine if all those people spent time actually farming for themselves. There'd be less obescity, less pollution (100km diet theory), better health and definitely more respect for farmers."

Probably from Tronna, that one...

"Harper wants to cut the deficit, $1 billion is a good start and I know where it can be found."
Smitherenzes

Well, I can find another 600 million because the CBC budget is actually closer to 1.6 B $'s, Smitherenzes

"It provides an alternative world, a world where people can build their status — and people do care about their status," said Julita Vassileva of the University of Saskatchewan. "They care about their reputation, and they're ready to pay real dollars."

This story may be a waste of ink, and both the CBC and the CRTC suck; but, I would like to raise peoples attention to how destructive on-line role playing games can be. I've personally seen it ruin relationships, cause students to fail in post secondary schools, and lose jobs. 60-100 hours a week is common for "advanced" WOW players and 40+ is necessary to simply advance with your peers(and you play for years). It is literally a second life for most people involved in this type of gaming. South Park’s “Make Love not Warcraft” just scratches the surface.

If it so much fun playing the game perhaps they should try it in real life for some really life shaping experiences.

We're paying for reporters to cover this stuff. Amazing. Actually, we're probably paying for that reporter to play Farmville every day, too.....

If those game-playing Facebookers want to taste some reality, they can go work for real on any dairy farm. Rise in the middle of the night and work your b*tt off. Aren't many folks who work harder than the farmers who bring us our dairy products.

Hopefully Farmville included shooting pesky varmints with virtual licensed long guns.

don't forget to buy the sequels, Feedlotville and Slaughterhouseville.

I'm just waiting for the eventual virtual farmer try to tell real farmers what they should be doing.

Flashback to my childhood. They should show farm kids throwing frozen cow turds around, too.

and shooting gophers!

Blizzard Entertainment seems to have put a lot of effort into making "World of Warcraft" easier to have success in with shorter sessions/etc since its release.

That being said, certain types of people will always be obsessive about something to the extent they're spending 80+ hours a week on it. I wonder how many jobs we're missing because underdeveloped potentially successful capitalist personalities have their head stuck in a virtual world.

Like blogging....

Many of my Facebook "friends" play this game, and I constantly getting updates that they are exchanging cows or whatever.

Is it realistic, ie, do you lose money every year with crop freeze and increased feed prices?

Me, I prefer to lose my money on imaginary poker.

This "information age"(*) has found ways to get people addicted to legal stuff and profit from it.

Games, Chat rooms, blogs, dating sites, porno sites, twitter, text messaging etc...

(*) It is also the disinformation age as anyone can say anything...and gullible people will believe... which explains why liberals win elections or why Obama got elected: disinformation.

Indiana Homez, they said the same thing about video games/Dungeons & Dragons/newsgroups/weed/gin/jazz when I was in university, and they'll be saying the same thing about direct brain stem stimulation when my kids are in university, probably. There's nothing inherently dangerous about any of these things; the problem is that people will use them as a way of escaping their real lives. Take away the online RPGs and they'll use some other video game; take away that video game and they'll use something else; take that something else away and they'll use booze. The problem is with the person, not their choice of reality-avoidance vice.

Posted by: Dave in Pa at January 13, 2010 11:41 AM

Dairy farming is a tough business. My sister married a dairy farmer, and I spent my early teens working for him. It takes a lot of patience.

There's a facebook game called Mafia Wars. One of my facebook friends seems to be quite involved in it. He's always commenting about killing someone, or making some criminal transaction. It's a bit strange.

One of my son's friends split with his girlfriend, and now spends every waking hour, in his bedroom, playing World of Warcraft. His friends are worried about him. They drive by his house, and see a blue glow from his window, and never a light on in his house.

Maybe it isn't so bad. At least these addictive types are safe, at home, and not poisoning their bodies with drugs. Think of it as mental hibernation.

virtual this,virtual that.Wish my Grandad was still around.He passed before Al invented the internet,but I sure would like to know his take on computors and the gaming,compared to his virtual world of WW2,and living in the real world,working his butt off and trying to keep a family going.

Fox and Palin MAJOR hit piece here at the Globe and Mail:

"Palin fits in totally at Fox – standing up for ignorance and stupidity"

http://tinyurl.com/y9oeacx

Comments open!

Like blogging.....

That's a good one! Careful, don't motivate people to leave their keyboards.

I blog when my business is slow, so I'm not tempted to go out and spend money. It's probably saved me thousands of dollars over the last couple of years.

Daniel

I agree, it is the person to some extent, but this venue is extremely addicting. I've seen it personally in more cases than I can count on one hand. I played games my whole life but I won't touch these after I've seen normal people that I respect completely lose all perspective because of their imaginary world.

I remember when I first heard of this issue and I thought "yada yada yada" but then I saw it in my own family. You're analogy of "video games/Dungeons & Dragons/newsgroups/weed/gin/jazz" seems correct on the surface but it isn't accurate. One of the major problems is that the gaming community to a person justify the behaviour to each other. It’s only when you are on the outside looking in when you can see the changes in the people addicted to this behaviour. There is plenty of info on the net if you're so inclined.

Drowning gophers was just as much fun.

Don't tell PETA.

I think there are too many virtual (aka BS)reporters and not near enough real unbiased honest reporters.

Like blogging....

Yeah, but a quick scan of paid advertisers and I think you accomplish more than playing a game.

Lets see a gamer turn his hobby into a job, even a part time job.

One out of a million maybe.

Point is, everyone from kids to COE's can get hooked on a game thats all the rage, then the fad passes. I did a 5 hr tetris binge when I was in my 30's. Then life moves on. As pointed out by many posters, this is not news. Its fluff.

"Drowning gophers was just as much fun."

For someone who moved here from the maritimes, this practice was disturbing. That is, until I saw gophers eating their siblings as soon as the car passes.

Like blogging....
Posted by: Kate at January 13, 2010 12:04 PM

That is a good 'Kate'.

Hey, farm kids are used to animal sacrifice. City people have to eat, not gophers, though, but I understand that during the Dirty Thirties gophers were considered a delicacy.

I seem to recall that kids got paid for every gopher tail they could present to their parents, or something. The little critters ate too much grain.

["It provides an alternative world, a world where people can build their status — and people do care about their status," said Julita Vassileva of the University of Saskatchewan.]

THAT! is why parents should be leery about entrusting their children to Universities. Enticed with bursaries and "loans" so the Utopian World can be perpetuated(along with the tenure and pensions).

Get them in and out as quickly as possible and in to the real, productive world.

I have been there, done that - and so have both of my kids, who were showered with gobs of money and awards. Took them 5 years to shake off the fantasy world after graduation.

Erik @ 12:07 Do they have "road apples" in that game?

Louise @ 12:47 We got 5 cents, paid in cash on the barrel head at the RM office. My cousins and I would take a waggon, cream cans full of water and a 22 calibre rifle. Lots of fun with a payoff at the end of the day.

Sask. Mike 12.17pm

Re. Globe & Mail and Palin

It appears that "ignorance and stupidity" is prevalant, widespread and unrecognizable among the left.

"It provides an alternative world, a world where people can build their status"

Ah, the world of environmentalists!

A friend used to own a big dairy farm here in B.C. I remarked that he had a beautiful farm. He replied,"yes, me and the bank have a beautiful farm".

Apparently the quota he had to buy from the Marketing Board to do business cost one million dollars.

Yeah, I bet Farmville doesn't have any virtual marketing boards or imaginary wheat board either.

TC and puddin:

You both reminded me of my aunt, who had a farm just outside Chatham, Ontario. She used to tell me stories about sitting on her porch with a .22 rifle, and picking off gophers as they poked their little heads up. She was an educated and refined lady, but she knew which end of the gun was the business end!

Indiana, I play Guild Wars a whopping three hours a week. It's a way to retain contact with my brother who moved to California several years ago.

I play and have played video games, tabletop roleplaying games, wargames, etc since I was an adolescent. I've been to gaming and SF cons. I own seven gaming consoles and more boardgames than will fit in my closet. And I spend less time and money on all those hobbies combined than my father-in-law spends on golf.

I know people who have succumbed to "geekdom addiction", but just as importantly, I know many, *many* more who enjoy it as a hobby and nothing more. And trust me, geekdom had the concept of "mutual reality avoidance support" looooong before Atari was a gleam in Nolan Bushnell's eye.

The thing is, Indiana, in every single case of someone losing their life to a video game/RPG/geek subculture, it's the same thing: these are people who couldn't handle their reality in the first place, and all the indicators were already there. Geeking just gave them an outlet that wasn't immediately and irreparably destructive, like alcohol or drugs. D&D isn't corrupting anyone's soul, and video games aren't turning anyone into either violent murderers *or* hikkikomori. They're just this decade's crutch of choice for people with addictive personalities, and the boogeyman of choice for moralists with nothing better to do.

earnest Just a little note about Palin and the Mope and Whail. Its a thing called mind over matter. Palin doesn't minde because the Mope and Whail doesn't matter. In fact the Mope and Whail keeps becoming more and more irrelevant each day.

Same John Doyle who was at the Wpg F Press eons ago ??

I like your take, Joe @ 3:48. I share your sentiments.

I jsut tried to email this to my wife at work and CBC tried to charge me 20 Frickin' dollars.
Fat GD chance loooooosers.

Too many reporters? Too many views out their not your liking? If smalldeadanimals really feels that there is too much reporting going on, maybe they should close down.