Playing Starcraft makes you a mental

I’m not a psycho killer. In fact, I’m not any kind of killer. I work routine jobs, hang out with my friends, and go on the internet. But if you had access to my internet history, and analysed posts I have made on messageboards/twitter/fanfiction websites, you could probably paint a picture of me as some deranged psycho who is mentally unstable and liable to snap any minute.

At least that’s the impression I’m getting from the Wall Street Journal. In the aftermath of the shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, along with an number of other people, in Arizona this week, the WSJ published the article ‘Postings of a Troubled Mind: Accused shooter wrote on gaming site of his job woes, rejection by women.’ The article then goes on to dissect the content of messageboard posts by the ‘accused’ shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. I bet any of you who have ever written on the internet about problems getting a job, or how you have no luck with women are wondering why the FBI haven’t hunted you down before now, aren’t you. What heinous material to be posting! And on the interwebs no less!

Now, before anyone starts to get angry about how I’m making light far too soon after this horrible tragedy, I will say that it is horrible. I know that. I mean no disrespect. I’m just trying to give some semblance of sanity to a world that has the media running rampant over every small scrap of material they can find around anything that the public considers ‘news’. And let me tell you, what counts as news is a very scary thing.

The article starts by summarising notes found scribbled around his house, saying things like ‘die bitch’ and ‘die cops’ on a letter from the congresswoman’s office, which I’m sure is somewhat relevant to the whole shooting thing. But then it moves into the messageboards. At first, a couple of lines the WSJ focuses on let you think that there is something of concern here. Apparently he was fixated on grammar, and yet he posted “I bet your hungry....Because i know how to cut a body open and eat you for more then a week. ;-)”. Unless he was fixated on bad grammar, that’s decisive evidence that he’s disturbed. Other lines published include him asking if anyone is angry all the time, or whether users would hit a “Handy Cap”, or some weird ranting ‘justification’ for rape. Okay, so it’s useful in painting the picture of him as a disturbed man who was not of sound mind when he committed the crime he is accused of.

But then they start using whatever posts they can find as evidence of his ‘insanity’. But these posts don’t add to the crazy. They’re just ordinary messageboard posts. Somehow, the WSJ is trying to use these as evidence that he is an insane motherfucker and somebody should have noticed earlier. I mean, of course, why wouldn’t you start to get worried when a guy is posting things such as these on the internet?

“How many stars are in the universe?”

“What do Chocolate cookies taste like?”

“This forum made me feel better J”

Under a topic he started called ‘Weight Lifting’ (Shock! Horror!) he “asked whether anyone else lifted. He described himself as 5 feet 10 inches tall and 155 pounds, and said he could do 65 push-ups, bench press 165 pounds, and do 25 pull-ups and 100 sit-ups, (thanks to the ab machine).”

Have you mused about the number of stars in the universe? Have you wondered about the taste of chocolate cookies? (Not me, I know what they taste like, but if I didn’t I’d definitely want to know) Have you ever posted information and advice about your current fitness obsession on a messageboard? Then the WSJ clearly thinks you are mentally disturbed, and you should probably go take a pill for that, or something.

I’d like it if the moral of this tale was as simple as ‘the media are morons and will print anything, even if it makes no sense’. But, sadly, there aren’t enough people in the world to temper the massive wave of idiocy that flows out from printing presses the world over. So the moral really is, be careful what you write on the internet. And I’ve broken that already.

* All material quoted in double marks (“”) is from the WSJ. Almost all the words in single are me being a dick. I do realise I use them a lot.

Some fun facts about New Zealand for the British*

*also applicable to those of any other nationality who do not know nearly enough about this darling Antipodean nation.



New Zealanders are not nicknamed Kiwis after a small brown fruit

Though we do nickname ourselves after something small and brown. The kiwi is a native flightless nocturnal bird, and serves a national symbol for our small island country. Nobody in New Zealand would ever think of eating a kiwi, being as they’re so endangered, but handily enough, nobody thinks you’re asking for a small bird to chop up and put on your breakfast cereal.

That’s because we call the fruit referred to in the UK simply as ‘kiwi’ – wait for it – kiwifruit. Simple (not simples though). Anyone who calls it ‘kiwi’ and drops the fruit is purely lazy, and probably ignorant enough to make the stupid jokes we always hear about being nicknamed after a fruit. Below are some pictures to show you the difference between a kiwi and a kiwifruit. I really hope for humanity’s sake you can figure out which is which.

We are not part of Australia.

Not even close. Australia is, on average, a three hour flight from New Zealand. How would you like it if people continuously thought that your hometown of Chipping Sodbury was located somewhere in Slovakia? If that doesn’t appeal, just pick any country that is longer than a three hour flight from the United Kingdom.

No, we don’t know your cousin Dave who moved to Auckland.

New Zealand is a country of 5 million people. While it’s small compared to practically every other nation that features in the World Cup (being the main reason Brits know there are other countries in the world), it’s large enough that the arrival of an Englishman (and maybe even his extended family) is not a cause for national excitement and news coverage.

That said, we probably do know your cousin Dave who moved to Auckland.

Everyone in New Zealand does actually seem to know one another. I moved literally half way around the world to London and found a roommate on the internet, who turned up to have grown up next door to my ex-boyfriend. Spooky stuff. While this is great for networking and getting your mates to hook you up across international borders, it does tend to result in instances like a bad one-night stand turning out to be flatmates with a guy you went on a date with the night before. Trust me.

We don’t really like our flag, so don’t be so smug about it

While most countries will happily deck themselves out in the colours of their flag for sporting events and other instances of national pride (for New Zealanders, only sporting events are important enough to be considered for national pride), we prefer black with a tasteful silver fern to jazz it up a little. The colours of our flag are red, white and blue, since we have pint-sized Union Jack in the corner of ours, but funnily enough we like to stand out from the multitudes of countries that have those exact same colours on their flag. This hangover from the days of Empire (suck it up, it’s over) gets on many a Kiwi’s nerves. So don’t start with your imperialist crap about how our flag pretty much is your flag. We know. And we’re trying as hard as we can to change it.

New Zealand is probably best described as Britain in the 1970s

Minus the striking miners and riots, of course (our miners just get killed. Awesome). You know how everyone likes to remember the ‘good old days’? When kids didn’t run around in hoodies saying words like ‘innit’, there was no such thing as ‘knife crime’ and the greatest threat to society’s moral fabric was a key-swapping party at a bungalow down the road? New Zealand is kinda like that (probably less swingers, though you never know). Violent crime isn’t that high. We don’t constantly have PSAs telling us to nark on our neighbours in case they decide they are going to blow something up or shove a cat in a dustbin. Sadly, n twenty years or so New Zealand will probably be as shit as Britain is now, but then Britain will be even shitter (heaven forfend!), so we still win.

You probably know more New Zealanders than you think

That girl from Two And A Half Men who stalks Charlie? New Zealander (check her out in Heavenly Creatures, a film about two young girls who have a strange, psychotic lesbian relationship and then brutally murder one of their mothers. Based on a true story and everything). Excited about the upcoming Green Lantern movie? Guess where his sidekick’s from? Yep, New Zealand. How about the guy who wrote the Rocky Horror Show? Grew up in New Zealand! (They erected a statue of Riff Raff in full space garb in the town where he grew up here. Too cool.) Or, if you’re a bit of a geek, you may be gratified to know that under their glossy white armour, every stormtrooper from Star Wars looks like a New Zealander. More specifically, Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett in one of the abominable prequels.

We’re to blame for Hear’Say

The tv show Popstars was the first in the world to do that ‘audition people to make a band and film it for reality tv’ thing. The result was True Bliss, a band of such craptastic proportions that it fizzled out faster than all of their later imitation. The only trace left of this truly heinous creation has been the presence of former members in the public eye, acting as z-list celebrities doing everything from volunteering for more reality tv to shilling on infomercials to keep themselves in the spotlight.

The New Zealand creators of the show sold the format overseas, first to Australia and then countries in Europe, creating bands that the world didn’t need in the first place the world over. In the UK, that was Hear’Say. Oops.