The Thick Skin

The internet is a pretty incredible resource.

Chances are that you, reading this post right now, are hundreds, even thousands of miles away from where I sit typing it. Right now, I could open up Skype and be capable of talking to someone on the opposite side of the world to me in real time. Or else I could open up Netflix and stream movies at a rate that would have been considered nigh-impossible a decade ago.

For every silver-lining, however, there's always the cloud.

Because whilst the internet is pretty incredible, it's also full of assholes.

Write a post about movies, and some guy will emerge to tell you that your opinions suck. Write a post about video games, and another guy will pop out of nowhere to tell you that you're terrible at what you do and you should stop. Write a post about religion from an atheistic standpoint, and you'll find several people jumping out the woodwork to tell you that you're going to hell. Write a post about religion from a theistic standpoint, and I'd wager you'll have plenty of folks telling you that you're an ignorant, Bible-thumping fucktard. Talk about how you think homoeopathy has no evidence for it and you'll get labelled a shill for Big Pharma. Point out the faults in a particular conspiracy theory and someone will be there to declare you a narrow-minded fool who can't see the bigger picture.

In short, if you talk about things on the internet it's basically an inevitability that at some point you will have people stop by just to try and fuck with you.

Don't get me wrong, writing a blog can be a very rewarding experience. I've been writing Damned Already for over a year now, and it's been an awesome way to help me figure out how I think about issues and has put me in touch with some very cool internet folks, too. But you've got to be prepared for the less enjoyable parts of putting your thoughts and ideas out into the ether that is the world wide web.

The ability to look past things and weather abuse, otherwise known as having a thick skin, is pretty vital at times when you're writing a blog. The ability to not be put off by some guy appearing just to tell you how much he thinks you suck can help you not to lose your enjoyment of this whole 'typing out your thoughts and ideas and then sticking then on the internet' thing. At the same time, though, it's important to be able to separate assholery from those dispensing useful, if blunt, constructive criticism. You might not like what they have to say, or the way they say it, but sometimes there's a few gems of useful feedback in amongst the sea of shit being spewed at you.

Posting anything on the internet can suck at times. That doesn't change the fact that it can be an extremely rewarding experience too.

The Joys Of Spring

 

 By joys, I mean exams.

Which are not in any way, shape or form joyful.

Yes, it's that time of year again where the University makes sure we student things actually learned something this year by testing us on our modules. So I'm currently buried under revision and last minute preparation, because forward planning has never been my strong suit.

As such, updates might be a little slow in the coming weeks. I'll be aiming to post something at least once a week, but that will probably be it for the rest of the month. Once June rolls around I'm free and clear, however, so it'll be business as usual then.

Until then, however, I best get back to reading about British immigration. A truly riveting and cheery subject. Honest.

Religious Themes in Video Games: Receiver

 

Been slacking off on these of late, so here's the next entry in this series on games that cover the often rather difficult topic of religion.

This one's a recent discovery of mine, and drastically different from the previous games I've discussed. Made in a week as part of an indie game challenge by a small studio called Wolfire, Receiver features some truly unique game mechanics and a covers a fascinating topic.

You see, Receiver is a game that allows you to experience what it's like to be in a cult.

Receiver

This is a game that takes a very subtle, minimalist approach to story, and I reckon it benefits from it greatly. You find yourself alone in a series of interconnected buildings and apartments with nothing but a handgun, a tape-player and a set of headphones. Scattered throughout this environment are tapes, telling you that you're special, that you have a great potential waiting to be realised. You see, you're what the beings speaking through the tape (oh, I did mention that they say they're from another dimension, right?) call a 'receiver', someone who is capable of hearing their message and has the chance to break free from the control of the Threat, another extra-dimensional race that has enslaved humanity through “media addiction”.

If you succeed in collecting all the tapes, you will become the first human to transcend to another plane of existence. The Threat isn't keen on this, and has released “kill-bots” into the area to murder you before you succeed.

It took me a bit to catch on to what the developers were trying to say with all this, but when the penny dropped it was a hell of a revelation.

Receiver isn't so much a commentary as it is an experience, and that's surprisingly rare in video games of this nature; it doesn't judge one way or the other whether the tapes are telling you a crock of shit or whether you really are a person on the brink of ascending to another dimension, instead just feeding you the information and letting you decide for yourself. It provides an insight into the mind of someone drawn in by a cult, the tantalising possibility that you really are unique in the world, that you have a destiny that will allow you to become greater than all others.

The nature of the gameplay helps to drive this idea forwards; you are alone throughout, with nothing but a voice on a tape-player as contact with other people. The enemies in the game are faceless machines, designed by the Threat to kill enlightened beings such as yourself. Just with this simple choice of design Receiver puts you in the mindset of a cult member, cut off and aloof from others, concerning yourself only with the words of your fellow believers.

The mechanics are a stroke of genius in-and-of themselves, but since that's not really the topic of discussion I won't dwell on them too much. Suffice it to say that I've played a lot of games with aspirations towards a “realistic shooting mechanics”, games that have millions of dollars pumped into their development, and Wolfire has topped them all with Receiver.

Cults are one of the scariest aspects of religion and faith, and so a game that can provide a means to understand those drawn in by such things is a valuable thing indeed. You can grab it on Steam or from Wolfire's website for just $4 at the moment, which is a steal as far as I'm concerned.

The gameplay is unforgiving, to say the least, but Receiver is worth playing just for the experience alone.

Sylvia Browne Told The Mother Of Amanda Berry Her Daughter Was Dead

Louwana Miller will never know that her daughter is alive

Just a quick update today, guys, as I don't have a huge amount to add to this story; I just want to do what little I can to make sure awareness of this spreads.

Sylvia Browne, self-described “spiritual teacher and psychic”, has a long history of having her predictions turn out to be big, steaming crocks of bullshit. And it seems we can tally up yet another to this very long list, because in 2003 Browne told Louwana Miller, the mother of the woman who has recently been found after her disappearance ten years ago, that her daughter was in fact dead.

You can read the transcript of the event in which she told Louwana Miller this lie here. Head's up, though, it's some depressing shit.

News like Amanda Berry and several other missing women being found is always great to hear, which is why having stuff like this blemish it is always so frustrating. What's worse is the fact that Louwana will never know that her daughter is in fact alive and well even after all this time: she passed away due to a heart-failure in 2006. Browne telling her that her daughter was dead changed her, according to Art McCoy; “from that point on, Ms Miller was never the same”.

I cannot express how much it angers me that Browne added further anguish to the final years of this poor woman's life. That's why this story is so damn important, and why I'm so glad that it's gaining so much media attention.

Charlatans and predators like Sylvia Browne deserve to be held accountable for their failures and wrong-doings. I hope that something good can come out of this extremely sad story.