Penny Arcade Makes Time 100 196
Precision noticed that Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade fame have made the Time 100. The writeup talks about Child's Play and PAX and lavishes deserved adoration upon the pair. I've always envied their ability to maintain control over their brand and use it for appropriately portioned good and evil ;)
Good for them (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a big fan of the brand and PAX, but I really have a hard time finding anything enjoyable about their writing.
Perhaps 1 out of 10 comics are interesting and most often the writing drones on like I'm reading Moby Dick
"I scrolled up and down my Steam library yesterday, listlessly, without so much as a remembered thrill; all I wanted to do was play Blur for some reason, something I hadn't picked up in weeks but whose thirsting fronds were reaching up through some mental fissure. After a few rounds to loosen up, quite organically I found myself in a Party discussing the events of the day. The conviviality and natural flow of the conversation began to disintegrate as the race progressed, slowing and then ceasing altogether, like the dwindling reports from a bag of microwave popcorn."
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree. I remember actually crying when I read the story he wrote [penny-arcade.com] for his newborn son.
Every time a read a thoughtful, poetic post from him, I think, "That's how I want to write."
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
The comics are often low-brow humor. The posts are often very high-brow diatribes. I love both and the contrast they portray. But to each their own.
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You're suggesting that people only pretend to like things that are popular. How did they get popular to begin with?
And why doesn't everyone here pretend to like Twilight? It's genre fiction and insanely popular. Maybe the Slashdot crowd likes XKCD because it is great, and they hate Twilight because it is crap.
Just maybe.
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I hate Twilight for the same reason I hate Monster Cable.
Awww, FUCK! Why didn't I think of that first?
Re:The it's-not-funny-but-we-laugh-anyway loop. (Score:5, Insightful)
And why doesn't everyone here pretend to like Twilight? It's genre fiction and insanely popular. Maybe the Slashdot crowd likes XKCD because it is great, and they hate Twilight because it is crap.
maybe twihards like twilight because it's great and they hate xkcd because it's crap?
or perhaps it's just because different people enjoy different things? nah, couldn't be that.
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Maybe I'm a freak, but I have actually read an excerpt from one of the Twilight novels (I have a Kindle and downloading samples is very easy). It really is as terrible as the uninformed haters make it out to be, possibly worse. I also enjoy many things of dubious quality, my reading, gaming, television and movie preferences would make a critic in the field squeal. Its all about being honest with yourself, and giving things a fair shake. And, I'm sorry, but Twilight is awful.
Re:The it's-not-funny-but-we-laugh-anyway loop. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right! Your "I don't think anybody finds it funny" argument is flawless. Now I realize that I only found their comics funny because I thought that, somewhere, SOMEBODY else thought they were funny. Eager to fit in, I quickly forced and tricked myself into enjoying it. THANK YOU for showing me the light.
I mean, why would I ever find awkward phrases like "Do you have snakes that come in sometimes? Don't stand for that shit!" [penny-arcade.com] hilarious?
All webcomics, hell all COMEDY is hit and miss. I cannot say that because one thing a person does is funny, everything else that that person does must necessarily be funny or else the first thing becomes unfunny. I find Penny-Arcade to be more often funny than not... so I like it. You might disagree.
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So let me start: Penny Arcade is not funny. xkcd is not funny. Don't bother referencing them, we won't find them funny!
Since we're doing the whole opinions-as-facts thing: xkcd and Penny Arcade are funny because I find them funny.
It's neat that a lot of people seem to agree, but my opinion of their humor doesn't require it.
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Re:The it's-not-funny-but-we-laugh-anyway loop. (Score:5, Insightful)
XKCD can be funny a lot of times, but I also find it frequently unbearably smug. Not old school nerd, more like the newer trendy hipster nerd thing that cropped up in the past few years.
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Re:The it's-not-funny-but-we-laugh-anyway loop. (Score:4, Informative)
XKCD can be funny a lot of times, but I also find it frequently unbearably smug.
So do I, and so do the authors of http://xkcdexplained.com/ [xkcdexplained.com]
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Jealous much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are we have popular geeks who make a living making little pictures and writing little stories for. Everyone loves them. They are witty and funny and frequently have sex with actual women and are everything you are not. Do you know there's a guy who has a whole boring ass blog about how xkcd isn't funny? Nobody reads it, because we all think xkcd IS funny. Penny arcade IS funny. You and the other haters are either too stupid to find the humor, or too jealous to admit it. Once you have achieved something in your life, I doubt you will feel the need to put other achievers down. Maybe you should try, you know, doing something, rather than bitching about the people who do.
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I wasn't referring to you, but to the AC.
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I'm bitching about talentless losers who demean others out of jealousy rather than any real critique. That's hardly hypocritical.
It is if you're doing it because you're jealous of them. (^_^)
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So let me start: Penny Arcade is not funny. xkcd is not funny. Don't bother referencing them, we won't find them funny!
Coincidentally, you are not modded funny either. Instead you are modded troll. Which, I guess, in itself IS funny. We're laughing AT you, not WITH you.
But by all means, please enlighten us; what IS funny?
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Re:Good for them (Score:5, Funny)
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You don't need to be a writer to criticise a writer.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Funny)
They answered you years ago. [penny-arcade.com]
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Both men are trying to improve their art. Gabe has come a long way from his humble beginnings. Tycho's writing outside the comics is still an acquired taste. I think it is partly an affectation, he's the smart one, Gabe is the dumb one, but those are still personae they put on for the comic.
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Wordy and convoluted isn't enough to be "smart".
Their stuff reads like the slightly-less-funny nerd version of Dave Barry. Which is fine; I like Dave Barry at times, but the subgroup they're targeting isn't geniuses.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Any idiot can write a meandering tangle of pretentious and meaningless wank about a game that I will never care about, but only Jerry Holkins can finish it a simile so clever that I will be actually glad I read that drivel. That's why he's the one with a web comic and we're all posting on slashdot.
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I knew this would be one of the complaints, but upon thinking it through I realized I actually enjoy the writing, and the fact that it comes in tiny little morsels. The heavy masturbatory prose of most navel-gazing writers, I can't stand, but PA is just a tiny bit of flourish to liven up what would otherwise be "This game rocks, sucks, and/or eats babies. I (dis)liked it because of X, Y and that native-american allegory tomato."
There are only so many ways to criticize the game industry and its excrement.
Re:Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, but which Moby dick are you referring to? The original, or this one
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/15/ [penny-arcade.com]
As they should! (Score:5, Insightful)
They are arguably among the most influential people in an industry bigger than Hollywood...I'd say they deserve a place on the list.
Not bad for two nerdy dweebs who probably got swirlied in middle school.
Re:As they should! (Score:4, Informative)
Didn't Halo 3's launch weekend generate more revenue than the biggest Hollywood opening weekend of all time?
Video Games are just as influential and big as the movie indudstry.
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I think that's a false comparison. Theatres are limited it the number of people that can fit in at any time, however games can manufacture the cd's ahead of time so they don't have an upper limit in the same amount of time.
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Well it may be a false comparison, but the video game industry is now larger than the film industry in terms of revenue. The film industry made around 10.5 billion in revenues in 2008, while the video game industry made around 11.5 billion. This is counting movie and game sales and rentals. The film industry may hold more cultural cachet and influence, and more people consider films to be true art, but that is changing as well.
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Box office revenues I could find for 2008 say they were about 10 billion, the home video revenues were around 22 billion. That was after a 5% decline.
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No, the video game industry is not bigger than the film industry.
Film Industry in the US employs 361,000
http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm [bls.gov]
All software publishing in the US employs 263,700
http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs051.htm [bls.gov]
Globally video games are worth 40 billion
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/VideoGameSalesOvertakingMusic.aspx [msn.com]
US film revenue is 42 billion, total box office gross is 10-11 billion, but that's only a piece of the US film industry.
http://www.allbusiness.com/media-teleco [allbusiness.com]
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Okay, you've got better sources so I must admit to being mistaken. Still, it's clear which way the trend is going, film keeps losing entertainment market share while video games keep gaining. It may yet be a while before games are accepted as real art, look how long it took for comic books.
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More interesting to me is the question of when the game industry will achieve cultural parity with the film industry. While I've seen a few of video games that I consider great art, but these are never the popular ones. Movies speak to whole cultures, video games speak only to a smaller subset. When will we see a video game with the cultural impact of, say, Star Wars?
well, there is this little tiny game called (Score:2)
World of Warcraft...
it's about 1/3 the way there. Pretty effing amazing for a game.
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How many people, worldwide total, have played WoW? How many have seen Star Wars? How many people have quoted a line from WoW, versus the number who have quoted Scarface "Say hello to my lil' friend" or Jerry Maguire "Show me the money" or "You had me at hello."
I, for one, have never played WoW and know next to nothing about it. I've never watched Jerry Maguire but I know all about it and can quote lines.
Video games are where comics were 40-50 years ago, some great art but still seen mostly as entertainment
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That's because we still have entire generations alive who do not play video games. People who are currently in their 30s grew up playing video games. When those people are the oldest generation, we'll see a massive shift in acceptance of video games as culturally significant.
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Halo 3 did make more than most hollywood movies in its first day than they do in their first weekend. Over the course of a few months though I believe most movies catch up.
While I would agree that video games are a big industry, I wouldn't go as far as to say they are as influential as movies. Video games (especially new releases) usually cost about 5 or 6 times as much as a movie ticket. If you consider the amount of sales and not the dollars earned as influential (which I have come to take its meaning), t
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A video game costs $60. Avatar tickets cost me $15 a pop. Even assuming a standar movie ticket is only $10, a video game is more expensive. So for the same money, more people are seeing movies. I'll give you that. But if I buy one copy of Mario Party and invite my friends over to play, then multiple people are playing on the one purchase.
But you often watch a 2 hour movie onec, and you're done. Video games you spend more time with. Video games are often played multi-player, or online. You aren't supposed to
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How did Halo 3 sell the next weekend, and the next, and the next? How were the DVD sales? How about the TV rights?
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Not bad at all, Halo Legends is, in fact, out on DVD and Blu Ray, and wait for it. The book sales are all good, too.
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Halo Legends is not Halo 3, it's a different thing. That's like adding sales of The Black Freighter DVD onto the Watchmen Boxoffice sales report.
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Well, wouldn't you? It gets awfully metaphysical. I've got the Ultimate Watchment blu-ray thingy, which includes TotBF. I don't know that they're splitting up that price.
Besides, isn't merch and spinoffs usually counted in with the rest of the franchise?
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You're confusing the entire franchise with the individual releases.
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Does your definition of “the world” only include “Geeks, mostly only from the US” again?
I don’t think in all of Europe more than a few geeks have ever heard of Penny Arcade. I used to create web pages that were (willfully) read by 13 million people every day. So am I now also influencing the world? (Hint: No.) ^^
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You don't have a charity that takes in a million dollars either. Don't be jealous. In European nations were most of the kids speak English PA has an audience. In Eastern Europe probably not so much. For my purposes Eastern Europe begins were the wall was.
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I'd say they deserve a place on the list.
Perhaps...but any entry on a list that puts Lady Gaga as the top artist of the year should be taken with a grain of salt.
Well congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the picture (Score:2)
Popularity contest (Score:5, Informative)
Kudos to them, but sadly this was a popularity contest where the likes of Justin Bieber and such were receiving votes.
I'd rather a wide-range, rational panel try to offer their opinions rather than open up a massive internet vote.
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Re:Popularity contest (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone know if they fixed the massive flaws from last year that allowed 4chan to precisely control the top 21 entries to spell "marblecake also the game"?
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Battenburg!
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Yes, it would be much better to only have a few select people make the decisions instead of opening it to a public vote. Wonderful idea.
That depends on who those few select people are. Specifically, do they make a decision "just because", or at every step of every decision can they give you good solid reasons to justify why they made that choice?
Really, Time? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was impressed until I read the rest of the list, particularly this love letter [time.com] to Glenn Beck........ written by none other than Sarah Palin herself.
Really, Time? Sure, he's pretty influential, and a demagogue to be certain. But casting him as an intellectual and a history buff? Have they ever even watched his program?
Jon Stewart had a great point last week: The Daily Show is as absurd and farcical as it's been since Day 1. However, the "real news" media are slowly inching their way toward the realm of absurdist comedy and entertainment.
Re:Really, Time? (Score:5, Insightful)
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He could very well be an intellectual and history buff, who happens to become an emotional demagogue once he's in front of the camera.
In that case, he's a pathological liar [slate.com].
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I suspect a lot of top media execs were sitting around thinking "This is an amazing, edgy, hip current affairs show - we need to be more like that"
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I think he was more complaining about claims that the man was an intellectual. I think we can all agree that is one thing he is not.
I saw that in their post yesterday (Score:4, Interesting)
When they commented that they have a bigger voice than Roger because the last time they checked they where above Oprah on the Time top 100 list.
I was like "NO WAY!" so I went, did some fact checking, and then voted to put them up to #1!!
Click the link here http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1972075_1976159,00.html [time.com]
To vote for them!
PA is a great organization (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. I feel like, while their brand has taken off(PAX, Rain-Slick Precipice, Child's Play), the comic quality has diminished to the point where it's hit or miss...more often being miss.
Same goes with Tycho's diatribes.
Honestly, I think that we're used to reading their stuff when they were bachelors. Now they are married and have kids, growing a gamer family. It'll probably click when I'm in the same situation they are, but right now it ain't.
Then again, this is only how I feel. I'm sure a lot of folks ar
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Honestly, I think that we're used to reading their stuff when they were bachelors. Now they are married and have kids, growing a gamer family. It'll probably click when I'm in the same situation they are, but right now it ain't.
I think that's a legitimate comment on pretty much any observer/commentator/etc. As their life changes, so does their viewpoint.
Now that I'm married, and have my first child, I'm looking at Penny Arcade and appreciating the viewpoints of individuals who make gaming a way to bond with their kids more. If I weren't in this situation, as you rightly point out, their viewpoint might be a little too distant from my own to really click.
Such is the nature of influence - you need to have some common ground to rea
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"Internet message boards were funnier 10 years ago. I've kinda stopped reading their new posts" - Simpsons writer Matt Warburton
Brand Control (Score:2)
From what I've understood from their past posts and various interviews, they owe a lot to their business manager, Robert Khoo.
They like explaining how they actually sold their brand and rights away before Khoo came aboard. Luckily, the buyer disappeared into bankruptcy and nobody else has since claimed that ownership. I'm not too sure of the details and current veracity of this :)
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Of course I can't help but
The *very* broken clock. (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems is easy to be a guru on the internet. You can make lots of weird predictions, and some will be right.
Like this 2006 comic:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/05/01/ [penny-arcade.com]
And this today news:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/54532/Activision-Bungie-Sign-Ten-Year-Publishing-Partnership [ign.com]
And this part of the reason Penny Arcade is still relevant.. theres a lot of predictions, and some are right.
Time does not make My 100. ;) (Score:2)
Interesting, how they struggle to stay important, by judging others, and sucking the cattle into their reality.
Unfortunately, in actual reality, they are long fallen into irrelevance. Or has anyone of you ever bought a issue of the Time magazine? I honestly don’t know a single person. And I don’t know a reason why I should. (Hello Time marketing? *nudgenudge*)
It’s not that I don’t wish them all the best. It’s just, that maybe finding a new business model and purpose would be a
Maintaining brand control (Score:2)
CmdrTaco writes:
That reminds me of the time they signed away their book publishing rights and nearly lost the rights to their intellectual property and the name Penny Arcade [wired.com]. Except for that, I agree.
I'm a big PA fan, but they totally needed a business manager. And since I'm writing about him, I love this anecdote about Robert Khoo [penny-arcade.com].
Time to move on... (Score:2)
Last I checked the list was full of Korean Pop stars and Figure Skaters.
I would say that somehow S. Korea folks were really aware of this, and/or no one else cared.
I would say that "Time" hasn't quite figured out this thing called "Cyberspace" and perhaps their "Time" has long since passed.
I mean how many years ago was it when Stephen Cobare would join just about any internet voting thing, nominate himself, plug it on his show, and get bridges, space station equipment, and a variety of other crap named afte
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
You can only write off what you actually donate. So unless they're donating enough to make their net income zero, they're paying taxes on their advertising income.
The vast majority of money for Child's Play comes from donations, donations that go completely into the charity, and are completely unnecessary for your It's Just A Tax Shelter theory.
They've raised literally millions of dollars for sick kids to have games to play in the hospital.
You're full of shit and an asshole to boot for trying to tear down something as great as Child's Play.
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The money comes into PA from ads and whatnot, they direct most (if not all) of it Childs Play (therefore writing it all off as a 'donation' to themselves), and set themselves up as administrators (therefore avoiding paying payroll taxes).
Where's your source for this? Everything I've heard about the way Child's Play is set up is that they distance it from PA Inc. as much as possible for two reasons. The first being that they don't want the image of the comic to draw ire towards the charity. Secondly, they don't want the possible collapse of their company to take down the charity.
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Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh great. So now you've gone from accusing them of using CP to dodge taxes on their advertising revenue to accusing them of laundering charitable donations into their own pockets.
Do you have any evidence for any of this? Do you have any proof that the two of them are paying themselves wages as CP's "administrators"? Do you have any proof that they have extracted "expenses" from the pool of donations that were not actually expenses of the Child's Play charity, but rather expenses of Penny Arcade or simply profit-taking?
Because that all would have to be spelled out on their tax returns, and if those "expenses" weren't really expenses then they can't be claimed and the IRS would be on them like flies on shit. So you're not just accusing them of cynically taking advantage of the tax code, you're actually accusing them of being tax cheats. The law is very specific on what can actually be counted as charity and what can't.
You're a real piece of work, you know that? People are out there making a real difference in children's lives, and all you have is baseless accusations founded on cynicism. Cynicism for its own sake is wrong and stupid. And it also doesn't help anyone, unlike Child's Play.
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Childs Play (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Childs Play (Score:4, Insightful)
There are lots of people and resources to give food, clothing, shelter and money. Of course, there can always be more. But don't denigrate a group simply because they found a unique and beneficial way of helping. Believe me its worth it and is appreciated.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
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let me say you must truly be the most bitter, irredeemable, self-righteous, scum-sucking, ignorant, foolish, truculent, and repugnant bastards I have ever had the misfortune of wasting my time reading
That is a venerable dinner plate of adjectives. +1 Internet point for you, sir!
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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I have similar issues with PA. I used to read it, and thought it was quite humorous, but with the language and dialogue, it was like drinking your favorite soda (Mountain Dew) with a bit of raw sewage in it. After a while, I just couldn't do it anymore.
However, I must give them praise for standing up to Whacko Jacko Thompson. That guy really needed to be put in a box for his own good. Thank you, PA, for taking him on, and being a major factor (IMO) in shutting him up.
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never, and will never, understand this mindset. They're just words. Words are giving power and meaning only by the reader. To me, they're not a big deal, if anything they indicate that the authors are being honest and not filtering themselves just to fit in some moralist 'acceptable' box.
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
I like to read PA from time to time. I could do without the sophomoric language that seems to be thrown in simply to 'identify with the youth', but sometimes I really find the comic funny. But the Child Play charity is primarily just a tax shelter for PA. They make a lot on money on advertising and PAX, and use CP to avoid (or at least defer) paying taxes on it. Not that that's anything unusual for a corporation, but I hate when companies portray their 'charitable giving' as some grand altruistic philanthropy, when it's just a way for them to dodge taxes.
If the laws that allowed this type of behavior went away, so would the giving.
You do not understand tax laws as well as you think you do if you believe the primary motivation for charitable contributions is to dodge taxes. It's a secondary motivation. You don't come out ahead.
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Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
But dude, you can't let that cynicism blind you to real charity. I don't think you have any idea how hard volunteers for Child's Play work every year. In the first year before they had any real logistics in place, a whole team of local volunteers worked night and day to physically process, store, load, move, and unload tons of toys for Seattle Children's Hospital. Even though now the toys go to hospitals directly, volunteers still help with the charity dinner, with various fund raising events around the country, with community efforts at PAX like the Cookie Brigade, etc.
Unless you have more evidence than a mere assumption, it is callous and insulting to all those volunteers to paint their hard work as nothing more than a 'tax dodge'. While I don't work for PA Inc, I know a lot of people who do, and I have heard nothing, not even a rumor, of any funds from PA revenues being somehow 'laundered' through CPC.
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Wow. It's hard to find the words. Yeah, there are reasons to be cynical about corporate charities, like how tobacco company Philip Morris spent tons more on advertising about how charitable it was than on actual charity...
Right, or a great example today I heard on the radio. KFC is trying to raise $8.5 million to donate to cancer research. They're doing this by selling pink buckets of chicken at something like $8/pop, and donating $0.50 of each. This is the typical cynical corporate method of charity cont
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
You want every charity to be run like a monastery that's your prerogative, but to act like CPC is some cabal of evil tax-dodging millionaire fat cats feeding off of an army of deluded rubes is so intellectually dishonest as to be disgusting and absurd. That is why your original post is rightly modded into oblivion.
Re:Childs Play (Score:5, Insightful)
If the laws that allowed this type of behavior went away, so would the giving.
Yeah! It sucks that people get rewarded for helping people. If there were any justice in this world, we would severely punish charities. Only then could we be sure that the people were truly selfless.
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You're so full of shit.
One of my fondest possessions is a thank-you card with crayon drawings on it I received from Tulane's Children's Hospital in New Orleans for some video games I sent them through CP a couple years back. The donations get to the kids, and it really does make their lives better.
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