"I feel raped."

a little overboard, i feel.

but it cant have been nice.

I think the worst part about the NYT scandal is that it's easy to accuse a bad story of being completely wrong now. All this shows is that somebody is a liar. Which side, I don't know. It's messed up regardless.

Thedeacon:

I'll come right out and say that my future in AO is shaky right now as a result of the slanderous and untrue article posted about me in the New York Times last Thursday. I don't make this post to create more drama, but rather to state my case and also to shed some additional light on what's going on in my life right now in relation to this horrible article.

Before I go any further, I want to first thank the entire community for all the words of support I received in the past few days. It shows what good people play Anarchy Online, to come to the aid of one of their own. It does make me feel good that you guys don't buy into what that article said, because it's just not true. I'm still reeling in shock over the amount of untrue information was in that article and how certain private issues (bankruptcy) were thrown in that article after the reporter, Seth Schiesel (ingame name Amis) had agreed not release private information such as financial info, school info, etc.

I got so many wonderful and supportive replies in the forums, through email and through private messages, not to mention the fact that Amis has not had the balls to log into AO since the article broke, so I should feel great, right?

Well I don't. I did a search on my name, as someone mentioned they had heard about the article from some dutch site. "Dutch site?" I said to myself. So I did a search on my name, both real name and ingame name and I was shocked to find what people were saying about me. It was absolutely crushing to my ego and my self worth, as I know deep in my heart that the article itself was a lie and Seth's motive may have been to exact revenge on me for flaming an old article he did on AO last year

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php? s= &threadid=58442 is the link. What I said wasn't even that bad, it was more of a joke, but it bothered Seth enough to mention it to me dozens of times while he was here. That should have been my first clue. This was like right when the Jayson Blair story was breaking, so my guard was down because I hadn't fully read up on the Blair situation.

You might have noticed I'm not logging in much lately. when I do, I've been trying to pretend like everything is alright, but I get this sinking feeling, a feeling like I'm going to be judged for my online time and it's totally sucked the fun out of the game for me.

Just reading that article in the Times, looking at the "creative writing" he did and how he left off so much of the positive aspects of my life shows me that he wrote this article with malice. I treated him like family while he was here and he turned around and stabbed me in the back.

Much of what was in that article that actually was true (VERY little of the article had any truth to it, but things like me filing bankruptcy was infact true) were things I had told him outside of the interview to explain a bit of the situation. Both my wife and I demanded that this be left off the article, which he agreed to. I was told that the article was not about ME per se, but rather a positive article about the online gaming community of AO, as told through my eyes. None of my personal information was to be released in this article. I was lied to, my wife was lied to, my friend stuntiliator who he also interviewed was lied to, and now the world is being lied to via this article.

I feel raped. There's no other way to describe it. The person described in the Time article is less than pathetic. He's a weak person that gave up on life. And damnit, that just isn't me at all. I'm no recluse, im no social outcast, I'm no mmorpg addict and I'm no quitter.

7 hours a day. you know what? That's such a load of crap

I would say it's quite rare that I'm ever online for more than four hours a day. Any longer and it's usually me logged into the chat channel or my character sitting doing nothing while I chat. So why am I on so much? Well figure this: I work from my home. There's the occasional downtime while I'

NYT Reporter: May I interview you for a story?
bull999999: Kiss my ass. I don't trust you guys.

Next day on NYT

"HEADLINE: bull999999 of Slashdot is a sickco"
bull999999 of Slashdot admits that he's a pervert that enjoys strangers giving oral sex to his behind. He also does not trust the media, rather perfers to consult his imaginary friend "Roy" and Slashdot for all his news needs.

She was interviewing a mother of a political figure (I forgot who). After the interview, the mother told Connie off the record that she felt that Hillary Clinton was a bitch. Not suprisingly, that "off the record" comment made it to the news. The moral of this story is that to the reporters, nothing is "off the record".

One reason I still read /.

Although filled with usual bull, sometimes it does give the little guy a bigger voice.

So the guy thought he would make it repairing computers out of his apartment. They're going through some financial difficulties and his wife stands by him. Then what does he do, but plunge himself into this video game where he is a god and the part time gamers have to do things like have their feet sucked and put up with his sexual ennuendos.

The guy denies it, but from what I've read in the article, his original posts, and now this, he's in serious denial. He should be out there looking for a better job, honing skills, getting some education, loading boxes for UPS, whatever to get motivated to improve himself.

Instead he is playing the victim, getting lots of attention, probably spending even more time in this pseudo-reality.

I feel for his wife, this isn't the behavior of a life partner.

I played a MUD (www.actofwar.com) in the year 2000 or so for the first time in my life after learning about it in IRC. It's a PK (Player Killing) game where you level up and group with other players from your city, to attack the players of one of the 3 other cities. It was addictive as hell, and rewards smart and fast thinking. I'd spend over 12 hours a day playing it. Nothing I could do could stop it...I'd delete my char (it's not very long to level) sometimes, only to make new ones. When there were no enemies on, instead of logging off I'd start a new char from a different class or run the monsters for good equipment.

Over a year later I decided I'd had enough, gave away my chars and deleted ZMUD and never went there again. That's about the same time my friend lended me his Diablo 2 + Expansion CDs with a virgin CD key, and BAM! It started all over again. The first week I was a newbie trying to figure out where to go and how to do things, and 2 months later (due to inredible luck from the random item drops) I'm a rich-as-hell elite possessing the rarest bow in the game, and even though I wasn't having any fun, the preciousness (sp) of those virtual items was way too much to just abandon it all. However eventually the same same scenario happened again: I suddenly realized I was wasting my life, gave away the items, and deleted.

As I type this now, I'm addicted to laziness. I spend my time playing old PC games, games of older consoles via emulation, and downloading music and porn off Kazaa. Once again it's time for a purge except this time it'll be more radical. I'm backing up whatever personal things I've gathered over the years (wacky pictures, rom collections, sex pictures I'm particularly fond of, irc logs, etc) to view again 10 years from now since this is basically the only memories I'll have of my late teenager years, and then I'mformatting my hard drive and giving the computer to my sister.

If anyone else than me has gaming fucking up their life, I suggest they do the same. It might seem too radical, but you don't need that PC, no matter how big a geek you are (and I doubt you're a bigger geek than me), unless you're choosing a career down the road.

When dealing with journalists, get *everything* in writing. Just saying "don't put this in print, okay?" "okay" is worth absolutely nothing. Life 101.

Not staying anonymous.

He's let a game (and its related interpersonal associations) ruin his ego, his financial well being, and general happyness.

Maybe this is a no brainer. Maybe saying this is akin to saying, i told you so. Hell, call it a troll. But gee, you know...

I was sent a C&D letter from MLB Properties last summer concerning my website and was subsequently interviewed by several different newspapers within a week or so. EVERY SINGLE ONE of them misquoted me. The most common error was paraphrasing something I said, but maybe not exactly the same, and then placing quote marks around it as if I had uttered those exact words. One New York paper even inserted grammatical errors into sentences I never spoke! The key thing is that I believe all of these reporters were composing stories from memory rather than tape. About a month after the initial wave of publicity, a reporter in the Philly area (Harrisburg?) named David Jones contacted me for an interview. The first thing I did was relate my previous misquotes and asked if he was using a tape recorder. He was, and he produced a very accurate and fair story. Sometimes what looks like malicious reporting could be nothing more than sloppiness.

Don't trust a journalist! What the hell is wrong with you? Journalists are even worse than Corporations!

Ok, let me explain this to you... A journalist is a person who started out with a bunch of starry-eyed ideals. His head was all full of things like the idea that he could make a difference or that he could actually make a living on a journalist's salary. For a select few, the wage might be OK but most of them would have been better off with a career in 1-hour photo development.

So over the years as reality sets in, the journalist's hopes and dreams are crushed and he turns into a sadistic and cynical bastard, unable to realize that some human beings might even be able to find peace and happiness in their lives. At the same time, his twisted spirit aches for the big scoop that will break him out of the doldrums of sub-minimum wages and canned dog food three times a week. As he gets older, he becomes more desparate.

Assuming he ever can manage to attain any respect at all in the industry, he HAS to keep producing blockbuster stories on a regular basis or it's back to the canned dog food for him.

And you would trust one of these wretches to represent your story in a manner that's not sensationalistic and negative? People don't want to read the fluff stories about someone who's life is kind of a bummer but he's finding happiness anyway. The journalist knows this.

Yes my friend, you should sooner trust Bill Gates with your immortal soul than trust a journalist.

Rule 1:

If you're ever arrested for anything say the following 4 words to the police and only the following 4 words: I want my lawyer.

Nothing else you say will help you, it will only hurt you.

Rule 2:

If a reporter wants to talk to you about anything only ever say the following 2 words: No comment.

Anything else you say can be twisted into making it sound like you said whatever that reporter wants.

The "better than thou" attitude of Seth Schiesel (the NYT reporter) here is remarkable:

Thedeacon is a celebrity. Mr. Stenlund, meanwhile, feels trapped - trapped in a town too far from big cities where big things happen, trapped in a hand-to-mouth existence, trapped in a mean little culture of cheap thrills and fast-food television.

What could drive a reporter to shun their supposed "objectivity" and engage in such social denigration? Was it just making the NYT reader feel good about themselves? "Big" Schiesel appears to have been irked by Thedeacon's interpersonal power in AO, perhaps because a powerful in-game community standing is something which those in the physical world may never attain.

This lack of respect toward emerging cultures and communities is a sign of the irrelevance of the media establishment. A reporter would not be able to get very far with this kind of twisted prejudice toward any given creed, race, or religion. Schiesel's blunt attack on a person who merely loves a new form of expression cannot hide behind the thin moniker of journalism, a profession which the NYT has nearly defined (and certainly destroyed).

- JML

Just for the record: I speak for myself. Not my employer.

Now that I have said that, there's something more to say about being written about in the media.

I have never met a person who think that he / she was depicted 100% correctly in an article. As a writing journalist myself, I have some theories about this.
When a person writes an article, it's imperative that the article is neutral and fact based. The article about Thedeacon probably has an angle, a focus. This focus may differ from what the article subject thinks is the focus and lead to a different (usually negative) view on the article. Thedeacon said that the article is factual, but the composing makes him view the article as bogus. This does not meant that it is.

It is easier for Thedecaon to simply brush off the article as bogus than actually take a deeper look into himself from another persons angle.

Furthermore, I'd like to adress the myth about the Vendetta Reporter. Some persons think that the article in NYT is a personal attack on Thedeacon for being a success in the MUD scene, staged by the reporter. Why? Does anyone here seriously think that a professional reporter would have something against this person and merge it into an article? It is difficult to be 100% objective in writing, but most of the journalists view this as a goal. If you absolutely need to worry about something? Go worry about the media melting that is currently going on in the US.

As for the ON / OFF-record thingy: Unless a third person is taking notes, there's NO record. A journalist seeks the truth. Thedeacon told a lot of things that he claims were "off the record" but can't prove this. Furthermore, they were relevant for the article. Maybe the the journalist could have taken the "No, everything you tell me is on the record" stance, but I don't know if he did. Anyway, the golde rule is don't tell a journalist something you don't want the journalist to hear...