On Monday, I mentioned an article by the irrelevant Kevin McCullough entitled "The 'Sex-Box' Race For President," a poorly titled, poorly sourced, and generally just poor piece of journalism. As the game has now been available for months without attracting his attention, I can only assume that his flailing response was based on this other report, itself already far removed from Mass Effect, the game which is ostensibly being described.
His recent post responding to enraged gamers is absolute literary wreckage, and it might take you weeks to find your way out. He has modified the particulars of his original argument so that the most egregious lies are smoothed away. He retreats at full speed from the items that can't be supported, while simultaneously claiming that his argument hasn't changed. And then, apparently to fill the space left by the original falsehoods, he suggests that the game is actually worse than he originally claimed, but won't say how. This is Calvinball of the worst sort, and we need not play.
He suggests in this column that what gamers really crave is bestiality. After breathless prose in the original piece about orgies and sodomy, acts which are manifested nowhere in the product he's discussing, he literally begins to fantasize in the body of the text about a machine that can rape people - and rape them "orgasmically" - at a distance. He does not warrant our time, but I will speak in the clear manner that one must when managing animals: these things are not simulated by this or any other piece of entertainment software available at retail. Indeed, it was precisely the lack of sodomy that created a stir before release.
What, then, is the source of this imagery? To find it, you must drill deep down through the artifice and find the undulating reservoir of sexual fetish that boils beneath. This scheming, grotesque caricature of a "concerned citizen" is about as transparent as it gets.
It really is incredible: this is a man whose job is lying to people who want to believe him. The inescapable result is that it has taken a craven, manipulative opportunist and reinforced these qualities. We suggested as a joke that he would attempt to manipulate the community, and he has done so - we have allowed it to the extent that we thought it would entertain you. I urge you not to encourage any further outbursts on his part: the man is strictly small-time, and you have the power keep it that way.
(CW)TB out.
