Whoever thought 'viral' could become an even dirtier word?

Ha. I waited ages to make that joke. Nicely gone off the boil now, though. We got a nice "don't worry about swine flu and for god's sake, wash you hands" email in the office, promptly setting off a torrent of jokes. Isn't it wonderful how a minor crisis sets of the comedian in all of us?

-Aporkolypse
-Armagammon
-Tried to ring the phone line, got crackling
-Something about a black guy being president when pigs fly, swine flu etc.
-Summer seems to be trotter than it was last year
-Seems like avian flu has come 'back' for more
-'Snout that bad

...okay, the last three didn't happen. I just wanted to see if there's any stray drops of pun to be wrung out here. But it's got everyone thinking about other pandemics, as well it might. For my part I humbly submit possibly the best and yet least-researched internet phenomenon - the World of Warcraft Corrupted Blood Outbreak.
Here is a picture of lots of dead people. If only characters stayed dead in WoW, the plague might be considered a mercy.
How fantastic is that? The Corrupted Blood incident is, apparently, lauded as the first "real world" event in the game - that is, the first gamestate where the parameters of reality rather than fantasy were what caused players to adopt certain behaviours.
Briefly: A curse that killed players over time was introduced into a new, high-level area. The idea was that the characters in that area were strong enough that they'd certainly be hampered by the affliction, but it wouldn't actually kill them - not if they were careful. But Blizzard (the developers) tried something knew with this curse - it was, as the WHO would say, Level 5: "Human-to-human transmission in at least two countries".
The idea being that players within the area would 'infect' each other and it would all be a really exciting laugh, though nothing serious.
But, as anyone who saw 28 Days Later knows, you can't contain a virus forever. Evil life found its dastardly way, incubating within the summoned creatures and pets of characters, escaping the area and spreading across the other, low-level areas, where characters who 'caught' it were too weak to, well, not die. A map of the virus' spread would be so cool, but alas, none.
The coolest thing was in the way people reacted:
-A couple of the early carriers adopted a malicious Patient Zero-like attitude, purposefully infecting as many as possible before they were put down by vigilante mobs.
-The well-meaning players attempted to heal the sick, almost certainly at the cost of their characters.
-Plenty of people ran for the hills. Cowards.
-Blizzard attempted to enforce a quarantine - which, you guess it zombie fans, was broken by some idiot and caused chaos, since it allowed the virus into areas where players has been deliberately packed into a high density.
Couldn't find a good video, so just watch this and pretend it's nerdier:


As an epilogue to this, the Corrupted Blood Incident has been used a springboard by anthropologists who may now use online world to test models of both viral infection, and terrorist cell formation.
How cool is that?
Very.
Shh, it is.

Let's stop thinking and start wanking

Enough of this. Can we all stop using the 'adjective' "wanky"? I'm all for the evolution of language and all that, and actioning things sounds like a great laugh, but there's a line between organically refining our communications, and pointless bandwagoning*. Language as I see it has a dual purpose - information, and social cohesion, these haven't changed since prehistory.

Information: "Oh no, a tiger! Look out!"

Social Cohesion: "Hey, do you remember that tiger? That was so rad, man."

Both are wholly legitimate. The species survives through awareness of the environment, and successful mating and group action. Therefore, I'd like to suggest that language 'evolves' when it a) becomes better able to describe the subject (external, internal, real or metaphysical - and one can see this is equally applicable in a creative sense), or b) better facilitates social cohesion by helping two people think in the same way, or feel some sort of empathy.

Wanky, to me, does neither of these. It has a couple of attractive qualities for the user:

- It says "I don't like this, but it's beyond my mental capacity and/or inclination to tell you why". What are you being paid to do, for fuck's sake?
- It does that whole low-level-swearing that people find edgy and cool nowadays. Good for you, Bill Hicks. You tell them.

My contention is that it's not only inefficient, but actively damaging to the discourse. Why care? First and foremost, because I'm a sentimental and pernickety young fool.

Secondly, it fucks up the way you think. George Orwell suggested that:

"...it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts"

Language is our door to understanding and empathy. Please, try not to treat it like a catflap.

...and if you must have 'foolish thoughts', make them original.



*see, I'm perfectly capable of verbifying a noun when I need to.

With a megaphone and nothing to say

Not a great start. But maybe I'll get better soon.

...hey, I've got an idea! Why not follow me and find out?

You wouldn't perform an AWESOMELY SWEET BANK ROBBERY...

Really really sorry for the lack of updates, everyone (mum), but it's been a busy time at work and it turns out moving to Lambeth takes a lot more effort than I thought.

But I still had time to notice this on an old DVD I got for christmas:



There aren't many adverts that actually the binary opposite of what they're intended to do, but here is one. How did this happen?

Ring, ring.

Hello, Federation Against Copyright Theft, how may I help you?
O hai this is ur agency. You want an advert abt d0wnloading and haxx0ring amirite?
That's right. I don't really understand the magic of advertising but I suppose you'll want to highlight the problems of downloading and de-emphasise the benefits?
Lol! No. Ya know what wld be 100% sw33t?
Is it, "achieving the purpose of our comms"?
We could have liek fast-cut camera shots, whip pans, and a kickin' rad Matrix soundtrack so that everyone knows that downloading is like being in Snatch. Totally kewl.
Um...
...except even better cause you can't be hurt! And if we don't show the faces of the peeps who get stolen from then it looks like a victimless crime!
Yes, but that isn't...
Oh oh AND then cut to a girl downloading something, and the download bar is filling up in abt 5 seconds even though she's torrented about 3 gigs of Heroes. We can make illegal downloading look not just danger-free, but rly rly quick and easy!
O rly?
Ya rly. And then BAM! The strapline... wait for it... Piracy. It's a crime.
Wow. That is totally mindblowing. My mind is, like, blown. Thankyou, agency, have some more money! :D

I'm firing up bittorrent tonight, just out of spite.

Well? Do ya?

So the 'Advanced Medical Institute' is ignoring the ASA's ruling that it must pull out early, with regard to the Longer Lasting Sex poster campaign. And this on the same week that Virgin Atlantic is applauded by others for its testostofest 25th anniversary campaign. Why is sex seen as a bit of harmless fun in some cases, degrading to our fragile minds in others? If anything, Virgin has offered a more graphic treatment of sex, while it is the AMI that have resorted to the abstraction of language:

The ASA is, in fact, slamming the ad for promoting a prescription product, which is undisputedly against guidelines. But can we believe that this has absolutely nothing to do with the 450 complaints received on grounds of taste? Personally, well done them for capturing attention (though using the word 'sex' is a bit of a gimmie), shame its a miss-sell. The controversy, if it can be fanned into a scandal, might generate even more notice. Whether you think that's a job well done is probably down to what you think advertising is for.

That Gross Oversimplification

Man, that is some Web 3.1-level satire right there.

But seriously, does this signal the end of the 'everything shop'? And should we be glad of that?