Ever since MMOs started making headway into the casual market, there’s been a subtle yet lavender-smelling invasion occurring on all levels: girls. Girls playing video games. Girls! Can you imagine it? For the male geek, this was manna from heaven — the potential of both games AND estrogen both existing in the same space! This was a Big Story way back when, which graduated to increasingly smaller and less relevant stories as people realized that it wasn’t a big deal. So girls play MMOs. Lots of people do. And if you have achieved some level of maturity, you can handle this wacky two-gender variety without blowing some kind of awkward gasket.
Of course, the day the internet matures and 4chan closes shop and the last LOLcat is posted is the day that something drastic will happen to the core of the planet, like exploding or turning inside out. Ergo, while many people peacefully co-exist with both males and females in MMOs, there’s a segment — which may be cruelly yet somewhat accurately stereotyped as basement-dwelling nerds — who react to this situation with the elegance of pulling pigtails and making little Suzie cry… or covertly stalking that hot chick six lockers down and putting pictures of her above your bed. This does not help our progress as a MMO community, nor do the girls who realize that they can use their gender as a tool/weapon to get what they want and generally make a bad name for other females in the game.
What drives me nuts is when stuff like this happens – it’s a long, convoluted tale of a “blogger” who was a “girl”, except it turns out that it may have been many bloggers or not — because it makes us ALL look bad. No matter who or what sex wrote the blog, but they most certainly weren’t this young lady who they used as photographic representation for years:
Now, unless you’re incredibly naive — as the blogger(s) posting this completely ridiculous “confession” would like you to be — there’s only one reason why this blog took pictures of this particular lady and used them as representation. Any hands in the air who want to say it before me? Yup — it’s a pretty GIRL who plays GAMES and oh WOW maybe she’ll like ME if I read her blog enough!
This whole stupid fiasco is pathetic and demeaning, especially to the lady whose pictures these actually are, and to the many readers who let their hormones do the RSS subscribing. Yeah, it’s an old cliche, some big fat hairy old guy pretending to be a hot young thing, but it got to be a cliche for a reason. This wasn’t someone using their gender as a selling point, it was someone pretending to be someone else and using their photos as a selling point. Lies upon lies, etc etc.
Anyway, I’m sure we’ve all learned nothing from this and will eagerly leap in the air like a trained seal the next time someone does a Google search for “cute college chick” and post a gaming blog with those pictures.
The REAL Syp
Whats more weird is, this “ferarro” person had been stalking the real girl for a couple of years. The real girl admits that some of the pictures stolen from her were from years ago on her myspace that she eventually took off.
But besides the pictures there are a number of other things that make this completely wrong and incredibly weird.
1. Ferarro said he/she worked for blizzard
This is a problem because Ferarro leaked the WotLK box art, thus violating the NDA. Plus as a person working for blizzard I highly doubt they would allow you to write guides about classes in game, since you have certain knowledge about them that no one else does, plus I believe there is a specific rule at blizz about not blogging or sharing information about the game unless it is allowed by blizzard.
Even if he/she didnt work at blizzard, they were claiming to be an employee, which is a banable offense in and of itself.
2. Not only stole pictures, but video’s and blog posts from the real girl.
Entire blog posts were taken from the real girls blog site and put on Ferarro’s site, same with certain videos she tried to pass off as someone interviewing her.
Now knowing all this, you then have to ask: Was the guides/info posted on the blog even written by Ferarro? The whole thing calls into question the credibility of those articles.
Its all incredibly weird and quite pathetic tbh.
Thanks for that post. I’m bored at work and that story had some great drama to pass the time
The sad truth is, that the girl he/she/it was stealing pictures from really is a pretty girl into nerdy tech stuff. She really is what all these people kind thought Feraro was, only slightly different. Internet drama makes me heart go pitter patter.
I think you are right about his/her reasons to pick a pretty girl as fake identity.
I mean I often play female chars, too, and sometimes you really still have guys who believe you are female because you did something dumb! :>
Then they usually help you and all that…^^
The “Many Men Online Role-Playing Girls” stuff lead to things like real females having to prove their identity over teamspeak and so on… oh my!
So thats what happened to that blog. I started a paladin recently and the blog had some great information, probably the best ret pali info that I could find. It went to invite only mode and I was a little bummed. I didn’t read the blog long enough to get attached to it. I honestly didn’t care if the blogger was female or male, I was there for the info.
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The internet is full of virtual crossdressers it seems. Oh dear.
Wait, I play an Avalonian Cleric in DAOC, a Dress Wearing Mage in WoW, and my Chosen is dyed all purple.
I need to go watch some football stat.