Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-20-2009

[andrewducker]

• Where are all the men bloggers?
  Fantastic thread.
  (tags: blogging feminism funny gender satire)
• How to deal with advertising - and raise your kids not to nag
  (tags: children socialisation education self-control advertising)
• Racism creeping up in Italy
  Italian town bans "ethnic" shops...
  (tags: racism italy)
• God Trumps Part I
  (tags: religion funny atheism satire humanism)
• Most gamers fat and miserable
  So suggests a joint study conducted by scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC), Emory University in Atlanta and Andrews University in Michigan. Researchers concluded that frequent gamers tend to be fatter and of less sunny disposition than non-gamers. Their average age is 35.
  
  The study quizzed 500 adults aged between 19 and 90 from Washington state. Around 45 per cent said they played games often.
  (tags: gaming depression health)
• Total Eclipse of The Heart as a flowchart!
  Every now and then...
  (tags: funny music visualization)

Comments

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Oh I do love studies that don't consider the cause-effect relationship (or even if they do the media never report them).

Gamers fat and depressed or fat, depressed people tend to game? Not that it matters, I'm sure the press will lap it up as another reason why games are bad for you :)

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that the relationship would tend to be that people prone to depression perhaps tend to have difficulties in social situations... and that games provide a reasonable substitute for social situations in terms of interaction and engagement. They also allow for far more control and offer easy achievements or accomplishments compared to accomplishments in real life.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

That would be my gut instinct too, that those who are depressed and overweight find it easier to get social satisfaction in gaming rather than in real life.

But of course, that's not going to make headlines.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

One way of looking at it give the headline
"Gaming makes you fat and depressed!!!"

the other gives
"Gaming is a good comfort for those uncomfortable in social situations due to either mental or body image issues."

Guess which one the majority of the press will run with.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Do [men] not have time what with all the sports and drinking and porn?

Maybe I'm not seeing the huge joke, but reading that blog entry just makes me upset. Is there context that makes it funny?

[andrewducker]

Yes - the discussions of why there aren't more women technical/political/whatever bloggers, which sees people say "Well, they're too busy having kids and talking about lipstick to write political/technical blogs." - this is satirizing this, all-too-common, response.

Also - thanks for asking, rather than just assuming there was no context and it was just offensive :->

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps they need to have small print that makes that clear. If I had stumbled upon that online and not had anyone to ask about it, I would have come away with a very negative view of the feminists who were commenting, and then that would probably have put a negative spin on my views on feminism. It's one thing to satirise and another to post something that could be taken seriously...

[andrewducker]

You could ask them, but I think they'd say that any article whose starting point was "There aren't any men talking about technology/politics" is clearly not being serious :->

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

In a world where people genuinely think that Obama is emulating Hitler for introducing 'socialised' healthcare, I never assume that common sense applies when someone is spouting rhetoric, and this is no exception.

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

That's the problem with the internet these days. Parody and satire are extremely hard to pull off because there are frequently people with opinions more extreme, more idiotic, and more just plain bizarre than even the most "obvious" satires.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

For instance, the recent PETA story that actually makes the Onion's pisstake look like the serious story. I believe someone quoted Tom Lehrer as retiring from satire due to unflinching competition from reality...

[broin.livejournal.com]

Kissinger getting the Nobel Peace Prize, wasn't it?

[andrewducker]

http://geekfeminism.org/2009/08/20/men-bloggers-the-followup-post/