Facebook: Murder, Death, Kill

Facebook has backed down after the controversy surrounding a video showing masked man beheading woman in Mexico and canned the video. But that it was there in the beginning, while breast feeding images were banned, speaks volumes about the site, and if we are honest, society in general. And yes, I use it but it doesn't mean I approve of everything it gets up to. These are real people in these snuff movies, not actors. Its one thing watching a Hollywood slasher movie, quite another clicking on a link that shows real murder. Worrying that some think its perfectly okay to watch.
Facebook themselves seem to be fine with it though: "the public should be free to view beheading videos then condemn the content" Dear me, what is that cotton-mouthed pish supposed to mean?
"Hey chums, look at this video of some geezer being beheaded! Terrible isn't it? It should be banned...wait, I've got another one showing people being tortured, disgusting eh? I don't know why they show these things ... hang on, wait until you see this video
of a woman being set on fire, its well wicked!"
Where are we heading? Don't we realise that by clicking these awful links, we are in fact encouraging more sickos to make them? In the same way that watching child pornography makes the viewer as guilty of child abuse as those who did the actual abusing. Look I know we used to gather at public executions in the 1700s and make a spectacle out of it but are we not meant to advance? And I suspect if the film showed animal cruelty, the outrage would have come a lot sooner.
It all comes down to this: how would you feel if it was your son, daughter, wife, husband, friend that was murdered and the video posted on the net for all to see? Context! Videos of murders, rape, torture and cruelty that are clicked on on a social media site are not concerned with reporting the news. Atrocities have to be exposed but to show a human being's last moments on earth in a video loop denies the victim of dignity, desensitises us to violence and makes us more callous.
I'm sorry, but videos of beheadings are videos of murder, and there cannot be any justification for showing them. It's nothing to do with freedom of speech or terrorism, it's murder, and posting and watching such imagery makes you complicit in that crime.

Playstation 4

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs

Wednesday 11pm saw gamers huddle around their laptops,iPads,etc to watch the live announcememt of Sony's new console, Playstation 4. And as a fan who has been the Playstation since it first surfaced back in 1995, I expected to be skipping on rainbows of ecstasy like a giddy schoolgirl by the end of it (forgetting the fact im now 41.) I dont care what anyone says, there is a curious thrill about the unveiling of a new videogame console. I was stunned by Wipeout (PS1), KO'd by Resident Evil 2 (PS2) and even swooned over Motorstorm when that hit Playstation 3 in 2007. Im not ashamed by this, its what you get if you give a boy an Oric 1 for Christmas in 1983.
So it is with great sadness that after admitting all of the above, the Playstation 4 announcementleft me slightly cold. Not quite sub zero cold, (more like tee shirt in March cold) but I was certainly not overheating in anticipation of pixelated rapture. I think it was all the talk of "social media" and sharing on Facebook/Twitter that did it. Sorry Sony but I just want to play VIDEOGAMES, im not in the least bit interested in posting scores on Facebook or challenging Twitter followers to online races. I simply want to slip a game into the console and smite weird beasties to kingdom come. Balls to Facebook. Im old fashioned like that. Its nothing new of course, theres already a ton of places on teh interwebz that use social networking sites to share folks interests, and fine some people like that kind of thing but it doesn't boil my kettle im afraid. (Reading comments on forums and underneath news stories about PS4, im not alone either.)
As for the Playstation 4 being able to predict what game you might be interested in and downloading it automatically? I hope we'll be able to disable that nonsense. (Im being dragged into the future kicking and screaming Laughs Out Loud.)
Thankfully things start to look up on the gaming side of things. This is why we're here afterall! Watch Dogs got me most interested (see the trailer above) as did Killzone: Shadow Fall. I didn't notice a huge difference graphically to PS3 (even when a Evolution developer waffled about "even the suede on the car seats has a direction") but as time goes on, game designers will learn how best to squeeze the most OOMPH out of the machine. We didn't get to see any sports titles (or was I asleep?) and I can't wait to see how a NFL or golf game looks on Playstation 4.
Unfortunately we also didn't get to see what the actual console looked like either so fanboys will have to make do with gawking at the new DualShock 4 joypad, complete with touchscreen and LED tracker. Looks a little rubbery but I quite like it. The screen on the pads front reminding me of the Dreamcast's VMU. Speaking of older consoles, as a RetroHead backwards compatabilty is important to me so I was a tad miffed to learn that PS1, 2 and 3 games will be available via Playstation 4’s cloud service. So no using my original copy of Tombi or Yakuza then? Bah! Happy they will be available in some form though.
I realise this started on a downer with the Facebook sharing side of things but I am quite excited about Playstation 4. Its just (obviously) not the mind blowing transition I experienced going from Oric to MegaDrive to Playstation back in those wilderness years.


DualShock 4

Here are some games that we got a glimpse of:

Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)
Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerrilla)
Diablo III (Blizzard)
DriveClub (Evolution)
Deep Down (Capcom)
Destiny (Bungie)


DriveClub

Wires In The Ether

I just found this online:

Should You Hire a Social Media Manager?
"Did you know you can also outsource your social media? There are people out there whose job is to handle other peoples’ social media marketing, saving them oodles of time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Constant Contact, you name it".

So this is it then. Evolve 2.0 The Modern Soul. The humble chat room has arisen into something that nobody can escape or ignore. (And please excuse me being overly dramatic here, its just my way). Some internet users a few years ago claimed they would never sign up to socila media sites but now it would seem they will have to. Or miss out.
And those note yet 'webbed up' are unaware of the monster that lurks in the wings. It will come for them too, as surely as the microwave nudged the oven onto the subs bench.
If we are so 'internet minded' that people are suggesting we hire 'social media managers' then the wires have truly gotten under our human skin.