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Tribbles Need Not Apply

Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education had a wonderfully misguided article entitled “Bloggers Need Not Apply“. Written by a “humanities professor at a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest” writing under the pseudonym “Ivan Tribble”, the article details how his college’s recent faculty search ended up disqualifying a lot of candidates largely because they were bloggers.

An article this misguided is not the sort of thing I’d expect out of the Chronicle. It illustrates the wrong line of thinking about blogs, the wrong line of thinking about interviewing candidates, and the wrong line of intersecting the two. This is worth picking apart. (Please click through for a full dissection.)

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Debated Disliked

Tear It Up

Back in April of 2003, I wrote a post [discussing my disdain](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2003/04/if_i_read_any_more_fanfiction_i_will_be_driven_to_murder.php) for fanfiction – particularly that of the DDR variety. I think most of the links in the post are dead, but the point remains the same: fanfiction for video games, particular video games without a plot, is a crime against humanity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m passionate about games. Twenty years of gaming gets you a lot of addictions and obsessions. I’ve played some games long enough to temporarily ruin my vision, taken mutli-hour car trips with people I barely know to play games in arcades, and written way more PHP to handle game accounting than anyone should have to in the course of their life.

But there’s a line for me. Somewhere past cosplaying at conventions is a breed of gamer who takes things way, way, way too far.

Today, Aaron Ramsey discovered – quite accidently – the [Beatmania IIDX Platinum Livejournal community](http://www.livejournal.com/community/iidx_platinum/). I should, in all fairness, know by now not to click links titled “SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE HELL THIS IS ABOUT”.

If there’s any game I’m obsessed with, it’s certainly Beatmania IIDX; anyone who’s been reading here for longer than a month has been subjected to the regular tangent about it. I am not going to go into details to describe the percentage of my gaming attention this game occupies. That said, this community scares the living shit out of me.

IIDX_Platinum is a role-playing group. This means each and every person in the community plays the role of one of the IIDX “characters”. Let’s stop right here, for the benefit of those people that don’t play: The characters in IIDX are largely relegated to screens that show your scores. They only occasionally appear in videos. They have very minor back-story associated with them, which is then obsessively filled in by people who think it’s worth filling in.

To base an entire perpetual role playing game off of characters that don’t have any characterization is…to make the obvious joke, *just disturbed, guys*. This is even acknowledged in the [group rules](http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=iidx_platinum):

> I’ve done all the research I could do and there isn’t a website that describes all the character’s personality.

There are other sections in the rules that are equally troubling, like the full acknowledgement that there may be [yaoi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi) and [yuri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri):

> Keep an open mind. *This community/rp group is run by yaoi fans… and we do allow yaoi, yuri, and het in this RP. Anything lemony, please warn us in advance.*

Some people may find this hard to believe, but Beatmania IIDX is a fun game even if you *don’t* pretend the characters on the results screens are having homosexual relations with each other. I personally don’t think it adds anything to the gaming experience – but maybe that’s just me.

I don’t mean to go on a complete snark binge here, so let me get to the heart of the matter, which is based largely in this line in the group description:

> Forgive us for being uncreative (or maybe being lazy) at the time, but this role-play has no set definite plot or anything like that. I mean, our boys and girls are DJ’s. Still, that’s not to say that it’s all they ever do. They are human after all, and go through the same things that we all do. Happy times, fun times, depression, frustration, anger, emo, angst, etc.

If these characters truly “go through the same things that we all do”, what’s the motivation here to write about someone else’s (fictional) life ? Why would you want to *pretend* to have issues, especially those that aren’t your own? Is there really an emotional rush for *pretending* to be in love with someone else who doesn’t exist? Since all of these love stories seem to end in heartbreak, why would anyone want to pretend to go through that?

Don’t misread that as saying there isn’t something to be said for going through all of these things yourself; there’s a lot to be learned from falling into and out of love, from releasing your frustrations and having your friends be there for you in your darkest days. But you need to go through these life experiences as yourself, not as a fictional DJ (or any other character from one of the thousands of roleplaying groups online).

In total, it strikes me as rather tragic that there are so many people out there who are content to churn out pages upon pages of fictional [phone conversations](http://www.livejournal.com/community/iidx_platinum/57710.html#cutid1), [AIM chats](http://www.livejournal.com/community/iidx_platinum/63104.html#cutid1), and [trips with fictional friends](http://www.livejournal.com/community/iidx_platinum/64835.html#cutid2) rather than try doing any of these things as themselves.

Life is too short to spend it writing a story for someone else’s life.

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Debated Disliked

America – Now With Less Freedom!

I’ve been following the Terry Schiavo case a bit over the last few weeks, keeping my fingers crossed this wouldn’t become a national issue.

Lo and behold, [here we are](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4367201.stm).

Friends, this affects every last one of us. You have lost the ability to make critical care decisions for loved ones. You no longer can expect someone to be able to take mercy on you and end years of pain and suffering and vegetative state. Personal decisions *and* the decisions of your doctor have been usurped by the government.

I don’t care if you’re Democratic, Republican, Catholic, Jewish, Agnostic, or SubGenius – read the [details of this case](http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html) and realize how tragic this is not only for Terry Schiavo and her husband, but for the United States as a country.

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> In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favour of life.

-George W. Bush

> By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient’s family’s wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother’s wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Digby’s *Hullabaloo*

I’m not even going to get started on his very much pro-death penalty ways; I’m content to stand pat and call the man a massive hypocrite.

********

While reading the [fantastic MetaFilter thread on the ordeal](http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/40549) – about Congress rushing through legislation to score political points; the stringent court cases that have assessed her as unable to recover; the fifteen years Michael Schiavo has spent flying her all over the country seeking treatment – I was struck by some odd nostalgia.

Bill Hicks, who by now should be up for sainthood, has a bit on one of his CDs (*Rant In E Minor*) about pro-lifers; it was one of the first Hicks routines I had ever heard. The jist of the bit was that if you’re so pro-life – if you so dearly value the sanctity of human life – then stop blocking abortion clinics, and instead links arms and block cemetaries.

Never in a million years did I expect anyone to actually take the suggestion to heart.

(As I write this post on the subway, *I’m Afraid Of Americans* by David Bowie + Trent Reznor came on my iPod. Irony noted.)