With PAX coming up this weekend (!!!), we didn’t really have time on Friday to invest in Virgil’s Wikiscanner - that mystical oracle that takes a raw IP range and then excretes a list of that organization’s Wikipedia edits. This is the pulsing, possibly Martian device that dished up last week’s awesome Electronic Arts edits.
I wasn’t sure if we should feel sorry for them or not - now that EA is situated in the number two slot, does that make them the scrappy underdog? - but I quickly realized it probably doesn’t matter. They can come right out and say “Yes, we edit it all the time,” mischaracterize the nature of the edits, and by the time it’s on the second page the events in question never happened. People don’t remember anything these days that isn’t on the first page of their feed aggregators. In any case, the entire affair is talking place on Wikipedia. Kudzu will grow over the propaganda soon enough.
Though time was indeed in short supply, we did fritter some portion of it pawing through ancient email headers, scraping for filth on old enemies. Or enemies with whom we have resumed talks. Or enemies who are now friends! Even people I hope to make enemies in the future by my careless commentary must fall beneath the scanner’s baleful eye.
Like a chugging trawler, we hauled up net after net of treasure onto the deck, sifting it on hands and knees. I’d never expose it, of course - sparking a desperate arms race to find self-serving commentary is a conflict I’m likely to lose. And with the deep catalogue of nemeses we’ve inspired worldwide (and even below the world, in the warrens of the pale Gambrya, where hate is eternal) it’s not what I’d call a fabulous scenario. For us, at least; no doubt, our foes have already begun their malevolent harvest.
(CW)TB out.
the second side of surfer rosa
