Thursday, June 01, 2006

Wow. Just WOW.

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure that this little piece of information will be equally startling, alarming and offensive to pretty much all of my friends, not just those of the Anabaptist/Pacifist persuasion.

If you can't tell by the title of this post alone, I'm sitting here at my desk, (while Ella naps and my homemade pizza dough rises), shaking my head in utter disbelief. Well, disappointment anyway.

"Blessed are the peacemakers." -Jesus Christ
Amen and amen.

4 comments:

Makeesha said...

I saw this as well - is it serious?

Christine said...

Oh, it's serious - I saw it on the LA Times website too. Gosh, that makes me want to throw up....

Makeesha said...

icky icky

Anonymous said...

Yes, the Talk to Action essay is serious. This is a real video game, that teaches Christian supremacy.

Here's an update from Talk to Action. "Who's Watching the Boys? (Part 6)

Imagine: in one hand, you hold cold pizza or your favorite caffeine-loaded cola, while with the other, you command a Christian militia battling the forces of the AntiChrist. Times Square is ablaze with video billboards and piled high with the bodies of New Yorkers. A goat-footed, horned demon, (controlled by your 13-year-old Christian gamer buddy Mikey) emerges from a United Nations Humvee to feast on one of your snipers. But then one of your tanks gacks the demon in a big fireball -- along with three nurses from the U.N. Now in a gnarlier game, there might be demon and nurse giblets hanging from the lamp posts, but in Left Behind: Eternal Forces, there's no blood and guts, just dead bodies. (As Mikey might say, it's kinda wack but whatev.) Apparently this cleanness makes the slaughter of New Yorkers who refuse to convert, somehow more Christ-like, just as when the Christian commandos shout "Praise the Lord!" after a fresh New Yorker kill.

But for now, the apocalyptic battle lulls. Across the battlefield, you spot a gold sportscar that crashed into a delivery truck for your favorite pizza parlor. Pizza boxes have spilled out, and cola cans are rolling around (time out: Mikey is hungry again). And on one of the Times Square digital billboards, there's a mesmerizing video clip playing. It's a promo for a PG-13 movie. The graphics are wicked good: flash video with radio sound. And it's stupid funny. Your voice cracks as you laugh at the video billboard playing in Times Square above the gigantamongous pile of bloodless, dead New Yorkers. You watch the video play through its 15-second loop, unaware that this in-game ad is also watching you.

It's cutting-edge Israeli technology -- a piece of software inserted directly into Left Behind: Eternal Forces, software that cannot be blocked or removed -- and without your knowledge or permission, it tracks you. This in-game ad software records how often you play the video game, at what time of day and for how long, what game play areas you visit (like Times Square, Soho, Chinatown, or the United Nations Building), which video ads and product placements you view, where your computer is located geographically, and who you are demographically. It monitors your choices and behavior, collates data, and reports back in real-time to... whom? For what purposes? Do you know?

READ ON: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/21/23153/9497