Image: Adapted from IMG_1924 by helloandrew under a CC-BY-SA license.

Online gaming. It’s fun, it’s cheap, and only in the rarest of cases has it been a problem for anyone. Time for a crack down just in case.

The government of Vietnam is taking the high levels of interest in online gaming amongst its youngsters seriously, requiring ISPs to block online games from 10pm to 8am every night (which everyone knows is the best time to game), supposedly in an effort to curb addiction.

I suppose the kids of Vietnam (and everyone else) will have to find something else to do during those hours, like form gangs, rape, or pillage. I guess they could try single player as well, although free to play MMOs are what’s big over there.

Most amusingly, the true addicts of gaming will see little effect from this, as they can still play all day. Really, it’s the casual gamers who want to relax after school or work who are hardest hit by this needless and ignorance-driven decision.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the upcoming Mortal Kombat game has been denied a ratings classification, which means the title won’t be available there. This is a persistent problem in the country, as the nation’s ratings board lacks the equivalent of an “R” or “M” rating, which means anything that warrants something higher than a “Teen” rating is simply unable to be sold. So, you know, the Australian government, they’re pretty shameful this week too.

Fun aside: my source includes a bunch of kids huddled around SNESes, which makes me wonder just what kind of online gaming is going on in Vietnam.

Source: Mail Online

Image: News Corporation.

Of course, the employees of Fox News could take turns being Shameful Human from here on out and it would be entirely justified, but that would be too easy. That granted, I’ve got a link to a Fox News exposé on the horrors of video games that’s given me special motivation to berate the organization this week. It’s right here. Be sure to make a wanking motion the entire time you’re reading that. Let’s do a quick run through of the issues with this piece.

The title is “Is Bulletstorm the Worst Video Game in the World?” Oh I get it, you can imply ridiculous things to your readers without being entirely libelous by posing leading questions. I need to take notes for my website dedicated to mockery and trolling. “Fair and balanced” is so ironic a slogan that I actually have to keep my brain from flipping into “I’m reading parody” mode when consuming Fox material.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Jerry Weichman says “if a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm‘s explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant.” Well, I suppose children can be affected by viewing violence, but Bulletstorm is M rated. If 9-year-olds are playing the game, I suspect it is as a result of poor parenting… no wait, I’m wrong. According to psychiatrist Carole Lieberman, ESRB ratings aren’t enforced. That’s funny, because I’ve personally seen EB employees refuse to sell to kids, and they are apparently better enforced than movie ratings. Baselessly attacking movies must not be worth as many scare points for Fox’s old and angry audience.

Lieberman wasn’t done making shit up in her above quote. She also claims “the increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games.” I wonder when all those dating sims I’ve played will kick in and I’ll go on a raping frenzy.

Alright, final ridiculous quote. “Video game publishers traditionally stay glib about the issue of violence.” This statement is followed up by an explanation of all the “no comments” game companies gave to Fox. In other words, I don’t think glib means what Fox News thinks it means.

Image: Dead Space 2 box art. EA.

EA, or whoever defrosted the aged idea of selling video games by making you feel rebelious for playing them in the marketing campaign for Dead Space 2, are this week’s Shameful Humans.

The campaign consists of a bunch of mom-looking moms (or maybe/probably they’re actors) reacting to footage from Dead Space 2. They react just the way years of stereotyped portrayals on television would lead you to expect they would react!

You can see the humiliatingly stupid results here. Anticipate a lot of middle-aged women grimacing.

Even more embarassing, part of this campaign involves a forced attempt at “going viral” by trying to get the kids back home to film their moms reacting to the violence of Dead Space 2 as well. Quick, you’ve only got until February 25th!

So, to recap: This campaign implies that gamers are a bunch of teenage guys who strive to be as bad-ass as possible by playing games their mothers wouldn’t approve of. Women don’t like video games. Adults don’t like video games. A “mature” rated game isn’t for mature people.

This campaign reminds me of the juvenility supplied so copiously by game marketers in the ’90s. These ads are more fitting Mortal Kombat than they are what I thought was supposed to be a serious game of 2011.

Image: Adapted from Nintendo office by Moja under a CC-BY-SA license.

For real this time.

Will the 3DS have loads of bad-ass games that both play and look awesome? Hell yes it will. Will it include intelligent design decisions? Maybe.

Andriasang has a story up about the online play of Super Street Fighter IV for 3DS, and it includes some rather dubious language: “You add players to your friend list by exchanging friend codes.”

For the uninformed, the Wii and DS have both featured ugly and arcane online systems which require you to enter a 12 digit “friend code” if you want to interact with specific people online. You can still play strangers no problem. There are system codes, which some games use, while others use game specific codes. The few players that bother with this system are faced with utter tedium.

Now, Andriasang’s story is based on a translation from a Japanese magazine that doesn’t give any further details. We don’t know if this is an updated friend codes system, whether friend codes are per game or per system, or if friend codes are even tied to an entire player account, nevertheless, the language is foreboding indeed.

Rumours are now circulating that the system will also be hindered by “region locking.” This is the authoritarian restriction of preventing people from different territories from playing each other’s games. In other words, a North American 3DS won’t be able to play Japanese games, or vice versa. You’d need to import a Japanese 3DS to play games meant for that territory.

All of this comes in addition to a currently unknown but expected price of $250+ and shaky 3-5 hour battery life. The west is waiting for January 19th when much is supposed to be revealed, including (hopefully) specifics on these troubling issues. Whether Nintendo has realized that this event is occurring in 2011 remains to be seen.

It’s a new year, which I was hoping would mean a fresh round of faces for Shameful Human of the Week, but the old ones continue to be goddamn horrible.

Activision Blizzard, the world’s largest video game publisher, worth roughly $14 billion, may end its presence in the UK and leave 600 people there unemployed because of an absence of sweet tax breaks. The company has thrown a tantrum over the government’s decision not to introduce tax “relief” for its industry.

Activision’s president and CEO, as well as ShufflingDead’s Shameful Human of 2010 Bobby Kotick called the lack of tax breaks a “terrible mistake,” claiming “there are so many other places that are encouraging the video games industry.” In other words: tax us wealthy corporations even less and maybe we will occasionally throw you a speck of employment.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Here’s an economic suggestion for the governments of the world: tax opulent asshole CEOs so thoroughly that they are forced to live in reality again, and use their money to employ people, instead of fighting over the scraps their companies give you now.

Source: The Telegraph

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has been made Shameful Human of the Year following a rigorous vote in which 8 people exercised their democratic right to decide the title. (9 shared the story on Facebook, figure that one out.)

Bobby took first place in the poll by narrowly beating out Steve Jobs 4 to 3, while Uwe Boll and Roissy trailed significantly further behind, grabbing 1 and 0 votes respectively.

Among all the annoyances committed by all the Shameful Humans of 2010, Bobby’s have certainly been some of the worst. 2010 saw the corporate mastermind get sued for trying to underpay one of his lawyers, firing the creative talent behind his company’s best selling games, getting sued by his former employees for ripping them off massively, and poorly slagging off Tim Schafer. This was all in addition to Kotick’s previous track record, which is one of driving game franchises into the ground and entirely disrespecting the artistic aspect of video game creation.

Congratulations Bobby, you’ve succeeded at being an utter dick numerous times in a single year, you deserve this more than anyone else ShufflingDead bothers to cover.

Image: Adapted from Nepal Protest. Photo by SFTHQ. Used under a CC-BY license.

As promised, ShufflingDead now presents the poll for Shameful Human of the Year. After a rigorous nomination process of me picking names based on the three comments we received regarding this important issue, we have narrowed the contenders to four. Make your selection in the poll below.

First up is Steve Jobs. Mr. Turtleneck has done a lot of being himself this year, and that’s bothered a lot of people. There’s plenty to dislike, you can read the full write up for more info, but in summary: he sells you shit you don’t need at prices you can’t afford, he’s smug as fuck, he’s secretive and controlling, and he hates Flash.

Next up is Roissy. His write-up was done in 2009, but we didn’t have a Shameful Human of the Year back then, so Roissy has been grandfathered in. Basically, he’s a raging sexist blogger. It hasn’t hurt that his page is one of the few on our site that gets any comments.

The third contender is Bobby Kotick. The Activision CEO has received a lot of bad press in 2010, and it has been well deserved. The man runs his company like an assembly-line, driving game franchises, even genres, into the ground for the sake of short-term profits. Along the way, Kotick has been accused of ripping off his most creative employees for millions.

Finally, we have perennial hate vacuum Uwe Boll, who actually managed to be Shameful Human twice this year. The man argues with journalists, he boxes his detractors, we produces garbage films, and generally acts like a raging dick.

Image: EA.

ShufflingDead’s final Shameful Human for 2010 is whoever it was, lurking in the darkest corner of EA’s corporate office, that greenlit SSX Deadly Descents. If you wisely chose to miss the abominable SpikeTV VGAs where this game was premiered, allow me a moment to explain what this new title is about.

If you have the barest knowledge of the SSX franchise, then you can probably guess that this is a snowboarding game. If you know anything more about the SSX franchise than that it is about snowboarding, I’m afraid you will be unable to assume anything else.

If the game’s teaser trailer is any indication, Deadly Descents is a tonal reboot of the franchise which moves it away from the “totally extreme” style of previous entries and toward the “gritty extreme” of Gears of War. Alternate titles suggested by angered fans include “SSX: Dudebro Descents” and “Tom Clancy’s SSX: Deadly Descents.” The official website for the game explains “SSX: Deadly Descents will pit riders versus both mountain and man.”

I’ve played a couple SSX games in my life, and although I would not describe myself as a huge fan, I did enjoy them. What I found most memorable about those games was that they were colourful, bright, humorous, and slightly-cartoonish takes on snowboarding. In other words, they were nothing like SSX Deadly Descents.

I love to rag on the manly-man dudebro style of games that have dominated this generation, but that is not my problem with this new SSX. The real issue is the entirely inappropriate branding of this game as SSX at all. A game so far removed from the previous titles which bore that name simply isn’t one of those games.

From a business perspective, I understand EA’s reasoning: stick SSX on there and let consumers know this is a snowboarding game while (maybe) getting the fan base on board as well. From an artistic perspective, there is simply no sense in the decision because there is no longer a common thread between the games aside from the most basic premise (snowboarding). Casting that wide of a definition of what makes SSX SSX means you might as well start calling all snowboarding games by that name.

Compare this with something like Spider-Man. That franchise has been ported to numerous mediums and been re-booted in most of them. Never the less, many characters remain in each iteration and fill similar roles. The basic plot (teenage boy with super-human spider-like capabilities deals with girls, the death of his uncle, and super-villains) persists. “Spider-Man” still means something beyond “superhero.”

It’s time game companies like EA began respecting their own intellectual property enough to call different games different things.

I admit it. I haven’t don’t much of anything this week except read about WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, the site’s detractors, and its defenders. It seems only appropriate to put a cap on the ass of this zany outpouring of internet: serious business, and declare the enemies of WikiLeaks, also known as the enemies of free speech, the Shameful Humans of the Week.

Who does this group include? Most prominently in recent days, it has been the corporations which have stifled WikiLeaks’ ability to sustain itself monetarily. That includes PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard for cutting off their ties with site, making donations difficult. These political decisions have been shown to be especially egregious thanks to the revelation that Visa and MasterCard can be used to donate to other controversial groups, including the KKK. Apparently, free speech is only okay when your organization is not in the process of being attacked and smeared by the American government.

Amazon booted WikiLeaks from its hosting, claiming the site did not own the leaks it was publishing. This claim came despite the fact that United States government documents are not copyrightable. I wonder if publications later discussing these leaked documents will be available on Amazon. My guess is yes. At least we got the amusing story of an Amazon UK seller briefly hawking commentary on the cables following this incident, which made it look like Amazon was actually selling the documents they had so much trouble with hosting.

There are plenty of other players in this as well. That includes whoever it was that DDoS’ed WikiLeaks, Sweden and its mysterious legal wranglings to bring Julian Assange back to their country, Assange’s uncooperative bank, etc.

In the end, however, there is no more hypocritical, and no more troubling a group than the government of the United States. A country which has perpetually lauded free speech and wagged its finger at other nations for disallowing free press has admitted in its actions that it only approves of those things when they do not reveal embarrassing information regarding the behaviour of the American government. These criticism include Hillary Clinton calling WikiLeaks’ actions “an attack on America’s foreign policy interests,” and Joe Lieberman calling on Amazon to remove WikiLeaks from its hosting. Most disturbingly for me was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ reaction when he found out about Julian Assange’s arrest from reporters. He commented: “I hadn’t heard that, but that sounds like good news to me.” In other words, arrests of the innocent when they disagree with you: good news. Video of the incident made it appear that he was fighting back a smile at the time.

Hopefully that’s enough on WikiLeaks for now. Maybe I can think about something else for awhile.

Image: Robert Gates. Government of the United States.

Image: Adapted from Nepal Protest. Photo by SFTHQ. Used under a CC-BY license.

With the month of December upon us, it’s time to begin considering the all too important process of selecting the Shameful Human of the Year. We’ve had some 40 Shameful Humans this year so far (Uwe Boll twice), and before all my rage is drained for 2010, we’ll probably have a couple more. Who among them has shamed the most? Who has shamed the most shamefully?

Hit the jump to see the full list of candidates thus far, with links to their corresponding write-ups. Ponder on the evil-doings of Bobby Kotick, Prince, Gene Simmons, Michael Bay, and so many more. Marvel at the collective badness of this especially annoying rogues gallery.

Pile upon the comments section of this post with your leading contenders. You can nominate anyone from the list so far, combine candidates (like the parade of Nintendo haters), or even throw in last-minute nominations I have yet to write about. I’ll put up a poll in a couple weeks between the leading contenders to determine the wrongest wronger of 2010.



Constantine Hantzopoulos
Antoine Seux
Pat Robertson
Uwe “Raging” Boll, and again.
Rex Fowler
Whoever wrote the “Intro” story for Sonic the Hedgehog 4
Robert Pattinson
Mike Hickey
Jenny McCarthy
Fredrik Liliegren
Barack Obama
Randy Neugebauer
James Mielke
Korean Pro StarCraft Players
Michael Pachter
Bobby Kotick
The Last Halo 2 Players
Steve Jobs
Michael Bay
Every single person responsible for Sex and the City 2
Bruce Jamar Walston
Ray Maguire
Andrew Auernheimer
Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Prince
Mel Gibson
Richard Blumenthal
Andrew Keen
Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page
Chris Anderson
Kevin Rose and the entire Digg community
Now it’s just the entire Digg community
M. Night Shyamalan
Cammie Dunaway
Gene Simmons
Kazunori Yamauchi
Child Abusing Gamers
Judith Griggs
Hot Topic
Mark Wahlberg and David O. Russell

Mark Wahlberg has broken the news himself: he will be playing the role of Nathan Drake in the upcoming Uncharted film, based on the PS3 game series of the same name. In other words, Nathan Fillion, the nice guy who wanted the role, who would have been perfect for the role, won’t get it.

I went back and forth on who to lash out against over this information. It’s hard to blame Wahlberg for taking a job, and maybe Russell just wanted to hire his friend (these two have worked together a number of times).

Ultimately, I had to target both men, not only because they contributed to depriving Nathan Fillion of a role, but because a cursory glance of their Wikipedia pages indicates that both men are complete ass-piles.

Marky Mark can be blamed for this, as well as his performances in Planet of the Apes and Max Payne. Also, when he was a teenager, Wahlberg robbed a pharmacy, and followed it up by knocking a man unconscious and blinding another man in one eye. Oh, and he fractured someone’s jaw for no reason when he was 21.

David O. Russell is apparently about as fun to hang around with. He had a screaming meltdown during the filming of I Heart Huckabees in which he repeatedly swore at Lily Tomlin before doing a little set-trashing and then locking himself in his office.

An even more astounding incident occurred between Russell and George Clooney during the filming of Three Kings. Clooney stood up to Russell after he had been hassling workers, and Russell did the mature thing by replying “Why don’t you just worry about your fucked-up acting?! You’re being a dick. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me” and then grabbing Clooney by the throat. The only good to come out of all this is that Clooney responded by beating Russell down.

So there you have it folks. Nathan Fillion missed out on a job because an abusive director wanted to hire his untalented buddy instead.

Image: Uncharted Drake’s Fortune box art. Copyright SCE.

Until today, I had no idea that the house that kids-who-wear-shit-on-their-wrists built was selling t-shirts featuring the “Rageguy” internet meme. You know, that’s the MS Paint doodle of a rather unhappy man declaring “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU-.”

Such a brazen misappropriation of “internet culture” alone warrants the title of Shameful Human(s). This is a large corporation looking to profit on the culture of others. Think of the products associated with any culture or subculture. It’s the difference between members of a culture selling their own, “authentic” art, and cheap knock-offs sold by others. Is it okay for 4chan and other sites to make ad revenue off posts containing “Rageguy”? Sure, those sites are on the “inside.” Hot Topic is decidedly not.

Having said that, Hot Topic has gotten a lot more shameful in recent days over this. 4chan decided to get involved, “taking back” the Rageguy meme by associating it with racism under “Operation: Black Rage.” The image board’s community decided to turn “Rageguy” into a racist, plastering the internet with the meme’s new direction. They then contacted anyone who would listen to claim that Hot Topic was selling material associated with/promoting racism.

The company announced some 19 hours ago that it would cease to sell Rageguy shirts due to the character’s new direction. 14 hours later, the company reversed its decision, refusing to “cave to bad people doing bad things.”

It should seem obvious at this point that Hot Topic is more interested in maintaining profit (thus the decision to stick with Rageguy) than adhering to the desires of the community which created him. This also exposes Hot Topic as a disconnected exploiter of the subcultures which it seeks to associate with. If Hot Topic were really on the “inside” of internet culture, it would recognize Raceguy as a force for internet justice and keep selling his products.

Source: GeekOSystem

When Gaudio got in contact with Cooks Source, Griggs blasted back with an astoundingly ignorant and condescending email that interneters the world over have come to marvel at:

Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was “my bad” indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.

But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!

That’s right, apparently the internet is public domain now. And us online writers are of such a desperate and unclean bread that we should appreciate merely having our work lifted by “real world” editors like Griggs, so that they may edit our work and profit on it.

Following the outpouring of internet rage that came from Gaudio’s explanation of events, more digging led to the discovery that Griggs and her magazine have ripped off everyone from Martha Stewart to NPR.

Cooks Source has been sort of apologetic about the events described above, or sorry they got caught, anyway. In a pseudo-apology appearing on the magazine’s website, they attack crusaders for internet justice, blame overworked writers and untrustworthy submitters, and play victim as much as possible.

I could rightfully declare the men and women of the R-I-double-A Shameful Humans every single week and be entirely justified in doing so. The Recording Industry Association of America is responsible for representing record labels and distributors in the United States. Its most prominent role in recent years has been to track down minor copyright violations of the intellectual property of its members and litigate with extreme prejudice.

Admittedly, the organization has taken a break from this practice since 2008 when they decided to give up on lawsuits (read: extortive out-of-court settlements) and focus on barring people caught pirating music from using the internet.

This week, the RIAA lands itself in the Angry Court of Shamefulness for continuing its fight against one of those early lawsuit targets, Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Thomas-Rasset, a low-income mother of four, once downloaded and shared 24 songs. For that, she has suffered through three trials, and will see yet more. The RIAA insists that her actions have been damaging to say the least, claiming that the $1.5 million awarded by the jury for her actions at the close of her most recent case “recognized the severity of the defendent’s misconduct.”

Luckily for Thomas-Rasset, she has pro bono lawyers on her side, as well as a judge who continues to reject the absurd damages awarded to this week’s shame-team.

Source: arstechnica
Image: Adapted from Pirate’s Treasure by aloshbennett under a CC-BY license.

I don’t mean to be one of those “think of the children” types, but I can’t help but declare this week’s Shameful Humans to be a pair of gamers who took things too far.

First up is Alexandra V. Tobias. She’s a 22-year-old former mother from Jacksonville, Florida who shook her baby to death for interrupting her FarmVille play session. Apparently, the mundane and repetitive tasks of being mother to a three-month-old were distracting her from the mundane and repetitive tasks of playing FarmVille.

The other shameful human this week is a Mr. Gundam.werra. He’s the manager of Team Werra, a Korean professional StarCraft team who abused his high school aged teammates. Werra’s crew is apparently falling apart following the accusations of one [bunch o' characters].Werra, who left after being sexually assaulted by Gundam. Since then, a couple more members have come forward to claim similar offenses. They avoided speaking out before, not wanting to be kicked from the team.

Image: Tobias, The Florida Times-Union

This week’s Shameful Human is Kazunori Yamauchi. He’s the guy who created the Gran Turismo series, and the designer of the (still) upcoming Gran Turismo 5.

Yamauchi’s apparent dedication, or perhaps obsession, with “perfection” has resulted in an ever-ballooning development period for GT5 that never seems to end. The game was revealed in 2006, but work had begun way back in 2004. Its original release date was going to be March 2010, but that was eventually pushed to early November, where it stayed until today. The game has now been delayed again, knocked back to an unspecified date “this holiday season.”

The official PlayStation Blog claims “creator Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital want to make certain they are creating the perfect racing experience,” but I must, of course, take serious issue with the use of the word “perfect” as it relates to anything Gran Turismo. Frankly, the games may very well represent the pinnacle of realistic driving recreated in video game form, but realism is often the opposite of fun when it comes to games.

Can you imagine if SimCity was about quibbling with the crotchety old residents living on the land you want to build a road over? Or if Mario was about clawing shit out of clogged toilets? Yamauchi’s obsession with recreating real-world tracks, cars, and physics is the racing genre equivalent. “Perfect” would be giving players something fun to do, not allowing them the chance to tediously steer around large ovals.

Source: PlayStation Blog
Image: Thankfully released into public domain by SpoonerTuner.

This week’s Shameful Human is the famous bassist and vocalist for KISS, Gene Simmons. Gene recently appeared at the MIPCOM convention, where he took the opportunity to attack music pirates, proclaiming “Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars.”

Simmons argued that “hundreds of thousands” of people are out of jobs due to a music industry that has collapsed under the weight of “fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid[s].” If it weren’t for those meddling kids, I suppose the ubiquitous KISS brand would be on upcoming hi-definition television sets by now. Oh sorry, that is happening.

Gene Simmons, whose bland and repetitive music continues to support an apparently lavish lifestyle (if the bland and repetitive “reality” series Gene Simmons Family Jewels is to be believed), claims the music industry lacked “balls” when internet music piracy began. Simmons explained that allowing one cute fox to steal one egg will quickly lead to swarms of foxes overrunning your farm, killing your chickens, causing your wife and kids to leave you, and destroying every business connected to your farm.

What Simmons seems to have missed in his parable are the parts where the farmer “egg”-regiously overcharged for his product, refused to change when his customers demanded new ways of buying their eggs, lacked respect or appreciation for his hens, and repeatedly insulted the most passionate omelet munchers.

[source]

Digg is some kind of social media/link sharing mega site founded by TechTV’s Kevin Rose. On August 25, 2010, version four of Digg.com went live. The redesign brought about a wide range of changes both great and small, from a layout cleansing (that looks infinitely better in my opinion), to a refocus on following the activities of your friends and favourite websites rather than the hive mind of the collected Digg community.

The transition has been shaky from a technical standpoint, with Rose and co. re-launching Digg seemingly without adequate preparation. Despite a lengthy testing period, the new Digg has been up, down, and glitchy ever since it went live. The extra click required to hop from your personal stream to the site-wide most popular submissions is also somewhat annoying. Speaking of personal streams, and as a means of being completely self serving, I want to recommend you follow Shufflingdead on Digg.

But this post isn’t just about Kevin. It’s also about the legion of basement dwellers who rely on his site for distraction while their youths slip away. You see, Diggers, like all geeks, are a ravenous bunch of haters. Change of any kind is to be reviled. Digg’s revamp has garnered nothing less than a torrent of whining from its millions of users. A quick scan from this comment page garnered these gems (after the jump):

What the fuck did you do Kevin Rose. Fix this shit.

-swellin

Fix the whole fucking thing! Give us the option to view it the old way. I don’t even want to come on this site anymore.

-mywhitenoise

No bury button. Digg has become facebook. What’s with this social media shit – I already have a facebook account simply because I’m forced to if I don’t want to make new accounts everywhere. Now the view sucks, I can’t easily bury a shitty story like this one, and it keeps trying to integrate with this social shit.

I’m antisocial and asocial. Yes, I actively want the downfall of society. Yes, I dislike everyone. Even those who agree with me. I’m your usual Digg user. We don’t like this shit. Put it back.

-Michichael

Meet Chris Anderson, he’s the editor-in-chief of Wired. You know, that magazine that’s also a very successful website. Chris recently blasted out a massive article declaring “The Web Is Dead.” It’s a rather dull piece with a stunning headline designed to grab lots of attention here on the highly profitable web. Anderson argues that the “web” part of the internet (that stuff you see in your browser) is quickly vanishing, and being replaced by isolated apps that use the internet but don’t live in the “web” ecosystem.

Chris begins his argument with a graph demonstrating that web traffic has dropped significantly compared to the rest of what the internet is used for. Have a look. Huh. It appears to be a chart of bandwidth usage, demonstrating that the web take has lessened relative to significantly more bandwidth-heavy uses. Hardly shocking. An even funnier thing about that bandwidth usage is that most of what the web has lost appears to have gone directly to video. You know, those moving pictures you watch all of the damn time through your browser on the web. Poor “other” has lost even more ground in recent years according to his chart. I wonder, where do all of those apps and X-Box connections Anderson claims are taking over fit in?

Don’t worry, my fellow interneters. This isn’t the first time a tech journalist has declared a technology, tech company, or tech trend dead a little prematurely. How many times were Nintendo and Apple declared dead during the ’90s?

Chris Anderson is a thoroughly shameful shameless attention grabber. At least the lengthy list of ironies inherent in his argument have given swarms of people something to talk about on this very lively web.

This week’s Shameful Human is author and professional internet-hater Andrew Keen.

To Andrew Keen, This whole web 2.0 thing, with its YouTubes and swarms of blogs, isn’t the time-wasting bliss you and I perceive it to be. No, it’s actually dangerous, and even Marxist.

You see, as Keen argued in his 2006 The Weekly Standard essay, the participatory internet “worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer.” Sounds great, right? Sorry, but according to Andrew’s novel The Cult of the Amateur, all of this creative energy is putting hard-working experts out of business. Craigslist robs papers of their personals sections, Wikipedia takes jobs from encyclopedia editors.

Keen has rightly argued that web 2.0 “suggests that everyone — even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us — can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves.” Well, there’s no doubt that a lot of idiots produce a lot of shit on the internet. You’re reading a product of that dangerous phenomenon right now. Having said that, the internet is also a realm (relatively) free of corporate control, a place where true free enterprise can flourish, and a place that gives rise to new small businesses every day. There is nothing less Marxist than that.

Keen himself has participated in many internet start-ups. How he considers himself to be any different than the people making careers out of blogging and vlogging is beyond my comprehension.

The Supreme Court of the United States is set to rule this October on a California law that would “ban the sale of certain video games to children under the age of 18.” This week’s Shameful Human is a particular supporter of that law, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (what is it about Attorneys General and video games?).

Mr. Blumenthal is running for senate, and is behaving like a classic politician taking advantage of the “think of the children” crowd. He’s also displaying some pretty amusing ignorance along the way. To show his support of California’s law, he released a statement to the press in which he hails the law for its ability to prevent children from buying games featuring the “slaughter [of] nude female zombies,” which, as we all know, is a disgusting act, well beyond the relatively tame practice of killing nude male zombies.

Another highlight from Blumenthal: “California’s law doesn’t broadly prohibit minors from buying ‘violent’ games — but a subgenre of games that encourages players to commit graphic acts of homicide, rape, and sadism.” Huh, I’m curious to know what games the Attorney General is referencing. Perhaps its those Japanese rape simulators that are already unavailable in the United States. I’m not entirely certain.

Regardless of what Blumenthal thinks video games encourage, it’s obvious he either doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to know, how the regulation of sales of video games currently works. Just like with movies, an industry which Dick B. points to as a potential example for gaming, the ESRB is voluntary and actively enforced by retailers, to the extent that potential buyers are IDed before they pick up M-rated games.

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I hate to be this obvious, but the Shameful Human of the Week is American/Australian actor, director, racist, anti-Semite, and sexist Mel “Blow Me First” Gibson.

The world first became aware of Mel’s anger issues in 2006 when he was arrested for driving under the influence. It was during his arrest then that he claimed that Jews were “responsible for all the wars in the world.” Well, it turns out that that little tirade was just the beginning.

Now Mel’s being investigated for domestic violence against former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, and some secret force in the universe is releasing clips of the insane rant conversations he had with her to the media. Thanks to these recordings, the world has now learned that Mel feels Oksana’s breast implants put her at risk for gang rape at the hands of a racial minority. Did you also know that Mel once had an urgent sexual need to be “blown fast… before the fucking Jacuzzi”? The situation was so dire that it needed to be performed before he burned down his house.

Yeah, Mel’s apparently a pretty scary guy to date. I’m sure that in the days and weeks to come, we’ll hear plenty more about wacky Mel, but he’s already made it entirely clear that he deserves the title Shameful Human of the Week. Then again, his movies pretty much did that already.

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This week’s Shameful Human is actually an entire corporation of people, it’s Nintendo Co., Ltd. In its arrogance, this once great company has done the unthinkable, and actually spoken ill of its competition.

Sony’s Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida found Nintendo’s words at E3 2010 to be hurtful. Frequently reminding consumers that their new 3DS handheld device allows users to play games in 3D without glasses is simply too much. Yoshida feels the company shouldn’t “bash some small part of what the other company is doing,” referring to his own company’s with-glasses 3D tech.

Sony just wants to play nice, after all. Yoshida would like to “work alongside Nintendo in promoting the new technology.” Pointing out how unfairly Nintendo treats 3D glasses, he also notes that they are “light and you kind of forget you’re wearing them after awhile.”

It’s about time someone stood up to Nintendo and their over-the-top trash talking. It’s embarrassing, and, frankly, unprofessional. Sony has shown nothing but kindness to Nintendo in every regard, betraying the company, stealing their tech, and entering the gaming industry as a direct competitor was a compliment in the highest regard.

Of course, its unlikely a company as reprehensible as Nintendo would actually do right and work with Sony. The company appears to be pitifully obsessed with minor misspeakings over the years from Sony personnel who have repeatedly implied that Nintendo products are gimmicky and kiddy.

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Andrew Auernheimer, or Weev as he’s known online, is a crazy person. He was once profiled by the New York Times as part of a piece on 4chan’s finest. Auernheimer might, just might, hates Jews and the Federal Reserve. He is also possibly excited by the thought of mass-extermination as a solution for overpopulation. At the very least, he pretends to journalists to be a mega-rich hacker. There’s plenty there to qualify as Shameful Human of the Week.

Now this professional troll and neckbeard aficionado has landed himself in jail for drug possession. Conveniently enough, Weev was kinda-probably under investigation by the FBI following that iPad security breach you may have heard about recently.

Andrew, of Goatse Security (yup), played a vital role in uncovering an AT&T security issue which allowed iPad owners’ email addresses to be exposed.

I can’t help but wonder if this professional troll got a little too into character. It’s one thing to torture members of LiveJournal, and quite another to fuck with major corporations while under the influence of illicit substances. Maybe this is all part of the plan, and Weev did all of this to get his ugly face plastered all over the internet as punishment to the rest of us. In any case, I wish him luck trolling his fellow prisoners.

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E3 fast approaches, and the gaming world stands poised for war with Sony and Nintendo positioning themselves for epic combat. It’s going to be a transcendent 3D handheld taking on a bumbling and bloated 3D console, and it’s a wonderful opportunity for Sony execs to say incredibly foolish things. Shufflingdead is sincerely grateful.

Sony’s UK Managing Director recently met up with Eurogamer to talk about his company’s sad attempt at profitability, and for that, the man has earned himself the title Shameful Human of the Week. Congratulations, Mr. Ray Maguire.

Maguire was asked about his console’s “over-specced technology,” and its appeal to the masses. Ray rightly responded that lower console prices had “worked particularly well for one of our competitors.” He then ceased to make sense. Maguire claimed Nintendo had appealed to a “potentially smaller market” with the DS and Wii. He went on to brag about the 3.5 million PS3s his company has sold in the UK, neglecting to mention that Nintendo has moved twice as many Wiis in the region.

Maguire’s sad mathematical methodology is laughable even for PR spin. In what conceivable realm does selling a product at a lower price point limit the breadth of its market? I suppose opposite math is de rigueur for Sony employees, considering Mr. Maguire’s buddy Andrew House, SCE Europe’s President, recently explained the PSPgo disaster as an experiment in consumer interest.

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This week’s Shameful Human is Staunton, Virginia resident Bruce Jamar Walston. The 21-year-old has been charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty and disorderly conduct following his murder of a kitten that temporarily interrupted his video gaming.

I’m not generally considered a lover of animals. In fact, I’ve singled-out cats in particular as having an overbearing and unpleasant presence on the internet, but I have to call out this particular mad cat swinger.

It seems Mr. Walston picked up his girlfriend’s kitten and hurled it against a wall after it disconnected his video game. Oh yeah, and in front of the woman’s kids, no less. Bruce’s lady friend called 911 following the incident.

Now, I’ve experienced problems not disimilair from Walston’s, and to an extent, I can understand his frustration. Perhaps he was on the verge of completing one of Mario Galaxy‘s 100-coin challenges, or worse, in the midst of battle with the boss of Final Fantasy VI‘s Fanatic’s Tower. That latter scenario can take perhaps an hour, and there are no save points available throughout the ordeal. Having said that, no gaming interuption warrants more than a controller-throwdown, or, at worst, a cartridge hammering.

Two-first-names Walston has a history of violence, having been charged earlier in the year for breaking down a door and beating two people. One with a vacuum sweeper.

I have no choice but to deem Bruce Jamar Walston Shameful Human of the Week.

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This week contains not just one, but rather a whole host of Shameful Humans. It’s the team of people so bereft of self respect that they were willing to work on the production of Sex and the City 2. The airbrushed Frankensteinian monster known as Carrie and her crew of entitlement queens are heading to the dessert of Abu Dhabi to battle the harsh conservatism of Islam.

As I have yet to personally experience the atrocity that is this film, and since the review community has had that duty forced upon them, I will rely on their commentary to explain the sinister nature of the movie.

Allow me to begin with Lindy West‘s master work, “Burkas and Birkins.” She ironically describes the movie’s conclusion as “sexism’s funeral,” in which the robed women of Abu Dhabi remove their veils and reveal “the same hideous, disposable, criminally expensive shreds of cloth and feathers that hang from Carrie et al.’s emaciated goblin shoulders.” Apparently, to the writers of Sex and the City, feminism was never about true equality, merely the right to egregiously waste money on fashion.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Roger Ebert has also trashed the film. He begins by bluntly stating “some of these people make my skin crawl,” and goes onto describe the movie’s visual style as “arthritic.”

Other highlights from Rotten Tomatoes’ 14%-positive collection of reviews include MaryAnn Johanson exclaiming “Thank Jimmy Choo for feminism! Am I right, ladies?” and Jeff Vice whining “On behalf of all sane and sensitive Americans, let me be one of the first to apologize to the Middle East and the Arab world for Sex and the City 2.”

There seems to be no doubt that Sex and the City 2 is a painfully unnecessary film which lacks respect for its audience, other cultures, and even the entire female population of Earth. The people who made this movie are truly shameful humans.

We’ve been making good fun of Steve Jobs for awhile now, and since the rest of the internet has finally caught up and realized that Dr. Turtleneck is one power-drunk bastard, I thought it was about time to crown Mr. Jobs Shameful Human of the Week.

Let’s review. Jobs doesn’t care that you want porn on your iPhone, and sarcasticly suggests you get an Android for that. Jobs dares lead his company against Nintendo. Jobs can’t take bland jokes about his products from Ellen. Jobs has some kind of insane grudge against Flash and won’t let you use it on his portable products. If you get your hands on an unreleased Apple product, somebody at Apple will see to it police raid your house. Oh yeah, and Apple employees can’t talk to other Apple employees about upcoming products. Even when that other employee co-founded the company and did all the work.

Did I mention that iPods come with painful-as-fuck ear buds that Jobs tries to up-sell you replacements of? Or that nobody needs any of the overpriced iPhones or iPads the company produces?

Steve Jobs is a truly Shameful guy. And if you want to know more, check out his life’s story of controlling nuttery in the movie they made about him.

Back on April 15, Microsoft finally gave up their futile attempt at winning last generation’s console war when they ended access to XBox Live service for the original XBox. Their effort was not unlike the Nazis during their last days, fighting on in Berlin, long after the people who didn’t use slave labour had won.

A handful of die-hards, unwilling to admit their giant black shame machines were as useless as hair gel to a bald space marine, have continued to play, refusing to exit their Halo 2 games. As such, and for as long as they can manage to stay in game, Master Chief lives.

This depressing group of refuse worshipers has dwindled since their mission began. The clingers were down to 12 a week ago, and that number is likely even lower now. XBoxes are not the most stable machines, and over time the stalwart’s systems have frozen or become disconnected, preventing them from ever getting in game again.

Microsoft, in an apparent attempt at apologizing for making a product with a built-in end-of-life date, has said the they will issue beta codes for Halo: Reach to these last few lost souls. That should come as little solace to the group, considering they would still have to buy the “new” game once it comes out in order to continue playing the one they don’t want to let go of now.

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This week’s Shameful Human is James Mielke, long time games journalist and current producer at Q Entertainment. Mielke joins a now massive list of games industry personnel to be named Shameful Human specifically for insane, anti-Nintendo hate.

When news broke of the Nintendo 3DS last week, Mielke immediately took to Twitter to not only register his disgust with it, a product he had not seen and knew almost nothing about, but to whine incessantly about Nintendo’s overall business strategy. I’ve compiled the offending Tweets below.

Reflect on the mighty rant that follows for a moment, and then consider that this man is representing a prominent 3rd party developer in the handheld space. I find it especially amusing that Mielke works for a company which has subsisted largely on making and remaking the same two puzzle games (Lumines and Meteos) for the last six years, and yet criticizes Nintendo’s reuse of its most successful franchises.

This is precisely the kind of radical anti-Nintendo bias that exists in the industry today. Congratulations James Mielke, you are an obvious hater, fanboy, troll, and Shameful human.

Pre-order 150 of them, then sell them on THE BLACK MARKET. FIRST GAME: SUPER MARIO 3D AGAIN AGAIN IN YOUR FACE 3D AGAIN.

First 3DS game confirmed: SUPER MARIO 3D AGAIN AGAIN IN YOUR FACE 3D AGAIN.

This just in from Nintendo Japan: Dear customers, we are sorry to report that the N3DS from the future is sold out for the next 5 years.

Breaking news: Yet another Nintendo console that’s impossible for anyone other than Nintendo to make money on.

Some sleuthing has revealed the 3DS’s first year line-up: Super Mario 3D. Zelda 3D. Starfox 3D. Kirby 3DDD. Metroid 3D. Animal Crossing 3D.

A secret internal Nintendo memo was just found: “Hmm. People want to buy the 3DS. But I can’t find the “Make More” button. Help!” -Iwata.

Backwards comp means “RAM-based media” means “LOL, have fun making those big game experiences for little profit, dev/publishers!”

Will Nintendo 3DS still have dumbshit friend codes? Here’s mine: 74326478687262754786
5263865432643276543875678342563749256342796543. ADD ME.

An aside: Can’t wait to see how the Reginator pumps this one up. Last year, when N promised me the 4th dimension, they gave me 4-player SMB.

I predict massive lines on 3DS launch day, despite the fact that the (only) launch title will be Tinkle 3D: You Can’t Stop Mr. Tinkle Pants.

This week’s Shameful Human is Randy Neugebauer, the Republican Representative from Texas who shouted out “baby killer” during last night’s debate over health care reform in the US Congress. Mr. Neugebauer has since claimed that he was referring to the health care bill under debate, rather than his presumed target Bart Stupak, a Democrat who had initially opposed the bill because, he claimed, it would allow abortions to be federally subsidized, but ultimately voted for it anyway.

Neugebauer is a convenient stand-in for the sheer and utter lunacy that is American political discourse today. Is it even worth mentioning that the bill in question did not provide federal subsidization of abortion? Of course not, reality itself has been rendered irrelevant by the American right, and insane knee-jerk reactions that confuse and inspire anger in the electorate are all that matter.

Yesterday saw the United States Congress pass a law which would moderately reform their country’s broken health care system by requiring citizens to buy health insurance from already wildly profitable corporations, and it still felt a bit too much like “socialism” for Republicans like Neugebauer to vote for it. Now his party has transformed their website into a hellscape of rage, ten states with Republican attorney generals are readying to file a lawsuit challenging the legislation, and the unofficial voice of the GOP is claiming the entire country is on the brink.

This is the unreality in which Americans live, and bloated Mr. Potato Head stand-ins like Randy Neugebauer are the cause of it.

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This week’s Shameful Human is none other than President of the United States, Barack Obama. Recently speaking at the annual Export-Import Bank’s conference, the American president made it clear that when it comes to issues of copyright, he stands behind the plodding, dinosaur-esque titans of the entertainment industry.

Obama even went so far as to declare his administration’s support of ACTA, saying “the (U.S. Trade Representative) is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses… including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).”

ACTA is a controversial trade agreement that has been negotiated in secret among countries, and its critics (including me) believe it places corporate greed over individual rights. Because ACTA is a trade agreement, it can be signed onto and made enforceable in countries that would not have been able to pass such unpopular, restrictive laws through the usual channels. As an example of its dangerous power, ACTA will force ISPs to reveal the identities of suspected internet pirates by removing safeguards against their liability.

Taking this latest disappointment into consideration, in addition to his general weakness when it comes to combating his crazed opponents, as well as his obvious disinterest in passing strong, progressive health care legislation, I have no qualms with labeling Barack Obama a Shameful Human. His presidency is only an improvement over that of his predecessor’s in that it is not a total disaster.

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This week’s Shameful Human is Fredrik Liliegrin, the former DICE CEO and co-founder who now heads up Antic Entertainment. He had a recent chat with Gaming Union in which he claimed the Wii was a “virus.”

Liliegren took the form of a wild-eyed prophet who has seen the future and knows the doom awaiting mankind when he announced “people have got to realize the Wii is a toy, not an entertainment focused product.” That’s funny, I always thought games were entertainment. Or is entertainment a higher form of art, something only reserved for the more refined palate of your 18-29 year-old Gears of War loving males?

Fredrik went on to say “this is not a games game machine.” Huh, I wonder what that means. Does the Wii not play critically acclaimed games software like Super Mario Galaxy, or does it merely provide amusing distractions for so-called “non gamers” looking to have a pretend game of tennis.

Liliegren followed up his rant with an attempt at some vigorous backpedaling a few days later on his blog, in which he basically said the same things over again. He claimed:

Given this design direction the Wii in my mind is more of a toy then a games machine, and I say millions of Wii Fit players agree with me! It’s a Toy that plays some pretty good video games, but the majority of users that has bought a Wii, I believe, would never consider buying a Xbox 360 or a PS3. Simply because I believe they would not be interested in that experience.

Again, Liliegren differentiates toys and games, with the implication that toys are something lesser. I suppose what he’s saying is that while the Wii may very well be a games machine, it is by no means “legitimate” in the same way the 360 and PS3 are, because while the public at large may buy a Wii, they would never pick up a 360 or PS3, where the “real” games are.

Liliegren joins legendary Shameful Humans like Capcom’s Antoine Seux, EA’s Alain Tascan and SEGA’s Constantine Hantzopoulos as a games industry insider bent on hating the Wii for no reason other than his own ignorance.

QJ.net, MCV

Finding an image of Mike for this week’s Shameful Human was a difficult task, so you’ll just have to live with the little thumbnail to the right. At least there is joy in staring at that mysterious robot claw that seems to be reaching up at him, and imagining it is some unfortunate victim being held down by Hickey’s repressive boot.

Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey is still in denial that Nintendo has fully won this generation’s console war, and insists the company needs to enter panic mode in order to have a chance against its competitor’s knock-offs. Hickey recently stated:

We believe Nintendo needs to cut the price of their console from $200 to $150 immediately, as they should establish as meaningful of an installed base as possible before the Natal and Arc are introduced.

That’s funny, I thought Nintendo had already established a meaningful installed base when they sold as many consoles as their two competitors combined.

Hickey’s lunacy didn’t end by assuming he knew how to run the world’s most successful video game company, he’s also tricked himself into believing the “fad” of Nintendo’s dominance might soon be ending. He predicts:

We remain optimistic for near term PS3 and 360 market growth opportunities… We expect continued market weakness through ’10 for Nintendo related products, as the Wii cycle fades meaningfully and the DS platform faces considerable competition from Apple related mobile gaming devices.

I suppose Wii and DS sales may fade in the upcoming year, although that does tend to happen when video game systems begin to reach a certain saturation point. Note Hickey’s language, “market weakness” is simply a nonsensical way of talking about a company which outsold its competition at a nearly 2:1 margin just two months ago.

Why is it that analysts and so-called experts still insist on predicting Nintendo’s doom, even as the company’s victory march continues? None of them foresaw this walloping coming, maybe they want to will their original guesses into existence.

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Robert Pattinson is another one of those people who I’ve always known would have to be crowned a Shameful Human at some point; I was just looking for a good excuse. Lucky for me, Pattinson has done well to act like an absolute idiot this week.

In a drunken interview with Details magazine, Pattinson revealed what most of us already knew, he “really hate vaginas.” Indeed, Pattinson claims to be “allergic to vagina.” Pattinson barely survived a lengthy photo shoot in which he “had to” position himself between the legs of a hot female model, and apparently only handled the ordeal because he was hungover.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that Pattinson is shameful for being gay. Absolutely not. It’s just that he’s spent an awful lot of time leading on an awful lot of confused young girls.

You might be thinking, okay, Pattinson is gay, well maybe now he can become a prominent gay rights activist. Actually, that won’t work, he’s not gay either. Add all of his gay followers to the list of victims he’s led on. It turns out that Pattinson only has eyes for his dog. In the depths of his bizarre interview, Pattinson unleashed this monster: “There might be something wrong with my emotional sight… The only emotional connection of relevance is with my dog. My relationship with my dog, it’s ridiculous.” Yikes.

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This week’s Shameful Human works behind the protective veil of anonymity, he or she is whoever wrote the “Intro” story for Sonic the Hedgehog 4 on the game’s official site. The events of the early, slightly better, Sonic games is lovingly recapped by this person in a series awkwardly written, comma-abusing paragraphs. Allow me to begin by analyzing one such paragraph.

Their reunion is short lived however, as Eggman resurfaces and begins kidnapping Sonic friends again, in an effort to create more workers to finish his ultimate Weapon – The Death Egg! Teaming up with the newly met, Miles ‘Tails’ Prower, Sonic embarks on a new mission through West Side Island in an effort to free his friends and ensure Eggman does not obtain the 7 Chaos emeralds to fuel the Death Egg.

I see run-on sentences everywhere! It doesn’t help that the tone of the piece echoes that of your typical, confused, adolescent Sonic fan-fic writer, either. I want to focus in on one error in particular though, about half-way through this little chunk of mangled English. It’s the gem “Teaming up with the newly met, Miles ‘Tails’ Prower, Sonic embarks on a new mission…” You see, the problem is that when you insert a little aside mid-sentence like that, the sentence still has to make sense with the aside taken out. What the writer is implying is that Sonic is embarking on a new mission with his newly met self.

It would be giving SEGA too much credit to think that this entire butcher-job was done on purpose to parody the rough translations found in early video games. I have to single out whatever unqualified moron wrote this shit, or pasted the original Japanese into Babel Fish and used whatever was spit out, because it’s clear that person has incredible luck, and I deserve to be massively jealous of it. I want to murder the English language in a cushy writing job for a company that no longer cares and in which no one can be bothered to review my work.

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Alert the internet: crazed Scientologist (allegedly) kills his business partner.

This week’s Shameful Human is Rex Fowler, he’s a Scientologist from Adams County, Colorado, and he’s been charged with murdering his former business partner, Thomas Ciancio. The two ended their working relationship in November when Ciancio quit over Fowler taking $200 000 of their company’s money without permission and giving it to what his arrest warrant affidavit describes as “a church or some type of charity.” Ciancio was killed when he returned to his former workplace to receive a severance payment of $9 900.

The case against Mr. Fowler appears solid. The murder weapon used was purchased by his son, who listed his address as 1413 L. Ron Hubbard Way, Los Angeles when it was bought. His wife, Janet Fowler, also attempted to cover up evidence in the case by trying to reclaim a mysterious briefcase belonging to her husband confiscated by police. She claimed “It is important to me, my church, and it is religious material and I want it now!”

Further demonstrating the total madness which Scientology followers suffer from, Janet Fowler told police “Even if you looked at it and read it, you would not understand anything in it… because it is way above a normal person and you would not know what it meant.” That sounds to me, an amateur Scientology critic, like the briefcase contained scripture intended only for those who had paid their way to a high level within the church.

Rex Fowler is most assuredly a Shameful Human, he took money from his business and used it to support the Church of Scientology without his partner’s permission, and is likely also a murderer. Still, I can’t help feel a little bad for the guy and his family. They have obviously been fully suckered into the church’s wacky belief system, and now must suffer the consequences of what their cult/religion has led them to do.

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This week’s Shameful Human is none other than infamous film director Doctor Uwe “Raging” Boll. Although he has truly been a shameful human for many years now, due to his stunningly awful video game films, Dr. Boll earns the title this week for taking on games journalist micro-celebrity Chris Kohler of Wired.com in a flurry of wild emails.

Chris recently wrote of the US premiere of Boll’s long awaited Postal film, and apparently Uwe didn’t appreciate what the avid retro game collector had to say. Uwe Boll, who, considering his writing skills, ironically holds a doctorate in literature, had this to say in response:

chris
your review shows me only that you dont understand anything about movies and that you are a untalented wanna bee filmmaker with no balls and no understanding what POSTAL is. you dont see courage because you are nothing. and no go to your mum and fuck her… because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it.
people like you are the reason that independent movies have no chance anymore.
uwe boll
PS: POSTAL is R RATED . The MPAA understood the satire — you not — you dumb fuck

Following that initial outburst, a series of bizarre emails were traded between Kholer, Boll, and Boll’s publicist. Apparently, Boll has nothing better to do than fight the internet itself, but then again, his willingness to box a bunch of ill-prepared scrawny nerds several years ago who dared give his movies poor reviews already proved that.



Bonus, Uwe fights famed webmaster Lowtax:

Source: Wired
Image: Adapted from Dungeon Seige (009) by Arbron under a CC-BY license.

Pat Robertson, the controversial voice for Christian conservatives whose name I will forever confuse with Robert Pattinson’s is this week’s Shameful Human.

Robertson claimed on his program The 700 Club last week that Haiti’s recent earthquake, which has caused the deaths of tens of thousands, was the result of a deal made with the Devil to secure the nation’s independence from the French.

You see, the catalyst of the Haitian slave revolt of 1791 was a Voodoo ceremony in which animals were sacrificed, and as we all know, for Robertson-style Christians, the religions of others are a quick stroll from Devil worship.

Interestingly, Robertson neglected the historical context of his claim that I have provided, which probably left his viewers scrambling to fill in the holes for themselves. Like maybe he’s saying that those pesky black people should have known their place and stayed the slaves of the great Christian white man. For Robertson, I guess it’s better to be the slave of a Christian than free and without Christianity.

Robertson followed up his insane claim with the statement “they need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God,” expressing his hope to capitalize on tragedy by spreading his particular brand of wingnut to the people of Haiti.

Even if Robertson did not intend there to be any racist subtext in his remarks, he still implied that all of this suffering is actually the fault (no pun intended) of the victims of this natural disaster, rather than the shifting of tectonic plates. That is a remarkable, even stunningly ignorant misrepresentation of reality which can only serve to further harm Haitians.

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Another week, another Wii hater. This week’s Shameful Human is Antoine Seux, director general for Capcom France, who, just like EA’s Alain Tascan and SEGA’s Constantine Hantzopoulos, hates the Wii.

Seux told French blog Gamekult that “the customer of [the Wii] has turned into something [of a] much broader audience. It is a disappointment… for us, Capcom, the future is the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.” Seux also complained of the weak sales of Darkside Chronicles as compared to Resident Evil 4 on Wii.

Mr. Seux is really going to do this to me? He’s going to make me go on this goddamn 3rd party Wii rant again? Well, alright. Here it is Mr. Seux: RE4 sold because it was already known to be a great game, and the audience was excited to see it made even better with Wii controls. Darkside Chronicles didn’t sell because it was a follow-up to Umbrella Chronicles which had a lukewarm reception from those who played it and only sold because the Wii hadn’t been flooded with rail-shooters yet.

Do you seriously not get how this works, Tony? You make a good game, and people will buy it. They are not interested in your various Capcom “tests,” they want proper, mainline entries in your biggest franchises with real effort put into their development. RE5 would have surely sold spectacularly on Wii, considering how well RE4 did and how well liked it was, but you didn’t make it for Wii. You made it for your buddies 360 and PS3. AAA caliber remakes of RE2 and RE3 using the control scheme of Resident Evil 4 Wii would probably also do extremely well.

Instead of whining about the Wii audience getting too “broad,” perhaps Mr. Seux and Capcom should consider making quality games for that broad audience instead of shitting out half-assed spin-offs.

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The Shameful Human this week is Constantine Hantzopoulos, definitely not pictured to the right. You try finding reasonably large pictures of video game industry personnel. He’s a studio director at SEGA, and another industry insider taking up arms against the guiltless Wii.

Hantzopoulos recently spoke to the Wii hating gang over at 1UP.com, on their 4 Guys 1UP podcast, where he spewed your typical ignorant Wii hater’s spew.

But that begets the question, are we going to do more mature titles for the Wii? And it’s like, probably not. Look at Dead Space. We were stunned. That was my litmus test. Basically, it’s like, okay, you got EA, who can put all the marketing muscle behind this, an established franchise that scored quite well on 360 and PS3. They should be able to actually hit this out of the park, right? We get numbers, real numbers aside from NPD, and I’m like, ‘Woah.’

‘Woah’ is right. Maybe this guy really is Keanu Reeves. Before forming this ridiculous opinion, Hantzopoulos should have considered the facts: EA didn’t do shit to market Dead Space Extraction, the first Dead Space game did not sell very well, the first Dead Space game was not on Wii and is therefore not established on that system.

How about this, Mr. Hantzopoulos, try putting some effort into both the development and marketing of a so called “mature” Wii game, the kind of effort you in the industry love to throw at the PS3 and 360 all the time, and then tell me whether or not you want to make any more such games for the system. People like you appear to be a bunch of bigots desperately trying to justify your ignorant hate for a successful Nintendo console. The 16-bit wars were a long time ago, let it go.

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We’re through the looking glass here people; I’ve discovered the mega-douche. The Shameful Human of the week is a man who goes by the name Roissy. He runs a blog call “Roissy in DC,” in which he discusses picking up women by controlling and manipulating them. For Roissy, a woman is not a person, but rather a game to be solved like a Rubik’s Cube.

Let us take a moment to marvel at some of Roissy’s more spectacular pieces of advice, taken from his Sixteen Commandments Of Poon.

[Women] in fact want to subordinate themselves to a worthy man’s life purpose, to help him achieve that purpose with their feminine support, and to follow the path he lays out.

Here, Roissy assumes that all women are the same and that they are inherently inferior to men. So far he just sounds typically sexist.

If you allow a woman to make the rules she will resent you with a seething contempt even a rapist cannot inspire. The strongest woman and the most strident feminist wants to be led by, and to submit to, a more powerful man.

Okay, now he’s starting to sound fairly crazy. I don’t suppose he’s conducted in depth studies of women, including those damn uppity feminists, and arrived at this conclusion through anything other than furious contempt for those who would dare consider themselves equals to his glowing majesty.

Refraining from reciprocating everything she does for you in equal measure instills in her the proper attitude of belief in your higher status. In her deepest loins it is what she truly wants.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Roissy sees men’s behaviour as existing in two categories: alpha and beta. Alpha-hood is the realm of being a cocky jerk. Beta-ness is acting kindly, having compassion, talking with lady friends as equals, doing nice things, that sort of ghastly thing. Despite having this obsession with superiority, dominance, and control, Roissy maintains a seething persecution complex, as witnessed in his insistence that cheating is worse than rape.

Fuck you, Roissy, fuck you.

Ron Livingston has become a hero to millions for his portrayal of Peter Gibbons, the lethargic lead character in Office Space. Now, Livingston is attacking the nerdy core of his following with a lawsuit filed against a Wikipedia editor who altered his entry to read that he is gay. Livingston is also targeting a Facebook prankster, presumed to be the same person, who operated a fake profile of the actor.

Under the Communications Decency Act, Livingston is unable to target Facebook and Wikipedia directly, but can go after the “John Doe” who so hilariously used their services, and may be able to subpoena the sites to reveal the real perpetrator.

Mr. Livingston’s lawsuit claims the prankster responsible to have performed “despicable acts.” Hey Peter, what’s happening? Would it really be so bad if you were gay? This lawsuit is proof that Livingston possesses a discriminatory belief that there is something wrong with being gay. It also makes it quite evident that the actor is incapable of taking a joke, even a very well made one.

A Wikipedia prankster once claimed I was a “World Champion Video Game Player,” and I took it in stride. I wish Livingston could do the same.

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Tony Hawk is a seriously famous dude, but it’s a sort of fame that’s come about in an odd way. Alright, he is a professional skateboarder, and in 1999 he did a 900 degree spin, but it’s not really those things that made him a household name. No, Tony is one of those cultural icons, like Lara Croft, that grew out of the success of the PlayStation. Sure, those original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games came out on the N64 as well, but they were really for those PS1 playing jerks.

Tony’s game franchise hasn’t been able to keep up with today’s gaming trends. His newest game, Tony Hawk: Ride has received negative reviews, and the general consensus is that its plastic board accessory is flawed. Finally, the rest of the world understands what I’ve known all along: Tony Hawk games are terrible and the only people who like them are biased PlayStation promoters.

Now, The Hawk is getting angry, recently stating of gamers “I think that they’re just not giving it a fair shake. And I think a lot of them came into it with an attitude that it’s going to suck.”

Well, Anthony, I think you’re completely wrong! Gamers would never give an unfair shake to something they had paid $120 for! Instead, we would save our money and bitch about the game on message boards having given the game no shake whatsoever! Not unlike myself, having never played your other games!

Yeah, I know, he’s actually a pretty nice guy.

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Erik Estavillo, figuratively pictured to the right, but not literally, is this week’s Shameful Human, although that title isn’t completely accurate. Erik is simultaneously shameful and awesome, and I feel kind of bad for calling someone so amusing “shameful.” Estavillo has no friends, no job, and nothing better to do than to sue game companies for hurting him in various ways.

This renegade plaintiff is suing Nintendo for preventing homebrew on the Wii, Sony for banning his online access on the PS3, Microsoft for the red-ring of death, and Activision-Blizzard for making characters in World of Warcraft run too slowly.

Estavillo revealed to Joystiq that “I told this other interviewer and it’s true — I actually have no friends. If anyone wants to test that, they can check my phone records — cell phone or home phone — and find out that I don’t call anyone and no one calls me. I rely on online gameplay for socialization. It’s why he has the time to launch his many lawsuits, and why it hurts him so bad to get banned from PSN. Without the ability to play online, Estavillo is unable to get any social interaction.

To help support his cases, Estavillo has subpoenaed celebrities rather than experts. This includes Wynona Ryder, for her deep knowlede of alienation stemming from her reading of Catcher in the Rye. In so doing, Estavillo seeks to bring greater awareness to the harmful effects of gaming.

Good luck Erik.

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Meet Alain Tascan, he’s General Manager of EA Montreal, and the Shameful Human of the Week. Tascan recently stated that “the Wii market is a little bit unpredictable these days,” in defense of his studio’s decision to give up on Wii development and focus instead on “big, blockbuster-type titles.”

Congratulations EA, kudos to you Tascan, you’re a bunch of fucking morons. The Wii is not the mystery you insist it is, success on the console only eludes you because you want it to elude you. EA Montreal has made for the Wii such games as Boogie and Boogie Superstar, both of which were quite poorly reviewed by critics. Allow me to explain to you the first step in creating a successful Wii game, you geniuses: put some effort into it. I also do not recall much marketing effort for any of the Wii games produced by the studio, in fact, I had to look up what these Boogie games were (they’re music games). Step two in creating a successful Wii game: advertise it.

Wikipedia has this to say about passive-aggressive behaviour: It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.

I submit to you the following: EA, Tascan, and third-party developers and publishers in general act in precisely this manner in order to purposely fail at creating successful Wii games. This allows them the excuse “third party games don’t sell on Wii,” thus they permit themselves to ignore the market leader in the industry, and create an excuse to do what they really want, which is to discriminate against Nintendo.

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It should come as no surprise that Sarah Palin would eventually be named a Shameful Human of the Week, after all, I’ve already declared my hatred for her. Honestly, my irritation runs so deep that I wouldn’t mind making her Shameful Human every week and I could probably find new justification every single time. Now might as well be the time, with Palin peddling her monster-selling new book, Going Rogue, making numerous media appearances, and generally raising the ire of every sane person with a television.

Palin is the embodiment of everything wrong with American conservatism today. She attacks the media because, as softball as the media has become, they still occasionally deal with pesky facts that get in the way of listing off ludicrous talking points about “socialism.” She’s upheld as an ideal woman, who to conservatives is apparently attractive, dumb, child bearing, and entirely incompetent. She’s a woman who opposes her right to choose what to do with her own body. She confounds all issues in order to further her agenda, which generally means tricking people into supporting issues which actually hurt them (like getting the poor to oppose health care). She wears Bumpits. The list goes on.

The idea that Palin may be involved in the 2012 Presidential election is a frightening thought, although imagining her trying to debate Obama is something I would like to see.

Reggie Fils-Aime is kind of my hero. He’s very close to having my dream job, he runs Nintendo of America (I’m personally holding out for control of the whole company), and when he made his public debut a few years ago, he seemed to kind of get what it was that we, the fans of Nintendo, most wanted. Unfortunately, Reggie has become a typical PR word gymnast who refuses to admit the mistakes of his own company.

When asked recently what he thought of the absence of such games as Assassin’s Creed and Modern Warfare 2 on the Wii, Reggie replied:

“I’m extremely disappointed,” he said. “I’ve had this conversation with every publisher who makes content that is not available on my platform. The conversation goes like this: ‘We have a 22-million unit installed base. We have a very diverse audience… We have active gamers that hunger for this type of content. And why isn’t it available?’”

I don’t know Reggie, maybe it’s because you intentionally created a wildly underpowered machine next to your competition. Maybe it’s because you don’t understand that third parties are motivated by the experiences they can create with more powerful hardware. Maybe it’s because the competition is willing to pay out for support to third parties while your company takes their ball and goes home whenever developers don’t do exactly what you want of them.

Personally, I’m not interested in Assassin’s Creed or Modern Warfare 2, but it would certainly be nice if the best selling console of the generation could actually garner some third-party support. It’s not all Nintendo’s fault, third-parties have shown their share ignorance and incompetence this generation, but Reggie isn’t helping.

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Carrie Prejean is this week’s Shameful Human. Prejean, who famously declared “I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman,” and added “no offense to anybody out there” during the 2009 Miss USA pageant has withdrawn her demand for more than a million dollars during settlement negotiations with Miss California USA Pageant officials. She was attempting some kind of lawsuit against them for libel and other issues, but dropped it once lawyers for pageant officials showed off a few seconds of Ms. Prejean’s sex tape.

I’m a big fan of people doing whatever the fuck they want with their own bodies, which definitely includes sex tapes (or in the case of Prejean, solo, masturbatory tapes), but I’m a big hater of hypocrisy. I can’t help but imagine Prejean’s make-believe persona of holier-than-thou, I’m allowed to tell you what to do with your body, conservative “morality” would frown upon sex tapes.

A side issue to this, which puts Ms. Prejean well over the top in earning her new position as Shameful Human of the Week, is her selfish insistence on not releasing this pretty hot sounding video to the public.

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Morgan Webb has fallen in line with the broader game industry’s malicious anti-Nintendo discrimination and declared Super Mario Galaxy, game of the decade, insulting for adults to play. The TV personality went on a Mario-hating tirade on a recent episode of Attack of the Show, stating of Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time:

…And let’s be honest, there are no other action-platformers out there… This is it, this is it… This is the only game out there for people who like action-platformers. I mean, I guess Mario Galaxy, but Mario Galaxy feels like it’s aimed so much for kids. Whereas this is like for everyone, but you feel like you’re not being insulted when playing it as an adult.

This kind of anti-Nintendo rhetoric would be funny if it weren’t so utterly common within games journalism and the gaming industry more broadly. When faced with the cold reality of undeniable quality, reviewers were forced to make Mario Galaxy one of the highest rated games ever, but people like Morgan Webb still paint Nintendo’s mascot as “kiddy,” and attempt to subvert Nintendo’s power within gamimg discourse.

Webb, your rantings are discriminatory and baseless. I have to seriously question your motives. Do you hate Nintendo? Do you hate fun? Have you been bought off by Sony? You disgust me, and that’s why you’re Shameful Human of the Week.

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Let’s review. A guy who grew up in Nazi Germany, who has claimed to not have been a fan of Nazis, is now the head of an organization with perhaps the deepest history of intolerance ever and is lecturing directly against tolerance and freedom. Does this man recognize this irony? Of the billion Catholics in the world, how many see through this wall of bullshit? How many follow his words blindly?

Frankly, I don’t even know what else to say about this guy because this isn’t really just about him personally, it’s about all of the typical closed-minded, bigoted intolerance that comes from him, that came from his predecessor, and comes from many religious leaders around the world. My fury on this subject cannot be summarized in the small amount of space I have to write here, it would likely take a rather hefty textbook.

Living in Canada, I generally get to marry whoever I want, fuck whoever I want, say whatever I want, and believe (or rather, not believe) whatever I want. I get the impression that these are rights Pope Benedict XVI does not deem me worthy of. It’s a good thing there is no hell, because I’d hate to spend eternity with this guy.

When I was a kid, I watched more TV than anyone, I really do mean that. I watched a lot of fucking television. I grew up on great TLC and Discovery Channel programming; they would have marathons of particular shows that I could and would literally watch for the entire day. These were series about space, dinosaurs, evolution, history, and culture. One show I remember in particular was James Burke’s “Connections,” and its follow-up’s, Connections 2 and Connections 3, which I still regard as one of my all time favourite shows.

TLC has become the home of make-overs, house remodeling, weight loss, and cleaning. Discovery Channel has become the home of car repair, motorcycle building, and explosions, and the only show I can stand between the two channels is Mythbusters. It seems like 90% of the time that I check Discovery all I see is Paul Teutul Sr.’s irate, reddened, furious face.

My hatred originates from his guest appearance on The Surreal Life a couple years ago. He pretty much groped the hell out of some girl, who not only put up with it, but appeared to like it, just because it was “oh my god, Andy Dick!” I think they walked away together after a few minutes, so I have to assume he banged the chick, which is just un-fucking-believable.

More recently, I saw him in some clips from the William Shatner Comedy Central Roast. The guy did virtually nothing but try to lick celebrity’s faces, apparently this is what he considers to be funny, or perhaps this is what he considers to be funny while he’s on cocaine, which he apparently always is. Backstage at the roast, he reportedly also groped, bit, and offered cocaine to a journalist.

Dick had a role in an episode of Voyager, which makes his shame all the more infuriating, as he is yet another celebrity whose connection to Star Trek defiles the franchise.

What’s especially infuriating about Beck though, is ever since this thing between Israel and Hezbollah started, he’s been convinced (or at least, he pretends to be convinced for the sake of ratings) that this is the beginning of World War III. I’ll admit, the Middle East has, perhaps, looked a little more precarious than usual. I also understand that there was a brief window where many conservatives in the media were hyping this “World War III” thing, but Beck hasn’t been able to let it go. Even now that there is a cease fire agreement in place, he’s still convinced that not just war, but perhaps even the end of civilization, is coming.

Mr. Beck needs to realize that “World War” is not a rank applied to certain wars just because they end up involving a lot of countries. The names of wars evolve over time once the nature of the conflict has become obvious; history writes the names of war. I should also note that the chance of something that could possibly be labeled a “World War” breaking out in the near future is extremely fucking unlikely. There is conflict, war, terrorist activity, and dictatorial posturing every year, and that lumping them all together to prove some sign of the apocalypse is nothing more than evidence of the furthering slide of journalistic integrity.

Let’s face it; Voyager was a shitty show, really shitty. I’m a fan, I’ll admit it, because I’m a sucker for cheesy terribleness, and also because I’m a sucker for Star Trek, but the show was bad. It would be impossible to sum up all the ways that Voyager was a terrible show in the short amount of space that I have, but I’ll try to list some of the major issues.

• the technobabble in Voyager is overwhelming, even compared to other Star Trek series
• Janeway is well acted but, frankly, an idiot who cares more about hippie ideals than reality and the safety of her crew
• Seven of Nine is just a ludicrous character in every respect, I don’t care how hot she was
• most of the other characters were either boring or under-developed, notably: Chakotay, Harry Kim, and Kes
• the show could have easily been good if the writing hadn’t been so lazy and the overarching storyline had been more closely followed
• the Borg became steadily more pussified every time they showed up on the show, to the point that by the episode “Unimatrix Zero,” assimilation wasn’t even a problem for its victims
• come on! the ship was supposed to have limited torpedoes and shuttles, so where the fuck did all the extra ones come from? oh I know, from the gaping assholes of lazy writers!

I considered the show passable, a decent way to spend time waiting for one of the shows listed above to come on. Despite the boring jokes and forced randomness, the show provided enough offensive “I can’t believe they did that” moments and interesting story lines to keep me from changing channels.

A few nights ago, however, I watched one of the new episodes, it was unbearable. The plot line was so thin that it seemed half the show was dedicated to Family Guy’s over used “like that one time” flashbacks just to stretch the episode across the required 22 minutes. All of the show’s short comings are now more glaring than ever, the boring jokes feel more forced than ever, the randomness is somehow even more forced, and even the once solid offensiveness is, yes, forced and unfunny.

MacFarlane is shameful because he’s gotten lucky with this completely unworthy show, and takes up time and resources which should have long ago gone toward a return of the ever-amazing Futurama. My disappointment has been furthered as I have just discovered MacFarlane has made small appearances on Star Trek: Enterprise, Gilmore girls, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the third being a great show, and the first two being my favourite tv shows of all time. A bitter taint shall forever lie over the episodes featuring this man, now that I know.

Castro has outlived many American Presidents, Soviet Premiers, and actually the Soviet Union and to a large degree communism itself. What I realized this week is that Castro isn’t just old, he’s a fucking dinosaur. He’s a face from the Cold War, a bygone era. News on Cuba feels like its been thawed out and re-aired. I’m not exactly a fan of American imperialism, but I think it’s time to hand things over to the Americans, just because it would be something new.

By the way, Cuba is near Costa Rica, and in the fictional franchise Jurassic Park, wealthy entrepreneur John Hammond leases a couple of islands from Costa Rica to build a dinosaur park. Just so you know.

Dobbs, supposedly a knowledgeable economist, seems to lack any understanding of what immigrant work and trade with China mean for the American economy. His opinions seem to come from sheer hatred for other countries and cultures rather than rational thought.

What is particularly frustrating about Lou Dobbs Tonight is that it is yet another program on CNN which masquerades as a news and opinion show, but offers a completely slanted view of everything, and removes any value that those opinions might actually have. Dobbs simply brings in guests who do not support his points of view, and then lashes out and attacks them throughout the course of his show, or he brings in people who agree with him and they circle jerk throughout the course of the show. He hammers away at the same topics night after night, ranting unrelentingly about his hyper conservative points of view at anyone who fails to see through his maniacal protectionist scheming.

Grace brings shame to Christiane Amanpour, who is a personal hero of both me and Rory Gilmore. Amanpour is CNN’s chief international correspondent, and is a model for journalistic integrity and quality reporting. She focuses on the most relevant and engaging news events of our time, and has traveled to many of the most dangerous places on the planet for her job. The fact that Grace shares gender, employer, and species with Amanpour is a disturbing and disappointing reality.