I'm reading "Can You Escape the Algorithm?/‘Filterworld’ Gives It a Try.
An experiment in digital disengagement prompts Kyle Chayka to consider how technology has narrowed our choices and dulled the culture" (free access link to the NYT).
That's a review, from a couple weeks ago, of the book "Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture" by Kyle Chayka (commission-earned link).
I'm reading that this morning after searching the NYT archive for "MMORPGs," a very annoying set of letters that I'd never noticed before, but ran across as an answer in a crossword, clued as "RuneScape and World of Warcraft, for two: Abbr."
My reaction was: If that's the way it's going to be, I'm not doing your crosswords anymore.
Overreaction? My test of whether this is something I should recognize, because it comes up in real life, is whether it's in the NYT archive. This was not the NYT crossword. And, yes, I'm a Boomer.
You can see that the recent appearance of MMORPG was in parentheses, after a spelling-out of what it abbreviates. Before that, it hadn't appeared since 2019. But back in 2013 and in 2005-2006, the annoying letter combo appeared a handful of times. I see the phrase "the wonderfully named MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games)."
I guess I won't boycott that puzzle, but I can see how puzzle publishers risk alienating their audience. Puzzles are full of things that are easy for Boomers like me and that must be very annoying to Millennials and Zoomers. But when I see something like MMORPG, I just think it's a pathetic play to get young people to think this thing is for them. And please don't say YMMV either.
And yet MMORPGs are among the things the "Filterworld" author is nostalgic for. It's not new. It's old. Mid-level old. Like blogs. I'm nostalgic for blogs too, of course, but I'm still here in mine, and I presume there's this other group of people — who the hell are they? — who are still out there in their MMORPGs.
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I mentioned the Concorde airliner at work and D, a smart fellow but born in 1993 said to me "What's Concorde?"
I have a couple of books of NYT Sunday puzzles, one bought 40 years ago, the other 30 years ago. I bought them, believe it or not, with an eye towards retirement (2019).
I completed the older one recently. Working them is like a trip back in time, especially the newer 80's book. It contains a lot more then-current cultural references than in the 70's book.
I, too, have no interest in a puzzle containing an answer of MMORPG. If others do, great.
MMORPG has long been a standard term in the gaming culture. It arose with the WWW in the 1990s, as greatly improved network speeds made it possible to have hundreds of people in one virtual environment at the same time. Before that, gamers had "LAN parties", where a bunch of adults carried their PCs to a shared room and connected 4 or 8 to a Local-Area Network. See South Korea's Internet cafes of the 1990s and the concurrent marriage and population crash.
The term MMORPG was very, very clearly an inch-by-inch, year-by-year evolution. The primary gaming market in the early 1990s was <30 years old males, and then under 35, and then under 45 and then...whatever age... Many females started playing games in large numbers ten years later via social dollhouse games such as The Sims and then phone games with virtual dress up, virtual Gucci bags, etc.
Like it or not, games have eaten much of the professional sports market and much of the theater film market. This is interactive fiction with billions of profits every year. Any weak and fat slob can pretend to be a world-class athlete or single-handedly defeat 1,000 enemies in an hour. They also find friends, and tend to chat extensively after completing the game objectives/winning. Some suspect that gaming unreality has contributed to broadly broken social skills, poor negotiation skills, impulsive investing, shallow sound-bite politics, and more.
For good or bad, gaming is a key part of humanity's foreseeable cultural future.
MMORPGs have been a thing for at least 20 years - certainly "nerd" culture, but something South Park has skewered and the Simpsons have a whole online game that satires them. I'm sure there has been an SNL skit or two about it as well.
Huh?
I am totally laughing at what FB's algos cough up on my feed, which I suppose is unsurprising, given that I'm a polyglot man [= speaks many languages, not to be confused with Pollyglot, a parrot who talks like a pirate] with numerous, widespread, and reasonably-competent interests.
Some are logical because of realities in my life -- like 'Silver Singles', an old-folks dating site, where "old" means 50+. Shit, one of my **kids** is eligible, and if anything should be clear from my postings it is that I already have a deeply-rewarding relationship with a remarkable woman ... but Whatevs, 'Silver Singles'. Besides, I don't even like Catfish, of which there are plenty on such sites.
More amusing are the $10 K "tours" of Yukon. Err ... I used to **live** there and still have friends there, so maybe I post about it because I know it and love it and have stories to share. Even better, because I post a lot in French [duh!] and follow military and geopoliticaI affairs closely, I recently received an application to join a veterans' org of former Foreign Legion and overseas French troops. Three of my Army friends came back from the Nam in bags, but that was 15 years AFTER Dien Bien Phu, you stupid algo.
I also post or comment a fair bit on legal issues, having grown up in a family full attorneys, as well as acting 'pro se' in a couple of 5-figure commercial disputes, and for 7 months in a nasty civil dispute with mid-6-figure money at stake. So I've been deluged with solicitations from AI outfits promising me 3 more billable hours per day in my [nonexistent] legal practice.
Those are just some of the legit ones. There are plenty more scams, too -- like 7 bucks for 'Morgan' silver dollars [which, if genuine, have 20 bucks of silver in them] -- but why bother. Nice try. No cigar.
Remember that, folks, whenever outfits promise you "advertising power" on the internet. Maybe. Maybe not. In fact, probably not.
Ann Althouse said...
"My test of whether this is something I should recognize, because it comes up in real life, is whether it's in the NYT archive. This was not the NYT crossword. And, yes, I'm a Boomer."
OK, Pauline Kael.
"'MMORPGs', a very annoying set of letters..."
What's annoying about "R" and "O" ?
"M" I can understand, even if I don't agree. It tends to take up more space than most other letters. And it's just an upside-down "W" anyway.
Why is a person nostalgic for things that still exist?
mmorpg is definitely a boomer word
I'm fine with YMMV as an abbreviation, but they are not using it properly. It feels shoe-horned in. That I'm not fine with.
I play an MMORPG nearly every day. I'll be raiding later with twelve friends from the EU. Half of us are women. Half of us are middle-aged. We laugh together on headset and take our fighting seriously.
I've never heard of it either, but I'm a Boomer, not a Gamer, ha ha. An interesting concept though, crossword puzzles composed of acronyms, for the ultimate insiders!
It must be a bummer, being young today. When I was young, the world was ever-expanding with the space program, science fiction, the computer age, and then the even-faster-expanding internet's limitless world of possibilities, to cap it all off. But as a young person today, is there any of that wonder out there, anything like the sense of fascination with what comes next? Or just a sense that opportunities and options are a thing of the past? Sure, it was a polluted mess, but now at it: The filtered information world, narrowed intentionally by your anonymous betters, curated to dull your curiosity and ensure you don't make any of the disfavored choices, which are subject to arbitrary condemnation and possibly even prosecution?
My youngest son is a Gen X-er born in 1970 who amazingly taught himself to read at the age of two using the Sunday cartoons. He asked me to teach him chess but I gave up trying to beat him by the time he was five. From there he went to junior chess competition at the Middleton Library and chess by mail at the same time.
Then he turned to complex video games on Atari that required incredible dexterity and suddenly he discovered Dungeon and Dragons and his mind was blown again. Off he went to UM-Minneapolis where he took on the role of Grand Master writing D & D competitions and playing via email.
But I lost his progress once he left home for college but he was a computer genius of sorts so I expect that he has taken on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) as well.
Yeah, he is a genius and a nerd who, as a libertarian, moved to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project in 2000 and now drives 18-wheelers for a living - and he teaches folks how to play winning poker.
“There are two kinds of people in the world” is a favorite phrase. A trope? A schtick? Anyway, there are people who read and people who don’t. Its that simple.
Every time you post something about pop culture, you get a bunch of commenters in here bragging about how they don't have cable TV and haven't been to a movie since 1985. Now you're doing the same thing.
this other group of people — who the hell are they?
Men. That's actually the disconnect here, more than age. Entertainment today is overwhelmingly female-coded. You've come to think of it as your territory, so when you are confronted with the primarily male world of video gaming, it seems weird and off-putting to you.
I disrespect puzzle creators who resort to more than 1 acronym/puzzle, and using ones with more than 4 letters should never happen, especially if the acronym is less than 10 years old, So, no to MMORPG, SEATO, ISWYDT, etc.!!!
I still play World of Warcraft, which is arguably the biggest and one of the oldest still-played MMORPGs.
I do hate that acronym, though.
Ordered! It get's a 3.9/5 on Amazon which is interesting. We'll see.
I'm a Twitter addict and an occasional Instagram user. The information I get from those two is dramatically different in tone. Instagram is all fun and good vibes, whereas Twitter is a more doom and chaos. I like them both, but i'm tempted to create a new Twitter account and rebuild my followers list and see if I get something less negative. Doubtful in a presidential election year.
I've unplugged on vacations and while it's great, I feel like I've missed out on some major events.
Wilbur,
I own all of the collected editions- the ones from the 1970s are much more difficult than the ones from the early 80s forward. Part of it is the difference in common cultural things, but people like Will Shortz have created standards for clueing that probably make the puzzles more enjoyable and to a degree easier- you no longer need to know what a small Tibetan coin might be called.
Make Love, Not Warcraft is the best South Park episode ever.
Althouse:
I presume there's this other group of people — who the hell are they? — who are still out there in their MMORPGs.
Just as I presume there's a group of people out there who still tout feminism.
I've posted it here, I played an MMORPG. Over ten years worth. I have friends in Thailand, England, Germany, Australia, Brazil and other countries that I mingled with daily. That's an advantage people playing a popular MMORPG have.
Do you personally talk to people around the world daily, voice and text? Talk, not snip back and forth like a blog. I spent a lot of time talking with Ben (22) in Thailand when his grandfather died and Zatanna (moniker, not name) as she fought stage 4 cancer. That kind of personally.
And yes to TomT, MMORPGs are mostly men, but my league was founded by myself and a sweet gal named Kiley around 8 years ago and it was about 1/3 female.
MMORPGs are entertainment and depending on which, can be fairly deep in story line - certainly more so than "Aguirre, the Wrath of God".
Steering engines, the fourth estate, diversity in color, political congruence, consensus science, etc.
"...and I presume there's this other group of people — who the hell are they? — who are still out there in their MMORPGs."
They're 40+ year olds who work for Google, or Microsoft, or any number of the larger, successful tech companies loaded up with employees. So much so that many of them find time to get their work done and still fit in time for MMORPG's because there are so many employees working on the same team project, it allows for time to meditate, play ping-pong, get a cold brew, or just work on your MMORPG.
I'm obviously a boomer and never heard of MMORPG's, but I know of people who love these games. And yes, they fill out key roles now in companies we all know and use. It's a lifestyle they've had since their youth and they're not letting go of it. In fact, I expect their kids will be brought up with it.
I'm surprised you hadn't seen that abbreviation before now. I read a lot online and that's where I've encountered it, but my pop culture interests are probably different from yours. It's still unfamiliar enough that I have to say each word of the acronym slowly to think about what comes next.
The acronym is at least 20 years old. We had married friends who met on WOW. That was in 2005 or 2006. Eh, maybe that's how I know the abbreviation, but it feels like a reading word, not something I ever hear.
Everyone has a proclivity. Some people engage in massive online games, some in solitary. Some people are fixated on sports, some on politics, some follow fashion and some shitty art.
They're all the same. Chumps thinking what they find interesting is great and what others find interesting is beyond comprehension.
You and I both fall into that description.
The www has become uber-corporate.
Everything seems scripted (literally).
The wild west of the old days was fun while it lasted.
There are things I know that most people don't, and things others know that I have somehow missed. That is how it is with crossword puzzles.
I have nephews who introduced me to World of Warcraft many years ago. Just last night I descended to the bottom of the underground complex of Shadow Hold in Felwood, killed Shadow Lord Fel'dan and his two succubi, Moora and Salia, and returned to the Emerald Sanctuary with Fel'dans severed head.
I prefer FPS MMO games. My MMORPG experience was more social and involved required scheduled events. PUGs in FPSs are short duration and require intense concentration and communication skills if you want to be successful. Like MMORPGs you interact with people ages 9 to 70 from different cultures and nationalities. It’s harder when not everyone speaks English. Yesterday I think I was playing with some cartel guys from Mexico judging from the way they spoke. They assumed I don’t speak Spanish and muted me. They all died and I won the chicken dinner for us but they didn’t see it because they dc’d before the match ended, ha ha. You get more of a dopamine hit from a successful FPS.
Your comment section is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
The LLR team usually finishes last.
The keyboard badasses and holier-than-thou anti-racists are little better.
And if I had a BFG I'd be vaporizing Rocco's avatar for insulting Woodland Critter Christmas.
I'd never heard of Coltrane doing "My Favorite Things." It plays in the background now, as I type this, found instantly on today's internet.
As to online games, I never moved on from D&D played with dice and paper. Nor did I ever defeat Gorgar on the pinball machine. And a professor who practiced sleight of hand made me never want to play cards for money with any strangers.
One of my favorite clues from old crossword puzzles was "Celebes ox."⁷
mikee:
And a professor who practiced sleight of hand made me never want to play cards for money with any strangers.
My lesson came from a very different vector. When I was younger, a friend's father was a gambler. Made all his money that way. One night the game was short a player and he invited me. Told me it was a serious game and I should be nice.
When everyone sat down, two players took out pistols and laid them on the table.
It was a VERY respectful game. I was pretty happy I broke even.
Good learning experience.
“ who are still out there in their MMORPGs.”
NTTIAWWT
Oligonicella, your comment about actually connecting with people reminds me of an experience I had in WOW during the pandemic. I was questing, and ended up teaming up with some guy I encountered who was doing the same quests. Eventually he was like, hey, can we just talk for a while? He started telling me about how severe the lockdowns were, and how he hadn't been allowed to leave his home in weeks. He just wanted to vent and talk to someone. I felt really sad for him. I know that these games are often derided, but they really are a thing that people use to connect. I don't play WOW nearly as much as many people do or take it all that seriously... but I still have very real memories of some of my accomplishments in that game. Strange that people would consider a novel or a film as a legitimate form of art, but so casually dismiss something that is much more elaborate.
It's my contention that the algos have gone so far as to render much of the internet dead. Gone are the days of plugging in some obscure text just for giggles to see what comes up. Now, the curation is so thorough, that everyone is in a silo with a limited amount of reach. Think shadowbanning, but on a much larger scale. We all eventually just shout into the void.
I'm a Boome and I've been familiar with the acronym MMORPG for over a decade, even though I don't play them. Expand your horizons Anne, you sound a bit silly sputtering about it (damn horseless carriages cluttering up the road!).
Friend of the Fish Folk:
Strange that people would consider a novel or a film as a legitimate form of art, but so casually dismiss something that is much more elaborate.
Or mock people who accumulate skins for their avatars (I had 16 alts at one time, all different) yet ooh and aah over runway shows.
@KellyM - Only if you restrict yourself to accessing through Google, etc. I've been on the net since Al Gore claimed invention, back when it was BBSs and raw sites. Hell, back when you had to type in the damn site numbers. There's still plenty of things you can find that don't require the big tech to find. Sometimes you have to use the numbers you find about.
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