An Academic Approach To Creepy Pickup Artists

 

An Academic Approach To Creepy Pickup ArtistsPlenty of people have called pickup artists creepy, but few have embarked on a full theoretical analysis of their creepitude. Now, a communications researcher does just that. Herewith, her breakdown of how Mystery twists evolutionary psychology to his own coercive ends.

 

Amanda Denes is a graduate student in Communications at UCSB. In a recent paper, she sets herself the unenviable task of reading all off The Mystery Method: How To Get Beautiful Women Into Bed and analyzing it from biological, cultural, sociological, and rhetorical point of view. Some highlights:

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This Guy Has My MacBook

On March 21, 2011, my MacBook was stolen from my apartment in Oakland, CA. I reported the crime to the police and even told them where it was, but they couldn't help me due to lack of resources. Meanwhile, I'm using the awesome app, Hidden, to capture these photos of this guy who has my MacBook.

Update: (June 1, 11:32 AM PST) The Oakland Police acquired my MacBook last night, and I picked it up this morning!

Update: (May 31, 8:37 PM PST) ARRESTED! An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos! BOOYA! The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up. Nice work OPD!

Update: (May 31, 7:38 PM PST) Thanks to the power of the Internet, I have the attention of the Oakland Police, who are tracking this guy down RIGHT NOW! Follow @jmk on Twitter for updates!

 

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The Game of Life - Santa Cruz News

Noah Wardrip-Fruin (left) and Michael Mateas. Photo by Chip Scheuer.

There were many brilliant and distinguished guests at the Inventing the Future of Games Symposium last month hosted by UC–Santa Cruz’s Center for Games and Playable Media. There was the perennially innovative Will Wright, creator of SimCity, The Sims and Spore. There was Rod Humble, who’s not only the CEO of Liden Lab, the studio that created Second Life, but also the auteur behind a number of artistically and intellectually ambitious indie games. But no one there sounded more like a futurist than UCSC’s own Professor Michael Mateas.

In his keynote address, Mateas compared the game-making tools of the current era to a cup of broken crayons. Then he switched slides in his PowerPoint presentation, bringing up a picture of the Mona Lisa. “If all you’ve ever seen are images produced by your broken crayon cup,” Mateas said, “you won’t even be able to conceive of this image, let alone execute it.”

Designers will not be able to create the games of the future until engineers build them the tools of the future. But what kinds of tools are we talking about here?

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Christian Game Developers Want to Leave Bad Games Behind

 

Christian Game Developers Want to Leave Bad Games Behind

Heading north on Interstate 5 toward Newberg, Ore. last week, I wasn't sure what exactly I'd encounter at Christian Game Developers Conference 2011. Would it have a show floor? Would they be showcasing new games? Would there be a Kinect-enabled Bible study game with 1:1 praying-hands control? Is a third sequel to the Left Behind series this community's Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and would we finally see a trailer for it?

Of course, I saw none of that. I had underestimated what "Christian Game Developers" really means. And what they do.

My problem, appropriately enough, was one of literal interpretation. See, in the conference's title, "Christian" modifies not "Game" but "Game Developers." The distinction is a little more apparent after you talk to enough people and find most of them working on secular games. They're building iPhone and iPad games that don't quote so much as "Jesus wept," or even mention Him at all. They work at BioWare, on Star Wars: The Old Republic. They go to the standard GDC in San Francisco. 

So if that's the case, why is this conference, now in its 10th year, even necessary?

"Some people just need to know they're not alone," said Chris Skaggs, of the independent developer Soma Games, and a conference organizer. "You see that in the conversations we have here. You often hear, 'Wow, there really are people who are out there,' and thinking about the same sorts of things."

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