Fucking Kotaku

[MasterDex]

Can't we all just get along?

 

Sure we can...just not with Joel.

 

You know, I haven't commented a single time since I announced my departure the day the redesign went live, but I just need to let off some steam at this dumbass who keeps writing garbage articles. Nothing big, not a rant or anything. Just a small "you're a dumbass" will do for me.

 

brb

 

I really wanted to, I even started....then I remembered I was banned. Go get 'em!

[Waldorf and Statler]

Being hateful on the internet only furthers the stereotype. I say turn the other cheek and just point out he's wrong, then laugh.

[RockyRan]

Done.

 

http://kotaku.com/58...507816#comments

 

I wrote it in a way such that I never called him a paid shill, nor did I insult him in any way directly. If he takes issue with it it's going to be extremely obvious to anyone reading.

 

EDIT: Jesus, you're way too passive. That's right, I went there.

Edited September 8, 2011 by RockyRan

[Waldorf and Statler]

It's a curse.

[MasterDex]

Done.

 

http://kotaku.com/58...507816#comments

 

I wrote it in a way such that I never called him a paid shill, nor did I insult him in any way directly. If he takes issue with it it's going to be extremely obvious to anyone reading.

 

Well said, you kept to the crucial point and didn't stray. ever...period.

[RockyRan]

EVER. PERIOD.

 

It's just that he keeps making these wild fantasies about PC gaming fundamentally changing the way it works just to spite PC gamers. I'm like, dude, the world doesn't revolve around you, and there's just no fucking way it's going to converge into a "standardized" format just because you keep making these shitty articles insulting PC gamers whose hobby it is to tinker with their gaming PCs. He just won't let it go, and he's completely fucking wrong at that.

 

I especially loved his "WAH WAH WAH PEOPLE SAID MEAN THINGS ABOUT MY OTHER EQUALLY SHITTY ARTICLE!!" tantrum paragraph he throws in there. I mean, dude, do you have ANY professional standards? Talk about petty, dragging his pissing contest between himself and his own readers into yet another editorial filled to the brim with the same exact petulant ignorance. You wrote a shitass article the first time, don't do another shitass article parroting the same thing just to stick it to the people who disagreed with you the first time. He's a complete manchild.

Edited September 8, 2011 by RockyRan

[deanb]

his shitass articles gets lots of hits though. Which is why when I submitted it to reddit I may have avoided that aspect....

 

 

(oh with Imgur you can remove the .jpg n it gives you some handy stats at the bottom: http://imgur.com/bTKCo)

[fuchikoma]

He really doesn't get it, does he?

 

That's the real reason I left - I no longer want even my nickname associated with that level of writing. At least this time I felt he touched on some good points though - the enthusiast market is a niche of a niche and can't expect to hold a lot of market clout. Also, I've worked on PCs for decades and I agree that when it all works as it should, it's electric Lego - I've even used that term. (When it doesn't go according to plan? It helps to have someone who's a walking encyclopedia of the quirks you find on PCs.)

 

The rest of it... pfft. It's as Dean says: Trolling gets reposts and hits. I'd accuse him of not even trying, but this actually seems to be a good level to work at to get a lot of outrage - especially the way he never misses an opportunity to weave in snide insults at anyone not in lockstep with him. I hate to say it, but it's at least interesting to see what the responses to these are. It's just a shame he had to do it by turning my favourite gaming site into a joke.

 

 

 

Can't we all just get along?

 

That was a great post, and you're right.

Edited September 8, 2011 by fuchikoma

[Cyber Rat]

(oh with Imgur you can remove the .jpg n it gives you some handy stats at the bottom: http://imgur.com/bTKCo)

 

I wonder how much money he lost from Reddit.

[madbassman39]

I can't really say much on the topic, the last time I upgraded a computer was 2005 to make it work with Oblivion, I was using an ancient tech motherboard (AGP when PCI-Express came out a few years before) and bought the best damn graphics card that was available for that motherboard. I had a 2.8 GH Intel single core processor, 3 whopping gigs of Ram, and an 80 gig hard drive. Within the next year or so they went Multi-core processors and I was left in the dust. I never upgraded, because I needed to build a new one from scratch, I never had more than 400 dollars to my name (I started college in 2005, and yes I'm still there) so I could never afford to start over with my computer. A few years later I got a laptop for Xmas, and never went back to desktops. I've always wanted to, until this summer when I made the realization that I probably would still buy most games for consoles because none of my friends know a damn thing about computers.

 

TL:DR => I can't say what the gaming industry on PCs is like any more (still play L4D 1 & 2 on my laptop, a few MMOs and of course the Sims), its sad, but I just don't feel like spending that kind of money on something I will never utilize.

 

The idea that the computer gaming industry will be standardized is ridiculous, especially now when computer games are given better treatment than they were two years ago by developers. Computer games will never be what they were before the 360/PS3 era, but they wont have a standardized system, because nobody uses the computer for the same things. Almost everybody wants a computer to do exactly what they need it to do, and no more because its more money.

 

Its obvious Joel is doing one of two things, trolling for hits, or is blind and has no understanding of what he is writing about.

[Thursday Next]

Its obvious Joel is doing one of two things, trolling for hits, or is blind and has no understanding of what he is writing about.

 

c. All of the above.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

I can't say what the gaming industry on PCs is like any more (still play L4D 1 & 2 on my laptop, a few MMOs and of course the Sims)

 

That's exactly what the gaming industry on PCs is like. Lots of MMOs, the Sims, and we also tend to cling to our older games and squeeze a lot more life out of 'em than console install bases usually do. You are probably in line with what many PC gamers do. My sister for instance, not a gamer by any means, freshman in college, but she saw us playing Left 4 Dead one day and wanted to give it a try. So I bought the game for her when she got a new laptop, and now she joins us once or twice a week. Doesn't play any other games.

 

The very fact that a modest laptop can run real games like L4D is a testament to the standardization of middleware and hardware. Joel's hypothetical scenario of homogenization simply doesn't exist, because we're already there. We're already at the point where casual and "hardcorez" games can be at peace with one another because the PC gaming market is so broad. There's no need to declare the death or marginalization of the "tinkerers", because they will always tinker regardless of what anyone else does. Gah Joel's article really bugs me. More later I suppose.

 

(oh with Imgur you can remove the .jpg n it gives you some handy stats at the bottom:

)

 

I wonder how much money he lost from Reddit.

 

The rumored going rate for writing at Kotaku is $7.50/1,000 hits. So for the 40,000 imgur hits from Reddit, he would have gotten some $300. Supposedly.

[Hot Heart]

Of course, there's the fact that not all those people would've read it otherwise and it may have spurred some to go and comment on it anyway.

[TheRevanchist]

There are some editors that keep gaining my respect. And there are some that lose mine. But, judge for yourself.

 

http://kotaku.com/58...ist-whore-skill

Edited September 8, 2011 by TheRevanchist

[Cyber Rat]

You know, if it had stayed in the game like that, it wouldn't have been an issue, but they obviously changed it on time aside from the debug file. They knew it wasn't "right".

 

However, people calling them out for it on Kotaku do seem to forget that Gawker called the commenters "internally" peasants.

[Cyber Rat]

Second question.

[Hot Heart]

Haha. Woah, second and final question. Kotaku got told.

[excel_excel]

AHHH yeah that's mah boy TB! He said it all baby!

 

But Joel's reaction in the comments section of the first utterly retarded Razer article made it seem like he actually believes himself. Or he feels the need to defend his shoddy work regardless of how unbelievable stupid it is. I don't know. The guy is like a person who just woke up to the fact that he writes on the internet. Grow some skin for godsake.

 

You're going to get a certain amount of criticism regardless of whether you are a messiah who gives every person on earth a million dollars or whether you are a rubbish blog writer, who writes shitty, unresearched articles that do nothing but attract page views and completely warranted criticism.

[MasterDex]

That is the first TotalBiscuit video I've watched *ducks to avoid incoming stones* but he's just got himself a new viewer. The guy nailed every point to be said on the topic and frankly, now I'm left feeling that a PXOD roundtable on the topic would be redundant...because that cynical Brit got there first - and so magnificently too.

[Luftwaffles]

 

The rumored going rate for writing at Kotaku is $7.50/1,000 hits. So for the 40,000 imgur hits from Reddit, he would have gotten some $300. Supposedly.

 

Just popping in to say that that is the most ass-backwards way of paying writers I've ever heard of.

 

It's hard to expect them to write good, thought provoking articles when that's the type of payment system they've got going on there.

 

It's a website, not a freaking car dealership.

Edited September 9, 2011 by Sporkwaffles

[fuchikoma]

The rumored going rate for writing at Kotaku is $7.50/1,000 hits. So for the 40,000 imgur hits from Reddit, he would have gotten some $300. Supposedly.

 

They've also gone from page views to unique impressions, so I guess there's even more incentive than there used to be to say something so backwards it gets posted to Reddit, Digg, etc to be ridiculed. They want people who don't even visit the site to come and look. Denton even said "It just means you have to be even more original, even more provocative or even more of a hustler than usual."

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

Speaking of getting paid by the 1,000 hits, Bashcraft's "Fetish" article today got 300,000 hits.

 

He either hit the horndog market or the curious market. Or a little bit of both?

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

 

The rumored going rate for writing at Kotaku is $7.50/1,000 hits. So for the 40,000 imgur hits from Reddit, he would have gotten some $300. Supposedly.

 

Just popping in to say that that is the most ass-backwards way of paying writers I've ever heard of.

 

It's hard to expect them to write good, thought provoking articles when that's the type of payment system they've got going on there.

 

It's a website, not a freaking car dealership.

Yeah it's pretty bad. It pretty much discourages writing about indie or niche games and emphasizes flamebaiting. I admit it's tough to find a good system (my site pays per word, which has the potential to encourage copy-pasting large blockquotes or fluff writing), but surely there's a better way. Maybe a base salary with small pageview or content bonuses?

[Waldorf and Statler]

AHHH yeah that's mah boy TB! He said it all baby!

 

But Joel's reaction in the comments section of the first utterly retarded Razer article made it seem like he actually believes himself. Or he feels the need to defend his shoddy work regardless of how unbelievable stupid it is. I don't know. The guy is like a person who just woke up to the fact that he writes on the internet. Grow some skin for godsake.

 

You're going to get a certain amount of criticism regardless of whether you are a messiah who gives every person on earth a million dollars or whether you are a rubbish blog writer, who writes shitty, unresearched articles that do nothing but attract page views and completely warranted criticism.

 

No way in hell am I giving away that much money.

[RockyRan]

AHHH yeah that's mah boy TB! He said it all baby!

 

But Joel's reaction in the comments section of the first utterly retarded Razer article made it seem like he actually believes himself. Or he feels the need to defend his shoddy work regardless of how unbelievable stupid it is. I don't know. The guy is like a person who just woke up to the fact that he writes on the internet. Grow some skin for godsake.

 

You're going to get a certain amount of criticism regardless of whether you are a messiah who gives every person on earth a million dollars or whether you are a rubbish blog writer, who writes shitty, unresearched articles that do nothing but attract page views and completely warranted criticism.

 

Bah! I just remembered where I had heard the whole "you got paid to write this didn't you?" barrage of commenter quips before.

 

It was at Ars Technica, where one of the writers there did a review of sorts of Internet Explorer 9. It was, much to the chagrin of IE haters (of which there are a lot, myself included ), not ripped a new one. In fact, the writer said it was very competitive to FireFox in features and performance. Haters immediately called into question whether or not it was a paid-for article by Microsoft. Dozens and dozens of people said the same thing in the comments.

 

You know what the writer and mods did? Nothing. As they should have. They ignored the catcalls and took the high road by not throwing scat like brainless monkeys. In other words, they responded in a PROFESSIONAL manner. Something that Joel is completely and hopelessly incapable of doing.

 

I remember that because when Jim from RPS began pretending like saying that kind of thing was a heresy and INCREDIBLY offensive, something in the back of my mind told me "bullshit, it's happened before and the editor in question ignored the outrage in a dignified and professional manner". I just didn't remember where I had seen it and now I remember.

 

So yeah, that's how you handle those kinds of criticisms, by not yelling, insulting and banning users. The very fact that he did it only reinforced people's suspicions that he had something to hide. And pretending like being criticized in that manner after writing such a horrible article is extremely offensive to the poor ol' writer is just sad.

Edited September 9, 2011 by RockyRan