Another day, another story I have to rub my eyes in order to believe. Today’s is quite funny, if a tad disturbing.
April 26th sees the launch of a new dating service, Cloud Girlfriend. The service is for starters free, “unlike your last date” they cry.* With it you create your own perfect partner and he or most likely she will leave messages for you on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, giving your friends and any potential love-interests the impression that you are quite the playah.
Yeah, I said playah.
The 4 easy steps to activate the service, according to the website:
- Define your perfect girlfriend
- Cloud Girlfriend brings her into existence
- Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network
- Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl
The posts will reportedly come from real women, not bots, and to your specifications. Are you creeped out yet?
This could be you
And here are a few words from co-founder David Fuhriman:
“What we are creating blurs the lines between reality and imagination. We allow people to define their ideal self, find their perfect girlfriend or boyfriend and connect and interact as if that person existed.”
The creators also believe that the service could be oddly instructive, teaching users how to manage their relationships. Mmm, that would be more believable if the relationships were real, and the people posting were invested in each other.
Where the site gets patronising and creepy is the duping-potential-love-interests aspect.
Cloud Girlfriend’s tagline is: “The easiest way to get a girlfriend is to already have one”. The site aims to make users more appealing to the fairer sex by making them appear unavailable.
The rationale behind this is quite awful. To get a girlfriend, you must HAVE a girlfriend. Ladies, does this trouble you at all? To know that you are all potential man stealers waiting for the social signal that a man is desirable before taking action?
Nothing drives us wenches wild with desire more than to know we must oust someone else to walk the path of true lo—wait a second, you tricked us! This is no basis for a relationship at all!
I doubt this will be the new eHarmony, its appeal is…niche at best and oh to be a fly on the wall if you manage to nab a girl/boyfriend this way and decide to come clean.
What could happen if your virtual girlfriend goes rogue
*If you bitch about details like paying for dinner as if you’re therefore entitled to a feel of some boob, you quite frankly deserve to be alone. Besides, shoes don’t come cheap and most modern, enlightened young ladies offer to go Dutch.
Filed under: Rants and raves | 3 Comments
Tags: cloud girlfriend, dating, dating service, eharmony
I avoid forums like the plague. I can’t stand the cliques, the bitching, the unattractive quote box within a quote box within a quote box punctuated by 20 or so smiley faces and one animated devil.
All too often posting an opinion on a forum or beneath an article feels like being dressed as a postman and thrust into a kennel full of hungry Dobermans* with hot dogs stuffed in your khakis.
And while, as Charlie Brooker this morning pointed out, there are plenty of unpleasant characters on social networks like Twitter, to me it feels less like a pressure cooker of penned-in attitudes. I’m sorry if I’m doing your forum experience a disservice, but I’ve seen far too many aggressive campaigns against innocuous comments to defend them strongly. Context is everything of course.
This weekend I was particularly amused/frustrated/surprised by the comments on the Eurogamer website in response to Rob Fahey’s article denouncing Duke Nukem Forever’s ‘Capture the Babe’ mode.
For those of you who haven’t heard, the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever has a controversial multiplayer mode entitled ‘Capture the Babe.’ You can guess the format: Instead of capturing a flag, you capture a woman. However these ladies may get hysterical and when they do you must administer a “reassuring slap” on the bottom to calm them down.
So far so… oh lord.
Continue reading ‘The bottom half of the webpage: Duke Nukem gets a reassuring slap’
Filed under: Game reviews, Rants and raves | 22 Comments
Tags: capture the babe, Charlie Brooker, duke nukem, duke nukem forever, eurogamer, Rob Fahey, Twitter
Paul Chambers is to challenge his conviction for having a sense of humour tweeting “menacing” messages.
In a punch the air statement from solicitors, Prieskel and Co, the firm said:
Our client Paul Chambers has decided today to proceed with a High Court challenge to his conviction under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. Paul was convicted on 10 May 2010 by Doncaster Magistrates’ Court and his appeal was turned down by Doncaster Crown Court on 11 November 2010.
Paul has instructed David Allen Green, head of media law at Preiskel & Co, and Ben Emmerson QC of Matrix Chambers, one of the UK’s leading human rights and criminal lawyers, for this challenge.
We’re all behind you Paul.
According to his good lady CrazyColours they will need to raise £10,000 for legal fees in order to proceed. If you would like to donate to this worthy cause please click here.
"as long as we live we must remain true to ourselves"
Graham Linehan has assured the good people of Twitter that there will be no celebrity charity single. A comforting assurance in these dark times.
If you can’t afford to donate, please RT the link and get people talking about the case.
Filed under: Rants and raves | 1 Comment
Tags: David Allen Green, freedom of speech, paul chambers, Twitter Joke Trial
Something is rotten in the heart of UK communications and libel laws.
Yesterday Twitter was collectively aghast at the news (via Jack of Kent) that Paul Chambers had lost the appeal to overturn his conviction of “menace,” stemming from a joke posted on the site.
Paul was arrested in January this year on suspicion of terrorism for posting the following tweet:
“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
I think I said worse last Christmas when my plane was grounded due to snow and I faced a Planes, Trains and Automobiles-like trek to get home for the holidays. I’ve also said far worse about…well it’ll take a while to do a mental recap, but that’s just human nature. We say things we don’t mean, we make flippant remarks we wouldn’t dream of acting on and exaggerate for comic effect. Social media grants us a wonderful platform for these flights of fantasy, hyperbolic rants and bad puns.
Since when is that a criminal offence? Well since yesterday.
The Crown Prosecution Service found no evidence of Paul’s intention to cause his followers to believe he was making a real threat but decided it was in the “public interest” to prosecute him anyway. He was found guilty on 10 May of sending a menacing message. He appealed this decision but Judge Jacqueline Davies dismissed his appeal on every count and he now faces several thousand pounds of legal costs.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore
Filed under: Rants and raves | 2 Comments
Tags: crown prosecution service, freedom of speech, libel law, libel reform, paul chambers, robin hood airport, twitterjoketrial
Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before: a few words on female inadequacy and high school
My high school had the worst school uniform imaginable. Uniforms are never fun, outside whatever twisted sexplay is probably bobbing around your subconscious since I said the word “uniform”. And our yuppie tartan monstrosity was no different. The printing mistake of two merged schools trying to unite the best of both, the uniforms somehow settled on a disturbing lilac, green and blue affair with all the sexiness of your grandmother in a tartan mini skirt.
Lulu. Learn from her mistakes
I still remember picking the thing up from the Sloane-ranger friendly, overpriced stockist. 12 years old, bright eyed and filled with hope. Hope that was soon dashed at the realisation that THAT would be mine for the next four years at least. Wearing this crime against fabric was a daily chore. I avoided friends outside school, avoided being in town and even hid from my boyfriend if I saw him on the underground it was so awful. All this because of a few yards of poorly-thought-out material.
A few times a year, for charity events like Comic Relief, our educational overlords threw us a bone. Pay a pound, wear your own clothes. Hoozah and hoorah! Not so. The uniform was nothing, zilch nada niet, in comparison to 500 hormonal women competing for fashion asshole of the year. Some would bring in their latest Donna Karen and compare exorbitant prices, while the more normal teenagers with parents who spent their cash on things like, bills and the occasional MacDonald’s arrived in jeans and a t-shirt. That’s not to say it was a bad t-shirt, but it wasn’t fcuk. Pay money to feel like the scaffy kid for a day, great.
Filed under: Rants and raves | 2 Comments
Tags: fashion, glamour, high school, mansun, paul draper, the crystal maze, uniform, university
Reviewed: Alan Wake
Alan Wake has a huge job on its hands. Famously announced at E3 2005 by Finnish developers Remedy, the studio behind Max Payne, the game was finally released earlier this summer with its first DLC, The Signal, out just last month.
With such a gap between concept and release, there was cause for concern that Alan came onto the market under a cloud. A big “is that it?” shaped cloud. Thankfully the game has enough originality to silence some of the ‘nice idea, shame it’s not 2007’ naysayers.
Bestselling author Alan Wake is suffering from writer’s block. He and his wife Alice head to small town USA, otherwise known as Bright Falls, to get away from the pressures of fame, not suspecting that the town harbours a great evil.
Alice disappears and Alan blacks out, awakening a week later with no memory of anything since her disappearance. Mysteriously, pages of a manuscript he doesn’t remember writing are scattered everywhere and the locals are possessed by this unseen evil, or Dark Presence – get used to hearing that phrase a lot. Alan must fight his way through the town to find Alice and unravel the mystery behind the darkness.
What unfolds is a surprising and highly memorable gaming experience, which celebrates the writer’s imagination as a source of both creativity and destruction.
Filed under: Game reviews | 3 Comments
Tags: alan wake, Dark Presence, DLC, E3, game reviews, Gamewank, horror, remedy, Stephen King, The X Files, thriller, Twin Peaks
Monday Monday
Forgive me for my protracted absence, it’s been a crazy couple of months. I’ve changed jobs, started running a magazine, been on The IT Crowd and even did my first piece of voice acting and podcast reviewing for my good friends Jim and Ric, the criminal masterminds behind Gamewank. (More on them later).
Sadly, and slightly more rubbish, I’ve also recently been dumped. I say recently, I mean yesterday. It’s still sinking in, I won’t go into detail but suffice to say today is not the best of days.
There are a fair few stages of any break up, some of which are repeated until our brains start thwacking us on the nose with a figurative rolled up newspaper. According to the ever handy Wikipedia and grief counselor and breakup expert Susan J. Elliott these stages can be classified under:
- Shock and Disbelief
- Review and Painful Relinquishment
- Reorganisation, Integration and Acceptance
Given that I’m just about 24 hours in, I’m still somewhere between stage 1 and stage 2. My plan is to listen to a lot of PJ Harvey and Kate Bush and try and get back some semblance of happiness this week. It’s also Monday so I can sneakily catch up with last night’s True Blood – I wonder if Alexander Skarsgard is single… In the meantime, if you can’t download or listen to Gamewank I’ll post the script of my review of Alan Wake in just a few moments.
PS Sorry for the emo post. Here’s footage of me and my best friend Lindsay having a great time on The Final Countdown episode of The IT Crowd. I should’ve blogged about it at the time, but hell here it is now. They asked us to geek up, I just came in my own clothes. Look out for Number 6 style blazer behind Moss.
Filed under: Rants and raves | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alexander Skarsgard, break ups, Final Countdown, Gamewank, IT Crowd, True Blood
Reviewed: Sex and the City 2
Carrie and friends return for yet another round of cosmopolitans, wrestling marriage, motherhood and menopause. But the real question is, do we want them back or have the four Manhattan gals outstayed their welcome?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but yes they have. Watching these movies is like watching a loved yet slightly past it family pet drowned in front of you, or an old school friend violated while you’re tied to a chair, looking on in helpless, agonising horror.
Sex and the City 2 picks up two years after the first movie: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Chris Noth) are still married; Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is juggling her home life with her career as a lawyer; Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is sinking under the pressures of motherhood and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is a walking chemists, staving off menopause with as many tablets and creams as she can cram into her eager cheeks.
The film kicks off with a wedding. The set is straight out of a 50s musical, there are swans and white everywhere and even a male choir singing show tunes. A big neon sign begins to manifest: this is a gay wedding. Just to hammer home this subtle vignette, Liza Minnelli officiates the ceremony. Apparently passing out of Judy Garland means you are automatically ordained as a minister in the church of gay. Harmless fun I hear you cry. Granted but nothing will prepare you for the sight of Ms Minnelli (64) singing and dancing her way through Beyoncé’s Single Ladies. At this point, my heart began to sink.
I am woman, hear me gag: the SATC ladies hit the karaoke bar
Filed under: Movie Reviews, Rants and raves | 1 Comment
Tags: Carrie Bradshaw, Liza Minnelli, Michael Patrick King, movie review, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City
Well done, Sister Suffragette!
Polling day is upon us once more, and by my count you have just over an hour left to vote. In sad news, today I had not one, not two but three depressing chats with women who do not plan to vote. I’m a great believer in exercising your right to vote, particularly as a woman. The tired old excuses of “they’re all as bad as each other” “won’t make a difference whatever I do” and “politics doesn’t really matter anyway” are just plain insulting to the memory of the thousands of women who fought and died in order for us to have our voices heard.
To them I say…
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A boombox is not toy
Wise words
Filed under: Recommended | Leave a Comment
Tags: Boombox, Incredibad, Julian Casablancas, Lonely Island
the girl in question
Xbox Live Gamertag
