New Games Journalism and the dialectic

Three conversations I've had today have come to the same place, and I figure if that's not a reason to blog about something nothing is.

Always Black, a dude who runs a pretty neat website, has a piece on New Games Journalism. Go read it, I'll wait.

That's the first piece.

I had a conversation this morning with a co-worker that meandered past culture jamming as an attempt to revive the dialectic (i.e. provide an opposing argument to a cultural norm). This in the context of a billboard I saw this morning with Paris Hilton vamping Guess glasses and her bare chest, on which someone had written "Do you judge your worth by the price of your clothes?".

That's the second piece.

I also had a conversation just now with a longtime friend who bemoaned the state of public discouse in two specific ways: (1) centrist opinions are not widely made public, like far-right ones are and (2) in the same way that stopped clocks are right twice a day, sometimes the AM demagogues say things that ring as true to centrists as they do to the far right. Since it's an AM demagogue saying it, though, the opinion gets painted with that far-right wash. And it becomes impolite in what little centrist discussion there is.

That's the third piece.

So that brings us to the actual point I had to make: let's talk about politics, everyone! Let's make our opinions known. Let's write, and speak, from the heart and not be afraid to be wrong. Dive right in!

...but you first, OK? I hear the water's cold. And I don't like to be mocked.