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Monday, January 01, 2007

Give me less of this

Some days it feels like the most common object that causes me trouble in Second Life is the penis. In that, I suppose, Second Life rhymes with Real Life, where the common penis has often been problematic in one way or another.

Give people the tools to create or draw what they want, and then apply the urge to offend or amuse (others, or only themselves) and it's the penis that keeps returning again and again.

A pity we can't all agree on some common, cross-cultural symbol that means "My intent is to offend you." We've got assorted hand gestures for that (though their meaning varies through different cultures); Another for "I'm using some offensive iconic in an ironic/sarcastic/amusing way."

Because, frankly, I'd love to write fewer news pieces involving a phallus in 2007. I'd like to see fewer people dressed as them. I'd like to see fewer jet-packs shaped like them. Fewer towering structures umm... erected in the shape of them. Fewer guns that look like them.

Less of that stuff, pretty please. Give me towers of ice and frozen flame, bridges of light and plasma, rings of sound. Be original. The basic penis image as 'funny' is a punchline that's about 65,000 years old. As a species, we need a new joke. Honestly.

They're certainly there. They're about as amusing as any other part of the body (being that like all comedy, the humour vests in other aspects) the phallus has a bit of a head start in a couple of elements.

I'm totally ready to move on. Elbow humour! Spleens! Gall bladders, even. Listen to Dave Allen talking about Adam and Eve and the nose, now there's a man that could make any body part funny, and on television.

Sad, perhaps, that most people are more offended by a phallus being boldly presented, than a gun.

"It's bad manners to wave either in one's face without consent." -- Ordinal Malaprop.

4 comments:

  1. /me blinks

    ...

    /me goes back to coding a gray goo attack consisting of self-replicating brown snot-dripping noses. Is that an improvement?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:46 PM

    I wait for the day when someone codes a self-rezing ball pit that accidentally takes over the grid.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's sad - shortly after Starship Troopers came out, I had a heated discussion with a mother of 4 when she found out I worked on it. Surprisingly, it wasn't about it being a big dumb movie, but that we'd taken a film that would have been good family fun and spoiled it...so I'm thinking "Was it the gore, the dismemberment, the decapitations, the 200+ shots of bugs and people exploding in wet sticky bits..." no, we apparently spoiled it with the filth of the totlly nonsexual co-ed nude shower scene.

    !?!

    You object to your child seeing breasts, which hopefully they'll have an oportunity to have a heathy relationship with someday, but encourage them to watch people torn assunder, which god willing, they'll NEVER have a realtionship with.

    People is funny.

    -Solivar

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous11:34 AM

    An obvious case of penis envy...

    ReplyDelete

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