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"The Comments Russell Brand Made About Sex Deeply Offend Me." - Georgina Baillie

I mean look, I like Russell Brand, I think he’s kinda what this country needs when we’re constantly surrounded by homophobes, bullies and just general twats. Brandy is a confident character who’s not afraid to be who he is; maybe he plays that up a bit and is totally false but at the end of the day he gets more pussy than most of us, right? Thus lies the point British-stereotype readers.

So on the point of this whole prank call palaver the newspapers are having a field day over: does anyone find it slightly ironic that the girl in question, Georgina Baillie, is a “Voluptua” in a vampire themed dance group called the Satanic Sluts? We know voluptuous means very, very sexy but after I UrbanDictionary-ed the word “Voluptua” I found it to mean “beyond voluptuous”. The lady at the centre of the controversy is clearly not a girl who is afraid of her sexuality then considering she wanted to be a Page Three girl.

Now, I’m not going to pretend to understand the whole situation because frankly I don’t but I just found it confusing trying to understand how the girl could be so “hurt” by some phonecalls that pay homage to the kind of conversation that goes on in all schools. You know, schools, where teenage kids go. Shock horror! Was the world not aware what little Timmy talks about with his mates?

I don’t agree with prank phonecalling and I certainly don’t agree with upsetting senior citizens. I don’t even think the kind of thing Brandy and Wossy did was appropriate but look… I just don’t get how you can play the “innocent” card when your career revolves around the words “Satanic Sluts”.

If you’d like to know more about Georgina Baillie and how innocent she really is just search for her Bebo.

Naughty Anime Makes Men Chauvinistic. Fact That.

Kristin Reilly, producer of down-the-pan games site Gamespot.com said this:

Okay girls and guys - I need a favor from all of you.

We’re having Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayer’s on the show on On The Spot on Thursday at 4pm PST. Essentially it’s chicks in bikinis slaying zombies.

Obviously I’m NOT happy about the objectification of women in this game or how degrading it is. I actually nearly pulled the game from our show until I realized this would be a PRIME opportunity for female gamers to show a united front and make developers hear our voice - and realize that WE ARE here and aren’t going to take this bullpucky degradation quietly anymore.

This is where I’m hoping everyone can help me out. I’m going to be the host picking the audience questions. I would LOVE for you girls to chime in with questions for the developer. You can watch the show here and email in questions to onthespot (at) gamespot (dot) com.

Thanks so much for everyone’s help in advance!!!!!

The Giant Bomb community found this:

Kristin Reilly Thinks Women Shouldn't Pose In Bikinis.

The Sammy said hypocrite.

Bumble Bee is NOT a shit hot cool-dude-radio-talking-super-warrior. He is a spy.

Not A Camaro.

Madonna Is Getting A Bit Old For That Kinda Cleavage IMHO!

Let’s have a disco to celebrate Madonna’s 50th.  What you have to do is close the curtain, get your Mum to keep altering the dimmer switch on your lights, get a packet of Cheese & Onion crisps and cherryade and play these songs one after another, dance like Mark Corrigan. Enjoy.

Amazing.

P.S. Sorry about the lack of Like A Virgin. It’s against the law to play that song in the UK or something.

P.P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADONNA!

I sent an email to the GiantBomb team the other day regarding the problem that seems to be devouring Internet culture of late. It’s not solo to games — I’ve seen it happen in music and movie forums. It seems that across the Internet people are constantly getting put down for their opinions.

The word “fanboy” has just been put in the dictionary and literally means “an individual who is devoted to a single fannish subject, or to a single point of view”.

I find the word really derogatory and downright irritating - difference of opinion should be challenged and discussed but the other party should never be put down. Whatever your hobby or interest you should never have to worry about your opinion being degraded because it conflicts with the views of others.

Here is my original email:

“I speak to you after observing some rather hostile threads regarding Guerilla’s Killzone 2. Given the nature of the game (being a PS3 exclusive) many gamers flocked to the threads to talk about how much better Gears Of War 2 (360 exclusive) looks or vice versa. Now regardless of the relevence of this kind of discussion I must pose to you the question: have gamers finally lost their opinion?

It seems to me that throughout the Internet (and in some cases even the real-world now) no one is “allowed” to have an opinion for fear of their views being relegated to “fanboy” material.

I see so many threads from people who sugarcoat their opinions in order to save themselves from a backlash and, hell, even journalists are not spared. If one particular journalist (hypothetically) rates Killzone 2 higher than (for example) a Gears Of War 2 he “must be a PS3 fanboy” — regardless of this being his honest and subjective opinion.

It’s certainly not something that’s going to keep me up at night but it worries me that people are seeing it necessary to adapt their opinion’s to make them seem more credible.

Do you think the term “fanboy” has destroyed our ability to share without fear our honest opinion on video games (or any other field of life) due to instantly being discredited as “ignorant” because it conflicts with another’s views?”

Thoughts?

The New last.FM Layout Has Caused Outrage From It's Community

Sometime last week I took my weekly visit to last.FM to find the website had been redesigned by an 8-year old. Or so I thought. Apparently the new look has not only destroyed any functionality the site once had, it’s also destroyed all credibility visitors once had in the site. In fact nearly 8,700 users have revolted against the new layout in (ironically) a last.FM group entitled “Bring back the old last.FM”.

I don’t think admins have had much to say on the overwhelmingly negative response as of yet apart from what is catalogued in this post. Interestingly the same day of the redesign The Times posted an interesting article about last.FM’s advertising scheme incorporated into the new layout.

In fact so strong are peoples feelings on the new site that videos have been popping up all over YouTube registering their dislike of the new layout:

Having been a member of last.FM for 4 years now I’m not so pissed off at the absolutely revolting look of the website - more the fact I haven’t a clue how to get to where I want to go within the website.

If the last.FM team were to change back to the old design they would gain a lot of respect from the mega audience of users they have. Things could easily go either way though.

Jeff Gerstmann & Ryan Davis' GiantBomb.com

I’ve been tracking GiantBomb.com for a good few months now - reading the articles they’ve been posting on their makeshift blog and closely following the podcast they provide. Two reasons: Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis are my favourite video game journalists of all time — you could probably say they were somewhat inspirational to me for wanting to get into video game journalism a bit myself; the second reason being that GiantBomb sounded so different to it’s direct competitors.

And now it’s launched I can confirm that it is.

I was a bit sceptical when I learned that the site was going to become (basically) another Wikipedia. But this site is so much better than what I expected. What it essentially does is give the user the ability to fill out the content themself. That means there are tons of user reviews (already!), you can tag video games with certain concepts (e.g. online gaming, silent protagonist, etc) and in the long haul this will create an absolutely huge video game encyclopaedia. It’s amazing because it’s the kind of route I would have taken GamesMainFrame if I had the know how.

This site will allow you to find every game that ever had a “Flamethrower” in it. And it does it all from simple but intuitive community building. You are encouraged to add articles by earning points. Points obviously mean you’re a more respected member and so eventually get to sidestep moderation.

In theory it sounds ingenious. Time will tell how the site develops and whether the users actively get involved but I think they will. I’ve already made a few changes to the site.

I’m not being paid to write this by the way. I just think it’s a really, really good idea.

Check it out.