An Army of United Nerds, or, How I Learned to Think Like a Group of People

The shit storm began roughly two weeks ago. Well, the most recent shit storm at least. Joystiq, like many other videogame news sites, has been running nearly daily coverage of the ridiculously outlandishly overblown controversy around EA/Bioware's, "Mass Effect." (The story has even warranted its own wikipedia page.)

Initially, the controversy was just one unheard of conservative blogger ranting about his gut reaction to the few YouTube videos of, "Mass Effect" he somehow stumbled upon. As gamers discovered his piece, they reacted to him and, as if things weren't ridiculous enough in his piece, Fox News even picked up the, "story" and ran with it. Geoff Keighley (yes, that Geoff Keighley) was asked to appear on Fox News to, "discuss" their claims - - and when he did, he was lambasted from all sides by arrogant downtalking and infantilization. The video is a great example of how Rupert Murdoch has turned Fox into all entertainment all the time. Political consideration aside, the lack of any respect towards the integrity of their own institution, none the less journalism on the whole, makes me wonder who's really out there, as a gamer, watching Fox for news.

Gamers run the gamut from conservative to liberal, politically speaking, just like the rest of the U.S.A. Gamers are not a unified group of people with the same political views, the same religious views - - we can't even agree on what horse reigns supreme. Fox News misrepresented the facts and, at very least, blew things way out of proportion. In doing so, Fox officially unified gamers behind something: a common enemy.

Cooper Lawrence, an "expert" in developmental psychology (I'm putting my money against that), became that figurehead. Ms. Lawrence thought she'd drop by a Fox newsroom and appear on a quick mid-day television show and in doing so, also promote her book. Based on her commentary, gamers flooded the Amazon.com page of the book she was promoting with negative reviews, claiming, much like she had, that they had never read the book but it was clearly terrible.

My question is this: Should gamers be enabling more stupidity like what happened at Fox by reacting as such? Yes, Ms. Lawrence acted that way herself - - does that mean we should too? Funny: clearly. Mature: not so much. And you? What do you think?