One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun - Kotaku Comments

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

Rectangle — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:36:09 MST

You mentioned drag racing in your email to the Sun. These kids were NOT drag racing! They were street racing. Drag racing is performed at a legitimate track under conditions that are much safer for the participants and bystanders. Drag racing is not illegal. Street racing is. I know that your crusade is against the bad stigma that video games receive. I'm just informing you of another stigma that is threatening yet another hobby in the US and Canada. Please use the terms correctly. They are not interchangable. You are not alone in your mistake, of course. Tons of people do it every day. It is particularly damaging when someone in the press makes the mistake, however. Though they rarely care. I would not shed a tear if street racing died tomorrow. But it won't. Ironically, one of the ways to decrease the occurance of street racing is to promote and build legitimate drag racing tracks. But the stigma against drag racing shuts down lots of tracks each year, with very few being built to replace them. The only alternatives to people who want to race is to street race or to not race at all. I'm sure you can see that adrenaline ends up winning in a lot of horribly unfortunate circumstances.

Rectangle

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

macdeth — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:43:43 MST

"Defense" = AMERICAN english "Defence" = BRITISH english The reason why I think it's important to "whine" about an article such as this is because of public perception. Public perception will lead to either support or rejection to a politician's motives. It's important to remember that once a story makes a headline and gets publicity, no amount of back-peddling or apologies from the editors will make as big a splash as the originating article. Hence, only about 50% of the people who heard about the wrong-doing actually knows that it's BS. The other 50%, however, are still walking around thinking that what they heard before is still fact. You can discount them as the subject pops up but by then, these ideas have already made an impact on their way of thinking.

macdeth

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

Omnitron — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:57:28 MST

Regarding the Tipper Gore vs. 2 Live Crew affair, no sensible person was going to listen to a woman named "Tipper" in the first place. It's also interesting to note that our dear friend, Jack Thompson, was part of that little crusade. He failed, just as he will in his current whirlwind of stupidity. Skitzo did a respectable job. A few misspellings and grammatical errors aren't anything to groan about these days. When you look at most online correspondence, being comprehensible to the person you're communicating with is good enough. Our Emails and posts needn't exude Shakespearian beauty. But I do think that anything you write to a news publication must be as legible and articulate as possible. Accuracy in your opinion makes little difference in the world of print; editors won't take a letter seriously if it reads like your English teacher's worst nightmare (rest in peace Ms. McCrotchety). My father laid an amusing quote on me once: "The difference between truth and bullshit is that truth is well-written."

Omnitron

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

the shipbuilder — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:44:05 MST

I don't personally worry or care about this type of negative publicity, nor do I think it will matter at all in the long run/result in censorship of any form. There's too much disposable income waiting to be spent on video games containing graphic violence. For reference, look at how successful Tipper Gore's campaign against 2 Live Crew was.

the shipbuilder

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

nojok3 — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:31:10 MST

I'm not sure if you guys re-typed the email but if you didn't there were a few misspellings from the person he sent the email to as well. Defense, not defence two not 2 (supposedly proper english)

nojok3

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

Pixelantes Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:22:03 MST

I don't know Aaron, that thing actually read better than the letter to Toronto Sun.

Pixelantes Anonymous

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

aaron — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:56:41 MST

"...killed a taxi cab driver on Need for Speed wondering why the paper." Would it kill you guys to proofread your entries just once before posting?

aaron

One Reader's Battle with the Toronto Sun

Zoglog — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:45:34 MST

It's thier paper and they can write the story as they wish =p. I don't see what the point of whining is. In fact this reminds me of parents whining to the FCC about inapproprate content on radio..... It's almost like Jack Thompson.... Nobody is forcing you to read their article =p

Zoglog