Category: Opinions

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Million Dollar Prize Spam Email – What Fun!

Every now and them I open my Junk Email folder and trawl through the trash like a man combing the beach during low tide. You never know what wonders you’ll find.

Most of the time it’s filled with the same sad messages begging for a bank account to deposit their money before moving to America. Or donors looking to give up their mega fortunes. Or flaccid ads about penis improvement.

But sometimes there are real winners – or, in my case, emails promises that I was the winner all along.

Titled simply “FYI” – a modest subject, as if reminded me gently that I had forgotten something – I received a spam email with a message informing me that I had just won “The Publisher’s Clearing House Draw for August 31st 2017!!!”

The case prize amount was no less than 1,000,000.00 USD!!!!!!

I’d love to meet an unnamed publisher who does random draws for a million dollars – especially when people who don’t even read their non-existent books.

Perhaps the kicker was that the spam came from a compromised email account (or maybe mail server) belonging to a law firm. In fine print, below the signature area, it still had a full paragraph of all the legal mumbo jumbo about client confidentiality.

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I love Game of Thrones, but also sort of hate it now

I love watching Game of Thrones, but I also sort of hate it now.

Like approximately one billion other men in their 30s, I read the books (the first time, quite literally over a decade ago when they were first available) and came to the show with my head already filled with the mad plotting of Lannisters, Baratheons and other loveable villains.

The most recent seasons (starting with season 6, and becoming amplified during season 7) feel like a very different show. Sure, the characters are all the same (to an extent… more on that later) and the plotlines and locations too (again, more on that), but the way the show FEELS to watch… well that’s different.

Seasons 1-5, which were closely based on the books before going into uncharted territory, were slow and methodical. The plotting and characters moving trickled like molasses and the larger story effectively moved at the pace of a soap opera (save for the “sweeps” episodes at the end of each season).

Since then, the pacing and “batshit” have become turbocharged.

To give a few examples, it once took an entire season for a group of characters to get from point A to point B (think of Brienne and Jaime in season 3; Jorah and Tyrion in season 5).

Now, we have the opposite. Euron Greyjoy can be in the Red Keep one day and on the other side of the continent protecting Casterly Rock the next. Tyrion can simultaneously be plotting on Dragonstone, and then find himself in the fields near King’s Landing with ten thousand Dothraki riders – all at the same pace it takes a dragon to reach there.

I assume the showrunners don’t want us to believe characters can magically warp from one place to the next; but rather, than large swaths of time have passed between individual scenes – but it’s not conveyed very effectively (especially compared to the glacial pace we were all trained to expect).

Typical hints of time passage are missing. Characters look the same in one scene from the next, with no distinguishing marks to show their journey, or even seasonal / daytime variations.

Adding to this, the major events that now take place on a nearly episodic basis have become borderline insane (often in a good way).

In season two, we had the Battle of the Blackwater.

By comparison, in season six, we had an episode with Danny going all out inferno on the Dothraki leadership and gaining an army; another episode with the epic “hold the door” zombie chase; the near full-length Battle of the Bastards; and the “explosive” (sorry) Baelor.

That’s roughly the equivalent of four seasons worth of buildup and big events in just 10 episodes (and just off the top of my head).

The result is that the show now feels more like a sprint than a marathon.

While each of these episodes were incredibly satisfying and great television, they somehow felt like the payoff was lower (with the exception of Baelor; that instrumental score at the start of the episode built a season’s worth of tension into ten minutes).

Don’t get me wrong – I was one of those people watching Bastards and wondering if the showrunners were actually going to kill off Jon for real. That scene with him sinking under the weight of the muddy soldiers was brilliant. But compared to the slow, dripping build-up of Ned Stark’s misfortunes in season 1 and Oberyn in season 4, it felt like something was missing.

And it’s not just the pacing.

Earlier I mentioned how all the same characters, locations and plotlines were still “the same” during this mad dash. But that’s not entirely true.

One of the problems with the speedy pacing is that there’s less time for character development. The first five seasons sometimes took an entire year for a character to make one minute change. Now, the writing has had to fall in line with the new pace to less than satisfying results.

To give one example: Tyrion. His early distrust for all authority and “fuck it all” attitude that involved a plan to drink himself to death in season 4, somehow distilled into becoming a loyal advisor for Danny. At the same time, all his pessimism, snark and clever verbal ripostes (not to mention his drinking and sleeping around) also got the boot with little attention.

Character transformations are the cornerstones of good storytelling, and give purpose to reading or watching something to the very end. However, we already saw Tyrion’s arc during the first several seasons (a rise and fall), only to have him rise again (as expected) but without the same level of adversity as before.

When he arrived in the fighting pits with Jorah in season 5, he was quite literally at rock bottom (having fallen from Hand of the King to a borderline carnival slave). As an audience, we want him to do better, to get out of the mud and shit – which he did. But that turnaround happened over the course of… what, one episode? Two conversations at most? Versus the earlier season long struggles between rising and falling.

The same sort of pendulum swing can be said for other characters. We saw Jaime transform from a series villain, into sympathetic antihero, into potential redemption story during the first 5 seasons. Then, in season 6 (and parts of 5 truth be told), his arc… back to square one more or less?

All his changes (discovering his conscience and route to redemption) feel like they’ve been put on halt just to advance the rest of the plot around him (and put him in some massive set pieces).

And then there’s Jorah’s season long deterioration with the horrific grey scale disease… only to be cured, again, in one episode.

I could go on about other characters, but I’m sure it’s already been covered elsewhere on some message boards.

Regardless, my point with the pacing and character development isn’t so much what happens (most of it is exciting and riveting to watch) but rather how it happens. When changes happen to fast, when build-ups take 6 minutes instead of 6 episodes, the payoff feel slightly empty.

It’s almost like that all the stakes are relying on our love for characters we’ve watched for years, more than what’s going on with their current stories.

And that’s why part of me has come to hate the show (while still unfortunately loving it).

All the trappings and veneer of the earlier show are there, but the insides feel more hollow. We see the faces and bodies of the ones we love running around in and out of harm’s way, but they’re more like mannequins than the humans they were once portrayed as.

As such, I might venture as far as to say that the show has become “bad” television – not bad in the “time to cancel” kind of way, but more in the trashy good fun that’s still ambitious (though not quite at the level of Jupiter Ascending, of course).

At one point, Game of Thrones could have been compared to smarter fare like House of Cards (albeit, more of a medieval soap opera). There was so much plotting going on that entire message boards and YouTube channels devoted themselves (and still do, to some extent) to analyzing minute character details.

In the end, it’s still a show that’s great to watch, but no longer the cerebral think-fest it used to be (and which got countless of us addicted to it in the first place).

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Can we please stop playing Cards Against Humanity?

Tell me if this situation sounds familiar to you.

You’re in your early-to-mid thirties.

You’re at a party with friends.

There’s about 8-10 of you sitting around a table drinking.

You’re two beers in. Someone asks if anyone wants to play a board game.

Someone suggests “Werewolves.” Another tosses in “The Resistance.”

And then it happens.

“Wait! Did anyone bring Cards Against Humanity?”

Three people inevitably raise their hand. And the night unpleasantly takes its turn.

—

Most people I know love Cards Against Humanity (CAH). It’s that card game where one player draws a white card with a phrase. There are some blanks that need to be filled. All the other plays pick a card from their hand with rude or bizarre words written on it, and toss it in the middle.

The first person then reads over the words to fill in the blank and selects a winner. Sometimes the final phrase when read out loud is hilarious. More often it’s nonsense. Everyone laughs. Win-win.

It’s like Mad-Libs, but for a group.

Or so it seems.

—

To be honest, I used to really enjoy CAH too. It feels like a thousand years ago when a friend of a friend brought a dirty paper back to a house party. In it were some cards he printed himself on his shitty office printer.

It wasn’t a bad time. But then the following thousand years happened. Now, every time I hear someone suggest we play that game, my eyes automatically roll. I start wondering how long it will take me to finish that six pack and be on my way.

Simply put: I’m sick and tired of playing Cards Against Humanity. I really am.

I even kind of hate it.

There’s a few reasons why. The first is how the game gives people a false feeling of cleverness.

More often than not, after a round is played, it’ll go something like this:

One person screams. “Oh no, you didn’t!”

Other person laughs and nods their head maniacally, like they just pulled a fast one on everyone.

Other players see what card was played to answer “What does Vladimir Putin enjoy for breakfast?”

“Pac-Man uncontrollably guzzling cum.”

Or maybe the card was “Coat hanger abortions.”

Laughter all around.

Oh, no they didn’t.

Well, of course they did. It’s the most random and bizarre card in their hand. The other choices were “Unicorns,” “Vikings,” or “Catapults.”

Even though any of those three would have made more sense (grammatically, and in terms of what a person can actually consume for breakfast), inevitably people gravitate towards the strange and obscene.

Naturally they will play that card and feel clever, even if it’s there’s nothing clever about it. It was simply written on the card for them. It’s not like they just conjured up that image out of their head.

Worse, they’ll be rewarded. The player selecting the winner will likely succumb to their devilish deed and award them one point for that nonsense.

And that’s where the flaw in the game lies. Not entirely with the nonsensical cards and simple structure (which is quite good), but with the way people play it.

It doesn’t award people for clever word play (unless you happen to be playing with a bunch of other lit snobs like myself). It rewards them for picking out whichever card from their hands makes them giggle the most.

Even though other cards would be more clever, or a better fit, there’s always the usual suspects.

“Mecha Hitler” and so forth.

Because the cards are pre-written, no one gets to be clever. They just act on instinct. They just pick the first card that leaps at them.

Like any number of bad YouTube videos, flash games or web cartoons, spontaneity is all that counts. Doing the most random thing, regardless of the consequences, is how you win. The game then rewards people for having the shortest attention span possible.

And that sucks.

The game basically rewards players for being stupid. Because people aren’t thinking about how to make the most ironic or grammatically correct phrase. Because people are too busy picturing Pac-Man downing a blue bucket of ghost cum.

—

CAH does work in the sense that it’s an icebreaker. Plenty of people (myself included) have noticed how playing board games gets people to open up.

In a sense, it forces people to socialize and become extroverted. By seeing how people play, we get learn more about people. Some people will take charge. Others might cheat. Some will go sit in the corner and talk over wine while the rest game on.

CAH at least manages to keep people entertained. It keeps the party together. But for the love of God, there are so many better games out there. Games where people can actually be clever.

Telephone Pictionary comes to mind. A game where you write anything on the first page; pass the stack; the second player draws what is written; pass the stack; the third writes what is drawn; and so forth.

For one, people get to choose what to write. You can start with something boring like “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Or you can go for the crude “Dick fingers.” Either way, you see where people’s minds take them and get a better sense of how people think than with CAH.