Yesterday this article by the blog Read Write Web was inundated with confusing and poorly-written comments by many people attempting to log in to their Facebook page. After the site's administrator looked into it, it seems that many people just type "Facebook login" into Google, and click on the first link that is returned. After reading through several hundred comments. Some thoughts:
First and most obviously there is the hilarity of the thought that a person has so little computer literacy that the only way they can find Facebook is by doing a Google search, find RWW's post, fail to read it, manage to scroll all the way to the bottom, find the Facebook Connect login, and post a comment riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. How, in this entire process, they could not understand how RWW's site was not Facebook is beyond me.
Reading the genuine comments, it's saddening to consider the poor spelling and grammar of many of these people:
I am going to delete my account (IF I CAN EVER LOG IN) as this SUCKS BIG TIME ! If this does not get back to NORMAL you are going to lose a lot of folks who hate this and as you can see from all the comments they think it sucks too !!! facebook was great for connecting with old friends ...now, NOT SO MUCH. SO HOW DO I LOG IN ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I truly love Faceback.I am able to talk to more then one person.
hello i want in now whats goin on,jus wen i wasstartin 2 ike it*
Are these people truly this stupid or are they just ignorant of how foolish they appear when they type like this? I would hope for the later, but am thinking the former.
*It should be no surprise that this person is a member of six fan pages, all of them relating to Farmville.
This situation is an example of how far the digital divide has split the haves and have-nots, with a service becoming so ubiquitous that even those that don't know how to operate a computer wanting to use the service, even if they can only get there using a very specific route. I wonder how these people fare in their occupations, especially with computers.
Sadly, these people are also part of the reason why I'm attempting to wean myself away from Facebook altogether - there's only so many application requests and stupid fan pages I'm willing to take. The Facebook of today is a far cry from the one I joined in 2004, and while it may be better for the bottom line, it's not really as fun having to wonder each time I post new content if what I'm saying might be something I don't want my parents or employers to know about.
I'm also intrigued at how much search traffic Google must get from these ill-informed individuals. Indeed "Google" is even a verb at this point (would it be a lower case "g" in this context?), synonymous with an internet search, and this can only help them remain on top with regards to their top money-making service.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Too Many Good Videogames
Gamespy has an interesting article by a guy begging the videogame industry to stop making games for a year because he has too many backlogged and can't catch up. It's written in jest, but it's a feeling to which I can relate.
Believe it or not, before the Wii was released in late 2006, Nintendo was in the 3rd place position for the past decade, beginning with the N64 and their decision to stick with cartridges when the medium was moving to optical discs. Today, the N64 is appreciated by my generation as the NES was by the generation prior, but the successor to the N64, Gamecube, has yet to be appreciated by anyone who wasn't a Nintendo fanboy. I was one of those fanboys, however, so while everyone was concerned with Grand Theft Auto and Halo, I was content in playing Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The latter two still receive shit today by the casual gamers, more concerned with how the game looks as opposed to how it plays (SMS was better than Super Mario 64, and while Wind Waker could not match up to OoT, it was definitely a solid entry into the series). Despite how underrated the system is, there were dozens of high-quality titles released over the span of the GCN - games that I took upon myself to buy and eventually play.
Fast forward to early 2007 - I owned 65 Gamecube games, half of which I had yet to play. I didn't have the time to put 30 hours into each of these games, and while I had the majority of ownership-worthy Gamecube games by that time, I got a Wii for Christmas 2006, so I also had a dozen Wii titles that were sitting there, taunting me with their fun and time-consuming gameplay. As is the case for all of my hobbies, things reach a tipping point, and I had enough. I put everything up for sale on eBay, and in a week's time was shipping it to another part of the country for a tidy $2,000. I bought another Wii within a year due to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but this time I figured out how to play pirated games, so I could have the ownership without the cost. Even today, I have about 50 Wii games, but I've only really played a handful of them. It's okay, though, because I didn't have to waste hundreds of dollars to do it.
I suppose that's the difference between me and the author of the article - whereas he is willing to plea for the industry to change, I'm willing to accept that I've reached a point where my hobby has consumed me, and move on. The feeling of wiping your hands of everything you've spent years collecting is pretty satisfying, too. (Something that I'm reaching with my DVD collection.)
Believe it or not, before the Wii was released in late 2006, Nintendo was in the 3rd place position for the past decade, beginning with the N64 and their decision to stick with cartridges when the medium was moving to optical discs. Today, the N64 is appreciated by my generation as the NES was by the generation prior, but the successor to the N64, Gamecube, has yet to be appreciated by anyone who wasn't a Nintendo fanboy. I was one of those fanboys, however, so while everyone was concerned with Grand Theft Auto and Halo, I was content in playing Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Mario Sunshine, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The latter two still receive shit today by the casual gamers, more concerned with how the game looks as opposed to how it plays (SMS was better than Super Mario 64, and while Wind Waker could not match up to OoT, it was definitely a solid entry into the series). Despite how underrated the system is, there were dozens of high-quality titles released over the span of the GCN - games that I took upon myself to buy and eventually play.
Fast forward to early 2007 - I owned 65 Gamecube games, half of which I had yet to play. I didn't have the time to put 30 hours into each of these games, and while I had the majority of ownership-worthy Gamecube games by that time, I got a Wii for Christmas 2006, so I also had a dozen Wii titles that were sitting there, taunting me with their fun and time-consuming gameplay. As is the case for all of my hobbies, things reach a tipping point, and I had enough. I put everything up for sale on eBay, and in a week's time was shipping it to another part of the country for a tidy $2,000. I bought another Wii within a year due to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but this time I figured out how to play pirated games, so I could have the ownership without the cost. Even today, I have about 50 Wii games, but I've only really played a handful of them. It's okay, though, because I didn't have to waste hundreds of dollars to do it.
I suppose that's the difference between me and the author of the article - whereas he is willing to plea for the industry to change, I'm willing to accept that I've reached a point where my hobby has consumed me, and move on. The feeling of wiping your hands of everything you've spent years collecting is pretty satisfying, too. (Something that I'm reaching with my DVD collection.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
