It’s almost 2 a.m. and I’m outside, a cross-legged heap with a laptop, leeching wireless from a sleeping family near my apartment.
Pet by pet, buck by buck, I will be among the kings of the Facebook application You’re A Hottie. I will end the reign of the warlord Poundstone, the man who invited me to this game.
And I will give him a stupid nickname.
Days before I became the pathetic wreck I am now, I overheard the most insightful conversation on African politics I’ve ever heard in passing. When the group left, I actually felt shame for being stuck in a bubble where I worry more about owning icons of friends rather than political violence in Africa.
Forgive me if I come off as insensitive to global affairs, but the shame I felt quickly faded once I realized that the Hottie application is a great way to look at humanity.
The lovechild of three Berkeley graduates at CLZconcepts.com resembles the tangled mess of international politics, economics and human psychology –– but packaged in an easily digestible program with just a smidgen of homophobia.
The actual game is slave-trade economics: starting out with $3,000 Hottie Bucks (HB) and getting a daily allowance of $650 HB, users buy and sell icons of other Facebook users, “pet” their collection of Hotties once a day to increase their value by 5 percent, and eventually get them bought back by those who feel it beneath them to be nicknamed “Gumdrop Fairy.”
The societal ramifications of this lay in who, in fact, buys the Hotties. With enough patience and HB, one can finally be that opportunistic land-grabber, that corporate overlord, that alpha dog he or she has always wanted to be, albeit in a land of make-believe where only the people with money get a kick out of it.
To make money, one has to dig into the very mind of a competing Hottie, forcing a purchase by giving nicknames that paint one as effeminate or riddled with syphilis.
After two weeks of buy-out after buy-out of my Hottie collection by Poundstone — each time the price increasing to keep me from regaining my lost property — I realized I needed a change.
I had to get inside his head.
It was a threefold strategy:
1) Predict Mentality.
2) Build Forces.
3) Repeat Steps One and Two.
Step one involved analyzing that prickly pear. Like myself, he was born in 1985 and watched loads of formulaic ’90s television. Not obsessively, but enough to make references to those characters a horribly nostalgic moment.
With my forces sapped and only $10,000 HB to work with on Step Two, I resorted to buying Half-Off Hotties. However, I only wanted these Hotties temporarily, and only those who could pass for characters in mid-90s sitcoms.
Therefore: the half-off Irfal gets nicknamed “Danny Tanner,” Mahamed becomes “Uncle Jesse,” Matthew turns into “Uncle Joey,” etc. Soon I had the whole (extended) Tanner family.
The next time he saw my Hottie collection, he thought, “Golly, that is the whole extended Tanner Family. I want them.” And so he gobbles them all up, sticking him with worthless Hotties and giving myself more cash to repeat the process from Step-by-Step to A Different World.
If this keeps up, I will become the dominant Hottie, swallowing up his loved ones without remorse.
And when I weigh out my Hottie dominance and that lost moment to have had an insightful conversation on African politics, I will wonder if I sacrificed my time wisely.
But how else can one afford a $300,000 Hottie without losing a small part of one’s soul?
Oh, I see. It’s a pyramid scheme. You get $500 HB per invited friend.
I — I’ve been used.
Justin Noga is a senior English major. Send him an e-mail at jn108203@ohiou.edu.
Reader Comments
This is not funny at all. Can we have Nick Philpott back please?
Ladies and Gentleman, you have read correctly: The Almighty God of Newspaper Journalism Column Writing, ashley herzog, hath passed her judgment upon this first column of the summer post.
What a way to defy any code of respectful criticism which ought to exist between two journalists who represent a common publication. Maybe Column God herzog has graduated and has moved on to bigger and better things and thus feels entitled to make such blunt, bold and generally unintelligent comments about this column.
My photo response to that comment:
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff220/kasrkintrooper/Whambulance.gif
My written response to that comment:
You come across as a poorly socialized, pretentious yet naive and foolish...you know.
...You're too intellectually handicapped for proper and civil discourse, that was the purpose of my first comment. You proved it with your second. Thank you.
Yeah, once again:
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff220/kasrkintrooper/Whambulance.gif
:D
Since herzog is clearly incapable of rhetoric, I'll also resort to "photo responses:"
http://blogs.salon.com/0002786/images/2004/02/20/ann_coulter_talking_doll.jpg
Yawn.
You don't have to take my word for this column being not funny. Apparently, a lot of people agree, since the author wrote a letter admitting that no one reads it:
http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/Articles/Opinion/Your%20Turn/2007/09/24/21331/
Before Ms. herzog's next esteemed comment. I was really trying to make one point in my first column: Merely saying, "This is not funny at all. Can we have Nick Philpott back please?" is brash and pernicious to criticism and discourse. Especially given that you either currently work for the post and/or worked for the post as a columnist as recently as last spring quarter. It's simply unprofessional to make such comments about co-workers or former co-workers (this guy was a columnist last summer). It's trite, corny and classless, and the only person it makes look bad is you, Ms. Herzog.
I'll concede that after my first few years of casual bemusement with Ms. herzog's amateurish and baseless "journalism," I actually thought that she was at least beginning to write with an ounce of substance last spring. She was almost becoming...tolerable. But, sadly I see that she is still nasty, unprofessional and classless. There are always those people out there, and they have a right to voice their opinion as the rest. However, herzog's everywhere do nothing constructive for discourse.
Boo hoo hoo. "Trite, corny, and classless"? This same guy wrote a column last summer calling me a "bat-shit crazy propagandist," then proceeded to copy one of my awesome columns (that, you know, people actually read), and attempted to add witty comments. (Fail.)
So if you want to be a concern troll, maybe you should read his column that mentioned me:
http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/Articles/Opinion/2007/08/09/20831/
Now stfu.
Oh noes, the number of hits on this column tripled after I commented. Probably the most attention his writing will ever get!
A. Holy crap at the argument this column has drawn
B. It's not even worth reading
Herzog is right, I read this column and afterward wanted to sue for the minutes of life I had wasted on it. Philpott was hilarious in his writing, but he did make a decent sarcastic point. This harkens to Griffith's Wal-Mart article that was an obvious attempt to get ANYTHING written to beat her deadline.
Herzog may be pretentious and arrogant, but this writing is barely worthy of The Summer Post, let alone The Post itself or even it's online content.
Buying the Half-off Hotties is probably a sound investment. Buy low, and sell high, my friend. That's how the game is played.
And I thought Herzog's egocentrism took vacation off like the rest of us. Guess I was wrong!
Christ, she's insufferable, isn't she?
Exfactor, you always were my biggest fan :)
i was not aware so many people read my columns.
*basks in the glow of fame*
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