Racial Profiling much?
Cup with tea…
I am so happy with this
Work cup before tea
Because… Why not
Hey, fashion…leave us geeks alone
Right, what I want you to do is close your eyes and imagine a geek. Think about the clothes, some kind of Oxford or flannel shirt right? Pinch rolled chinos ending just above a crisp pair of brogues? a pair of Ray-ban’s perched atop a well maintained beard, or at least a moustache? what I have just described to you is the popular fashion trend defined as “Geek Chic” and is arguably one of the most offensive and insulting trends in fashion right now. Offensive, that is, to the indigenous geeks in which it claims to represent.
Popular media enjoys portraying geeks as socially inept, sexually repressed and characteristically anti-fashion. Good examples being Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and Moss from I.T Crowd, characters who do not possess any particular desire to join in with popular culture and are happy doing their own thing. While these character’s social skills (or lack of) may be a hyperbolic representation for the sake of humour one can not deny their quasi-punk attitude towards mainstream, popular, culture is something that is expressed by geeks across the globe. We do not care for your culture.
Since we were of decision making age, geeks have almost always liked things that were, well, geeky. Popular culture bored us: football had nothing on the latest Megadrive release, building a PC was a better waste of time then building a car and Eastenders would have been way more interesting if they had thrown in a couple of Super Saiyans (damn I miss Toonami). This is what we liked and what we wanted to talk about with our more mainstream peers. And this is where marginalization began. This is where we geeks began to get told that we were weird, strange, freaks who will never get laid and will have no friends based purely on personal entertainment preference and choice of conversation topic. So naturally geeks decided to hang round with others who had similar interests and, more importantly, did not chastise difference.
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The Guv' Reviews: Gotham City Impostors
My first ever video review.
The next next-gen: D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F
Article originally posted on planetivy.com
It has been almost 10 years since the current generation (7th gen apparently) hit store shelves and tricked one by one into households across the world and over that time span gamers have seen their games evolve from a curious time waster into one of the most prominent entertainment industries since the founding of home cinema. All of which culminated in December 2011 when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 reached the $1 billion doller mark in 16 days, 1 day faster then Avatar, which made it the fastest selling property in entertainment history. Say what you want about the game it’s self, that is an impressive feat regardless.
Also, this current generation of consoles have boasted a variety of technological advancements, taken as commonplace today but may have been considered damn near futuristic 15 years ago: 3D gameplay, touch screens, online multiplayer, DLC, motion control, HD graphics, media services, online marketplaces. While some of these “technological advances” have been based on precursor systems, it has only been during this 7th generation where most of the inovation (or novelty) has been a commercial success. Also, not all of these advances have been overly “good” for the consumer: on disk DLC, DRM and digital pricing failures are just a selection of dubious practices which has caused controversy in the latter part of this generation. Going into those may have to be saved for another day.
With the 7th gen fast approaching the end of a decade it is to no ones surprise that hardware companies are starting to make moves and announcements, with considerable input from speculative journalists, as to the shape and function of the next next-gen consoles. There have been rumbling of anti-preowned systems, name changes, release dates, pricing, connectivity with peripheral devices. The list is endless, and frankly I dont really care.
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The Attempted Rape of Lara Croft
Extract from my own article originally posted on Planetivy.com:
Since the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider reboot was showcased at this year’s E3 a few weeks back, the non-gaming media have completely lambasted the game over one scene in which Lara fends off an attacker who appears to be attempting to rape her. From The Guardian to New Statesman, pundits have attacked the game and the infamous scene as “lazy shorthand for showing women as vulnerable”, “eager to reproduce and normalize a culture in which women are blamed for being raped” and as implying that “Women can’t just be born tough and cocksure – that has to be fucked and beaten into them”. While there may be some legitimacy behind these views, almost every article written about the subject focuses on Lara Croft the woman and Lara Croft the character, while almost none have evaluated the effect that this may have on Lara Croft the cultural icon.
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Lollipop Chainsaw
Everything that can be deduced from a superficial glance at the cover stirred the raging cynic in me and allowed me to declare the following - “I will hate this game”.
