Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Yvonne Abraham thinks you're dumb

Why does Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham need to bring video games into this screed about lunatic sports fans -- not once, but twice?

In fact, one of the many reasons I wasn't out rioting when the Celtics won the championship was because I was at home, playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. It's one of numerous non-idiotic things I do with my time. I also like to read books, cook, and spend time outdoors hiking and snowboarding. But none of those things would mark me as the kind of drooling ape only Yvonne Abraham has the courage to take on in the pages of a major metropolitan newspaper.

Abraham's implication, which I'm sure she spent upwards of a second and half cogitating, is clear: rioting is a brainless activity, and playing games is a brainless activity. Can't have one without the other. There you go! That's your lede! Now to break this column into several vapid, Bill Plaschke-like one-sentence paragraphs, and sit back and wait for the accolades to roll in. Yvonne, you've done it again!

(I am glad to see that it's not just sports bloggers who are always accused of plying their trade from their mother's basements, though.)

8 comments:

Etelmik said...

Better hope Kotaku doesn't see that. More so, she'd better. Is that her email address?

Daniel Purvis said...

I'm a little pissed there isn't a "Comment" option on that article. Thank you for pointing out the email address though etelmik.

Anonymous said...

I have the feeling that this videogame linkage is a little bit blown out of proportion. Sure, it is unnecessary to say all those hooligans are playing Metal Gear now they are home. As it is unnecessary to suggest that all those men and women (or rather apes and pigs (true!) to stay in the Abraham way of teasing) are life guards or office clerks. She was just upset about the pointless violance and suggested a few ways those hooligans could spend their time at home. Incidentily, Metal Gear is pretty hot at the moment. But it might as well could have been Wii Fit ;)

The only think I find insulting is that she thinks all gamers live in their mothers basement... oh wait, no, all videogame playing hooligans live in their mothers basement... oh no wait, I'm confused now... Did she just suggested I have an Oedipus Distortion?

But hell, let's just all wright an email to Yvonne and show that we gamers are uptight persons with a low caliber of digesting silly remarks.

Mitch Krpata said...

I certainly wouldn't recommend anybody sending her nasty emails. It's sadly true -- and probably undercuts my thesis -- that if the Kotaku hordes did see this column, Abraham would probably be on the receiving end of the e-version of the Celtics rioting.

Etelmik said...

Well, and also, the article was just plain poorly written. It reminded me of that Jim Armstrong article about baseball statisticians living in their mothers' basements.

More than anything, it was terribly written and she's writing at the fucking GLOBE. There is no excuse for poor writing--none. All the lower excuse from some of these people who have too many connections.

I can't wait for a decade or three from now when this kind of crap is less likely to be published--by that time, publications that you pay for in hard form will not receive money from all the people who know they can find better on the Internet for a lower price and with a better response time.

And yeah, I really did mean it when I say hope that Kotaku or any similar place somewhere else doesn't see it.

Daniel Purvis said...

Haha. Just so you know. I wrote quite the letter. Not angry and not abusive. Then I decided it wasn't worth sending. So it got deleted. End story.

Anonymous said...

I think Yvonne Abraham is a hack. Does she ever research a story or is it just easier to make up shit while your sitting in your snuggy and drinking tea?
Hey Chaffone some of us remember your palgiarlisitic ways at the pheonix. F&*k off

Anonymous said...

ok, it's a few years old, but i've had a problem with most of what YA has written for years now. she takes the absolute worst humanity has to offer and makes a "story" out of them so we feel bad that they were oh-so-oppressed. case in point, her current article:

http://tinyurl.com/3ng229e

so, Deval Patrick, someone YA likely has lots in common with, knee-jerk reacted (which is to say, he actually *reacted* to something) by making parole tougher in an extremely liberal state with an overcrowded prison population. I say, for once; good work, Deval.

Did this one guy with a drug addiction and a rap sheet suffer? By not being able to die "with dignity"? who cares? it's still important to make the rules tougher, even if a few suffer in a supposedly unjustifiable way.