Matt Damon, you big fat jerk!

[TomChick]

Imagine the online media as one big sloppy game of telephone. Guess where you're sitting? At the far end of the line, like a chump.

[Nellie]

I'm fucking Matt Damon!

[Hans Lauring]

Good work mr. Chick. If you're not careful we'll start accusing you of actual journalism.

[Niclas]

Originally Posted by Nellie

I'm fucking Matt Damon!

Brian Ashcraft is, rather.

[KieronGillen]

This stuff frustrates me so much. I know why they do it, but just follow the fucking links.

KG

[Omniscia]

How long until someone writes an article about how Tom Chick called Matt Damon a "big fat jerk" with no provocation whatsoever?

[Fugitive]

You see it on Slashdot all the time; an article will have a nice big INFLAMMATORY HEADLINE!, and the comments will be filled with SO MUCH OUTRAGE!, but if you actually go and read the article, it turns out to be some misquote, or misinterpretation, or some lone senator's mumbling rather than actual law, or some special case, or some crucial details were omitted, or...

[KieronGillen]

Being paid per page impression is a dark and evil thing.

KG

[Niclas]

That's just commercial blogging; some use that as an excuse to sell out more than others, though.

Valleywag is notorious for using these misleading exclamatory "zomg" headlines.

[Jazar]

It's the lowest form of journalism. Right below the guy who writes the weekly cafeteria menu on the elementary school newsletter.

[mok]

Nice article.

[Ben Sones]

Originally Posted by Jazar

It's the lowest form of journalism. Right below the guy who writes the weekly cafeteria menu on the elementary school newsletter.

The menu guy is actually providing a useful service, though, so there's a pretty wide gap between the two.

[Charles]

This kind of shit infuriates me. This is just another tick in the column of "why blogging isn't journalism." Sorry to all those who do blog like journalists -- I do appreciate you. I guys kotaku et al are to blogging as Fox News is to journalism.

edit:

I just had an idea. Make a site like Digg, except the whole point of the site isn't to promote good or interesting articles, but to shame misinformed or poorly written articles. I wonder if it would take off?

[MemoryKay]

Yeah nice article indeed. I saw that story a few days ago on Kotaku too but sort of ignored it because the game really doesn't seem that interesting anyway. There are times when these cartoon/TV-series/movie-adaptation games come out that have been hyped to oblivion but us hardcore gamers keep saying to ourselves "probably not going to work". There's the new Ghostbusters game too, for which they got actual voice actors for from the original, but it doesn't look like it'll be that fun either. Don't come at me with your pitchforks, I want it to be cool just like everyone else (I love Ghostbusters!) but .. you know. The interesting thing is what did they say to Bill Murray to get him to lend his voice. Or how much did they pay..

Anyway, as written by Tom, it's the broken telephone all over again. I thought Kotaku was more trustworthy though, despite the hundreds of spelling errors and broken sentences you see in their posts daily :)

[Al]

I just kind of skimmed everything but I guess the point is that former Attorney General John Ashcroft is fucking Matt Damon?

[Tom Ohle]

The game actually looks very cool... but who seriously gives a shit about Matt Damon's thoughts on violence in games in the first place? As an industry I think we need to get away from taking posting news about "oh my god a movie star's kid plays games!" or "dude this celebrity has heard of GTA HOLY SHIT MAN". I have no real opinion on the story checks in this situation, because I don't care what Matt Damon OR his mother think about games. Can we be any more juvenile?

Is Variety reporting that some jerk from Fallout Boy watched Iron Man in his Spider-Man underwear this weekend?

[Neopythia]

It's just the business model of the Gawker Media empire. Denton has realized that the money comes from breaking stories, creating internet fire storms, or creating q-list celebrities.

Occasionally I find an intellegent discssion on Kotaku, but it's almost always ruined by the "humorous" trolls that they court as commenters.

[BDGE]

Can we all at least agree that literary violence is even more distressing? Like when Damon totally beat the hell out of that guy with a book in the Bourne movie! I'll never look at hardcover novellas the same way again.

[Niclas]

Originally Posted by Charles

This kind of shit infuriates me. This is just another tick in the column of "why blogging isn't journalism." Sorry to all those who do blog like journalists -- I do appreciate you. I guys kotaku et al are to blogging as Fox News is to journalism.

edit:

I just had an idea. Make a site like Digg, except the whole point of the site isn't to promote good or interesting articles, but to shame misinformed or poorly written articles. I wonder if it would take off?

Like this one?

[MemoryKay]

Originally Posted by Tom Ohle

but who seriously gives a shit about Matt Damon's thoughts on violence in games in the first place?

I think the point is more as to them claiming Damon didn't agree to take part in the project because he thinks it's violent as opposed to what Damon thinks in general about video game violence. At least that's how I see it. Would be a lot cooler to play a Bourne game with the actual Bourne in it.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Niclas

Like this one?

Not exactly. That one is essentially just a blog itself.

[Niclas]

Originally Posted by Charles

Not exactly. That one is essentially just a blog itself.

Well, choosing which one that has to go down the most on such a site, as you're suggesting, might seem a little unfair. It risks reaching lynching status, even for a misstep that's not really that catastrophic. Just watch how irrational diggers can be, and how much fuss they can make over cases that are often insignificant - and may even be based on a wrong assumption. A multiauthored site consisting of people with the necessary prerequisites might make a decent concept, though.

I don't think this particular case is severe; it's more what it's a symptom of - and that it's likely happened before at Kotaku.

[mono]

Kotaku is the only source you need to discount their own conclusions. Their citation is the money quote. Damon's mom, speaking for Matt by proxy, simply speaks out against marketing violent games for kids. There's no stance against violence in games, only the audience that publishers target for them. Kotaku just went the sensationalist route for hits.

[Chris Nahr]

Bravo, that was a nice piece of detective work!

Uh, I hope we can keep posting inflammatory misleading headlines in this forum? Threads get more replies that way, you see, and I still have some way to go for the 10,000 posts achievement.

[AndrewM]

Another recent Great Moment in Gaming Journalism was the reporting of the price of Age of Conan. Somebody on Gamespot went to the trouble of reading through investor reports or something to determine that Funcom said that the box cost of AoC was going to be $60 (spawning a thread here at Qt3), but didn't bother to look at any retailers, where the cost appears to be uniformly $50. Maybe the price is going to be raised, but I'd guess that the price given in the report was the MSRP and not a real price.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Originally Posted by Chris Nahr

Bravo, that was a nice piece of detective work!

No. The problem is that wasn't detective work, it was easy and what should've been done in the first place.

[Kyle Wilson]

Uh... this is the Bourne game being developed by High Moon? They got the rights to the Bourne series of books. They're not associated with the Bourne movies. I suspect that if they featured Matt Damon's likeness in the game, both they and he would be the subject of lawsuits from the movie production company.

[Kool Moe Dee]

Originally Posted by Kyle Wilson

Uh... this is the Bourne game being developed by High Moon? They got the rights to the Bourne series of books. They're not associated with the Bourne movies. I suspect that if they featured Matt Damon's likeness in the game, both they and he would be the subject of lawsuits from the movie production company.

But...but...it sounds better the other way! (Oh, and it will get more hits, too...)

[BacteriaEP]

Half-assed journalism will be the deathknell of video games...

I've said it! It can't be retracted now. Mark my words!

[Foxstab]

Originally Posted by Charles

This kind of shit infuriates me. This is just another tick in the column of "why blogging isn't journalism." Sorry to all those who do blog like journalists -- I do appreciate you. I guys kotaku et al are to blogging as Fox News is to journalism.

edit:

I just had an idea. Make a site like Digg, except the whole point of the site isn't to promote good or interesting articles, but to shame misinformed or poorly written articles. I wonder if it would take off?

And the "professional" written press doesn't do this too?
A big inflamatory headline, designed to draw readers, then when you open the newspaper and actually read the article you realize how so much out of context, perhaps even warped, the headline is.
Everyone's a sellout whore fighting over rating.