Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the brands-and-bands dept

This week, the man behind the Stanford Prison Experiment went on a tear against videogames and all sorts of associated culture (reduced to its most gauche symbols). PaulT took first place for insightful by tearing apart his vitriol:

“When I’m in class, I’ll wish I was playing World of Warcraft”

…as opposed to the “I’ll wish I was doing almost anything else” that was the norm before WoW existed? Or, is he pretending that the world was full of dedicated studious children before that?

“When I’m with a girl, I’ll wish I was watching pornography, because I’ll never get rejected.”

Because porn is a brand new thing that never existed before the internet, and teenagers would never fear rejection if it weren’t for porn?

“Zimbardo defines excessive porning and video gaming as more than five hours a day”

How does this compare to other similar activities such as watching TV? I’ll never take any of these people seriously if they pretend that watching hours of trashy reality TV and soaps is OK or that lounging around watching football is fine but it suddenly becomes a problem when you have a controller in your hand.

“He added that young men are drinking Coke instead of alcohol and becoming “fat-asses.”

…because nobody got fat from drinking beer? Because instead of a fatass playing games in their room, what you really need is a pissed-up teenager with nothing productive to do outside the home?

“Unsurprisingly, Zimbardo has recently published a book dealing with these very issues.”

Ah, OK. So, instead of a dickhead being paranoid about videogames and presenting half-assed research and long-outdated stereotypes as mere fearmongering, he’s doing it to make money from book sales? That’s not better.

What a shame that people will swallow this rubbish rather than dealing with some of the real issues (such as parents who use games and TV as babysitters because they don’t have time for productive parenting, have swallowed the 24 hour news cycle exaggeration of danger outside the home, etc).

Meanwhile, in a guest post, law professor Michael Carrier laid out countless examples of how technology has benefited musicians, and jupiterkansas won second place for insightful by pointing out that not only does this disprove the RIAA’s idea that the music world is ending, it makes them look pretty useless, too:

This article lists over a dozen services that any of the major record labels had more than enough resources to create in the last 20 years as a service to musicians – the kind of service they’re supposed to be providing. It’s their own fault they couldn’t see the future past the bottom line.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with the story of yet another company trying to retain ownership of the stuff it sells you via copyright on the software. In this case it was John Deere, prompting one anonymous commenter to point out just how absurd the entire idea is:

Additionally, there is about zero market for pirated tractor software. The software is useless unless you own a compatible tractor (and thus you already own a copy of the software.) The copy protection does nothing legitimate.

Next, we’ve got a response from John Fenderson to the latest murmurs from the Internet Security Task Force (actually a coalition of movie studios) — not so much its unsurprisingly-ridiculous statements, but its blatantly manipulative branding:

I also like how they call themselves the Internet Security Task Force (ISTF). This is obviously intended to cause confusion with the legitimate and not-corporate-lobby-group, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). They’re probably hoping that they will benefit from the established legitimacy of the IETF.

Way to not be sleazy, guys!

Speaking of entertainment branding, our first place comment on the funny side this week comes in response to the cable industry’s decision to distance itself from the word “cable” and drop “The Cable Show” as the name of its annual trade conference. One anonymous commenter had a suggested alternative:

Ok let’s just call it the Anti-consumer Show then.

Next, we’ve got a bit of an odd one. The aforementioned post about the benefits of technology for creators, and the lies and failures of the RIAA, prompted a vicious but completely-unsupported rebuttal from someone named Phil. It certainly didn’t seem like a joke, so the fact that it won second place for funny really illustrates the difference between “laughing with” and “laughing at”:

As a professional musician earning a terrible living in the industry since 1999, I want to say that the level of ignorance of what musicians are dealing with in 2015 expressed by the authors of this blog and by the commentors here is astounding and depressing. In the 5 minutes I spent reading this rant and the comments that followed it, I was overwhelmed by the number of misinformed or logically faulty arguments expressed. I love debating on the internet and I’ve had no problem dealing with presidential elections, hot-button social issues, pressing scientific controversies, etc. But the sheer asshattery and blindness expressed here just leaves me speechless. All of you musically ignorant fucks completely deserve the dark ages of original music that is forming even as you dissemble and make endless excuses for the low value that our modern economy has affixed to original music… That sad thing is that from what I can tell, most Americans’ musical literacy is so abysmal that they will never be aware of what they have lost.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got two quick and punchy lines. First, a response from Michael to Wyoming’s attempt to control reporters and hide the fact that its streams are contaminated with e. coli:

Bullshit in streams leads to bullshit in legislature.

Finally, we’ve got what might be the simplest, most elegant response possible to the sad, amusing announcement that Verizon is buying AOL:

Two turkeys don’t make an eagle.

That’s all for this week, folks!