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In order to avoid looking for images of Amber Cole out of fear of unwittingly bringing up child-porn at work, I instead have included the first image result from searching “cyber bullying”.

I feel like I’m late to the party on this whole Amber Cole thing. I might’ve been distracted by the fact that they killed Gaddafi or some other world impacting news. I’m going to admit from the get-go on this one that I’m a little jaded about this sort of thing.

Here’s what happened: Amber Cole is 14 years old. She gave her boyfriend a blowjob. Someone taped it.  It got on the internet. If you watch it, you’re watching child porn. That doesn’t seem to stop some people. I’m as shocked as you are. 75% of people who browse a site called Global Grind are interested in seeing the tape. That’s wonderful. The kicker? Supposedly (I have not seen it, nor do I want to) there’s a few boys watching her do the deed in the video. Why’d she do it? To get her boyfriend back. This is the kind of behavior that Twilight seems to be encouraging. According to this nice lady (Janelle Harris) there’s an issue with Amber giving out BJs. To me, that’s not an issue. I’d rather my (hypothetical) 14 year old daughter be giving blowjobs than having full on intercourse. Her reasons are fucked though, performing sexual favours to try and win a boy back? Letting other people video tape it? That’s the fucking problem.

Everyone involved flipped the fuck out and everyone (her friends, parody videos, etc) involved is getting hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube. I’m not linking to any of these videos out of principal. You can search for them on your own time. This is our quality time together. Other than the kiddie-porn angle, there’s also the cyber bullying angle. Of course, there’s also the mandatory suicide angle. Which isn’t true. Stupid Twitter. I have a hard time with the cyber bullying thing too. The girl made a terrible mistake, eventually it’ll die out, and it’s the internet. People forget about stuff really quickly on the internet. This story is already on the downswing as I’m writing about it. I feel bad for the girl, I really do. Then I remember that if she plays her cards right she can spin this into a whole hell of a lot of money, maybe a singing career (why not?) or something. Then I feel less bad.

Jaded I know, but hey, it’s the internet, who knows what’s going on in her head at this point? The reality of this situation is basically that now she’s famous. I don’t really know how to say all that without coming off as extremely callous so try to take what I’ve said with a grain of salt. I really don’t wish ill on this girl and I do honestly hope this doesn’t ruin her life.

I’m going to stop talking about this before I say something too out of turn, I’m gonna talk about gaming again since that will make me feel better.

You know what fucks me up? That a single video game company can have their own convention devoted entirely to their games. Well, I guess if your games include Diablo, World of Warcraft and StarCraft and you have millions of people playing your games you can get away with it. Of course I’m talking about Blizzard’s annual BlizzCon. 26 000 people showed up last weekend to this year to “ooh” and “aah” as Blizzard showed them tidbits from upcoming launches. New WoW expansion? You bet. It’s called the “Mists of Pandaria” and it’s about… Kung-Fu pandas. I’m not fucking kidding. Look at the screenshots. I read up on this and I can see why people are sort of pissed off. The Pandarens have been used as running jokes by Blizzard because come on, seriously, they’re Kung-Fu pandas. Jokes no longer it seems. Yep, they seem pretty intent on taking a joke and making it reality. I don’t and never have played WoW, but doesn’t this seem like a bit of a stretch? You know you might just be at the bottom of the well when your latest expansion is about fighting panda bears.

Speaking of bottom of the well I don’t think Blizzard made a single announcement not pertaining to a sequel or spinoff of some kind. They also didn’t really pony up on any release dates either from what I can tell. Diablo 3? No release date. However, if you buy a year’s subscription to WoW you can get it for free, whenever it comes out. Early next year. Or later. Or whatever. My thoughts? Blizzard is afraid of BioWare’s upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic taking a bite out of their MMORPG pie and want to lock people up for 12 months just in case.

Also, Blizzard’s announced a DOTA game but I stopped caring, I don’t even play PC games. All this is pretty meaningless to me. Maybe it’ll mean something to Jorn, maybe we’ll talk about it on a podcast. Life is full of mystery. Here’s some cosplay from BlizzCon that’s pretty fucking impressive (first prize is insane).

Cyber Bullying photo from Facts of World
Pandaren Photo from Joystiq