I'm a gamer; love my PC, my Wii and most of all, my xbox 360. I wish i had more time to play them but alas, i usually really only play on the weekends. During the week however, i visit http://www.teamxbox.com to get the latest news and rants of the gaming community.
Who woulda thought there'd be some loons at such a site. Read more about it below the fold...
Overall, it's a really well moderated forum. This is necessary because, gaming like politics is quite, erm... partisan. You have the xbox camp vs the PS3 camp vs the Wii camp. The debates arguements are often quite irrational and completely biased without remorse. It's quite entertaining watching kids and young adults battle it out on the smallest details and spin news which ever way they see fit.
It all just reminds my of washington politics. Then i discovered the forum had a board called the "Political Playground". As you can guess, it's for political discussions. I started frequenting the board since i'm heavy into politics now thanks to Mr. 25% and his disastrous administration.
What did i find? Well, essentially, a group of hard right individuals have pretty much monopolized the discussions there. Same guys post over and over again, spewing the same right wing nonsense.
Let's take a gander at some of their latests rants:
Global Warming:
it is more damaging to the environment to walk somewhere than drive! Yes, really! If you figure how many calories you'd burn walking and the food you'd need to eat, the emissions from the production, shipping, refrigerating, cooking etc of the food is far more than even a Hummer!
Amazing eh? It had me and my girlfriend rolling on the floor...
- Simple argument, but still somewhat meaningful. If we can't accurately predict what the weather will be 5 days from now, how can we know what's gonna happen in 10, 25, 50 years from now? I'm just sayin....
- My main reasoning. This whole global warming bizness is based off of something called the greenhouse effect. For the uniniated, it basically says that because of CO2 emissions from vehicles, factories, etc that reach the atmosphere, less heat can leave the Earth. The normal process is that heat from the sun enters the atmosphere, gets absorbed by the Earth, and is radiated back out. Supposedly, with more CO2, less heat can exit the atmoshpere and we are therefore hotter. The flaw with this is simple. If CO2 can block heat from exiting, it would also block it from entering. So with less heat entering, it doesn't matter if less escapes, because the proportions would be equal. The other thing that doesn't make sense is that CO2 is what plants take in to create oxygen. So, if anything, the extra CO2 emissions should make the Earth greener.
- This is more anecdotal evidence, but in my experience, it hasn't been getting much hotter. Sure there are hot days, but it was also just one of the coldest Julys on record where I live. If there is a consistent temperature increase, it wouldnt make sense for any kind of record lows to be set.
Again, this is nothing new. Global warming serves the same purpose today as throwing virgins in volcanos did five hundred years ago. Both are methods to keep you afraid and obedient, and serve little purpose outside that.
Gonzo resignation:
Who's next? I really thought Pres Bush would leave a more positive legacy than anything, but these resignations (whether induced by partisan attacks or not) does not bode well for his legacy.
This guy then goes on to say that he's still happy he voted for Bush because of the two supreme court appointments.
When you have ravenous partisan search dogs taking thousands of documents and over analyzing every statement you make and they fail to find anything solid, that represents to me probably innocence. That is why we have innocent until proven guilty in this country...
Believe it or not, he's talking about democrats...
I think you summed up Bush pretty well... as liberal a Republican as Clinton was conservative a democrat.
Both Presidents were attacked by a very well organized smear machine whose voice was amplified by a rabid media.... The result however is that a person who failing of character were very apparent, even so much so that it lead to purjery and lying to the entire nation boldface. However it is Bush who is considered more the liar even though it is highly unlikely that he knowledgeably ever lied to the American people. I think the reason is that Clinton apologized for his actions and did so articulately while Bush will never be able to apologize for he did not lie and for his incompetencies he is unable to do so because it would serve as propaganda that would et troops in the field killed. Also he defends himself inarticulately, he would never have been elected as a lier as Bill Clinton was because he suck at telling what he believes to be the truth let alone lying.
There's more, but i'm too lazy to continue copying and pasting.
At first i just read their posts and snickered at their silliness. They never seem to provide proof, they just regurgitate talking points they saw on Fox Noise. Then it occurred to me that letting them get away with talking this nonsense might actually influence some other non suspecting minds. The typical audience of the site is teens and young adults after all. They probably don't pay much attention to politics and might be getting a good deal of their political updates from teamxbox.
So i've started responding. It's actually quite fun...
now, why did i post this? I dunno... just felt like sharing. If you're bored check out the discussions there and feel free to jump in and set some of these loons straight. For a while, the wingnuts were in control but it's getting a little more balanced now as more members like myself have gotten fed up of the wingnut fud over there :)