This should be painfully obvious to anyone with any familiarity with politics or popular culture. The list of people who have failed miserably at jobs that people wonder how they got in the first place is astonishingly long: Rod Blagojevich. George W. Bush. Jimmy Fallon.
Yes, that's right: "astonishingly long," in my world, means "three."
Usually it's painfully obvious when someone is bad at something, but bloggers are a very unfortunate exception. The reason blogs are often exempt from quality control is obvious: blogs have a very specific point of view, so naturally, those viewing those blogs are people who agree with and share that same point of view.
The problem these days is that the lines between "blogger," "professional writer," and "journalist" are often skewed. Obviously what you're reading at the moment is a personal blog, since nobody would ever pay me to write this (not to mention you are probably the only person who will ever read this... congratulations, by the way). Some Web sites, however, label themselves ambiguously, thus giving them an extraordinary power.
This brings me to my tale of a prominent blog and how it filled me with anger one brisk Sunday morning.
Video gaming Web site Kotaku recently posted this entry: "Obama Doesn't Know How to Work an Xbox or a Playstation." Nice! The video game blog gets political! Who doesn't like to diversify?
The article contains a few lines from a recent commencement speech that Obama delivered, including this one:
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation"
Oh, okay - so Obama's statement actually proved the thesis presented in the headline, right?
...right?
Well, only if you've been buried under a rock for the past 2 years. Obama is well-known as being a huge geek, as evidenced by the following:
- He once joked in a speech that he was born on Krypton.
- Sasha and Malia have both a Nintendo DS and a Nintendo Wii in the White House.
- During his campaign, there were rumors that Obama made a shockingly obscure reference to an Internet meme based on a poorly translated video game.
- Obama is the first president who refused to stop using his Blackberry when he took office - a technology that even I haven't been able to afford to embrace because I don't make any money from sitting around writing free blogs all day.
The moral of the story, then, is that the headline is misleading, right? Oh, but it gets worse. The author then goes on to say:
"Also interesting he goes out of his way to say he doesn't know how to "work" them; would it matter if he did know how to work them? I mean, it's not like a 360 or PlayStation is any harder to switch on than a Wii..."
Yes, analyze his joke. Analyze it until it makes you blue in the face. Because nothing is more fun than seeing a writer completely miss the point. How's that for a prime example of Someone Else Failing? Hey, that's the name of this blog!!
Actually, one thing IS more fun: seeing readers and commenters make blind judgments based on poorly delivered information!
The comments are simply a gold mine. Here are my favorites:
- "This makes him sound very ignorant in my opinion. He constantly points blame at technology, man [sic] of which are on Kotaku, and he doesn't understand them."
- "People gave McCain [censored] about not being technologically savvy. I say turnabout's fair play."
- "Maybe one day I'll see a president that is actually fluent with technology. Maybe..."
Misleading headlines + misleading editorial comments = idiots
Now, Kotaku's caption, "Kotaku, the Gamer's Guide," is vague. Who exactly is guiding me? Is it a fellow gamer? A professional journalist? Some fat dude sitting at home taking a break from World of Warcraft while he's waiting for his guild members to meet up so he can scream about DKP for 6 hours (and no, I don't know what the hell DKP is/are)?
Kotaku's side bar indicates that it employs editors, columnists, and even reporters. Its content makes it very clear that it has a headquarters - "Kotaku Tower," in Colorado - and that its staff constantly receives promotional items and press kits from video game developers, publishers, and magazines. But nowhere on the site is there any mention of journalism, nor is there any claim of the site reporting any news.
Thus, the site has the luxury of operating with all the freedom of a blogger - not having to check any facts, being able to voice personal opinions in articles, having control of the comments written in response to its articles - as well as all the perks of a journalist - press kits, insider contacts, and, most importantly, a faithful audience.
Pretty sweet, right?
When I worked in radio, I used to wonder why people would call me on the phone sometimes and just start screaming violently about political hot-button topics. Now I know that it's because idiots with vague job descriptions put vague information up on vaguely-defined Web sites so that people with short attention spans can skim articles and fire off comments that have no repercussions, require no thought, and ultimately have no purpose.
...other than to agitate me for no reason, of course.
