First up at bat.. PETA protests the famous Flying Fish market. They are claiming this is animal abuse, and is like “throwing dead kittens”. Does anyone there realize two important things? 1. The fish are already DEAD and 2. They are being purchased and will eventually be eaten by customers of the market. The third important thing is that this cements the notion that PETA and its followers are nuts.
Who in their right mind actually protests the handling of already dead fish that are on their way to someone’s dinner plate? Who has this kind of time and why on earth do you care that much about fish that are being sold as food? Get real PETA, find something useful to protest like puppy mills, dog fighting, but not the “mistreatment” of already dead fish.
Next up is the L4D2 boycott by gamers, who claim it’s too soon and that Valve hasn’t come up with promised additional content for the first L4D (Left 4 Dead) and that 12 months is too soon to follow up with a sequel. Um… that makes no sense really. L4D2 isn’t even scheduled to come out until Q4 of 09, so there’s plenty of time for Valve to release additional content for the first L4D. I’m pretty happy we’re getting a sequel in less than 24 months when gamers often have to wait over 2 years for a sequel to a game, suffer through months of hype and often are disappointed by the final release because it doesn’t live up to the constant hype of [Game title] Sequel #X.
I honestly want to know what gamers think they are going to accomplish by doing this? Unless they get huge numbers of people who sign up for this protest, and here’s the important part actually stick with their stance of NOT BUYING the game when it’s released, their protest won’t do anything to Valve. In a market where games are released world wide and on multiple platforms, a protest of thousands means nothing against the millions of people who are likely to pick up the game anyway.
I swear reading stories like this, and ones about a woman who sued because she didn’t know Crunchberries weren’t real fruit, the guy who shot and killed his grandson for cutting into his watermelon too soon and men putting out Craigslist ads to have their wife raped as part of revenge or the guy who raped his unconscious girlfriend while streaming it live to the internet; I give up any hope for the human race. These stories and the continual parade of stupid, horrifying and astounding acts of hatred make me want to pack up a towel, find the nearest space shuttle and head out to the next hospitable planet because this one is doomed.
