Complacency and Facebook
Couple thoughts today…
I was filling up my car with gas this morning and as I was finishing up, I noticed one of the attendants standing slightly off to the side of the garage smoking a cigarette. Now, I am sure they feel safe smoking at a gas station, but I certainly didn't. I figure the first few times they smoked at the station, they might have had a slight concern and tried to be careful about where they flicked the ashes and such, but they did not look at all concerned or worried that they were putting a smoldering stick of tobacco to their mouth within yards of gasoline tanks and fumes. How many times does it take for something bad NOT to happen before someone starts taking it for granted that it is never going to happen?
Compare this to Null Sec in Eve Online. When I first started flying around in Null Sec, I was pretty nervous. I would constantly be on the lookout for hostile activity. Now, unless there is anyone in local chat, I have no worries. When people do show up in local, I still get that nervousness, but unless I am at a gate, I do not get to the level that I used to. Particularly if I am in a fleet with my corp. I have a much better sense of what we can handle and what I can do in my ship now, but I still get that initial rush. And now that I have spent so much time in Null Sec, I even get that feeling when travelling through High Sec – at least until I get used to the fact that people are not tyically going to attack me in High Sec.
In League of Legends, I think the analogy could drawn to ganks and invades. I used to fear invades in almost all games I played. At the Bronze level, they don't happen often, but they can be devastating – hell, even in Championship play you can see some major game changers before minions spawn (as in the SSW vs AHQ match I linked prevoiously). Invades can be rough, and usually, as Morgana, I hold off on taking a spell until after I am sure there is or isn't going to be an invade. If there is an invade, I'll grab Q for Dark Binding, but if there is no invade, I take W (Tormented Soil) because of the AOE damage and spell vamp. I also don't usually fear an invade anymore unless the opposing team has Blitzcrank, Thresh, or Amumu. I don't see as many invades without those champs. Another area of complacency is face-checking bushes, and this is an area I need to pay attention to. As I play a few games in a row, I have a tendency to stop worrying that there might be someone in the bush, and sometimes that comes back to haunt me. I need to stop losing my fear that someone may be in the bush, especially when I am squishy.
On a somewhat related note, I see Facebook is making assumptions and being complacent about its users. Specifically that the users are so stuck on using Facebook that they will stay with them even when they start taking draconian measures to ensure that people use their 'real names'. I guess they figure they have over a billion users, what does it matter if they piss off a few. What I think is funny is that they are doing this only a couple months after Google+ supposedly stopped enforcing their 'real name' policy. These big companies go around doing things until they strike a nerve in their user base, then they pull back – always testing the bounds of what intrusions people will tolerate into their privacy. Even the U.S. Government does not require legal identification when you go to vote, but Facebook is going to require you to use your real legal name.
Well, in my book, Google+ never got off the ground because of this stupid requirement. I was a beta user and was using it quite extensively during comic-con a few years ago until they told me that the username I had been using with Google for over half a decade was no longer acceptable and I had to use my real name on my account. This is the same username I had been using since the 90s, and now some big corporation whose motto is 'Don't be Evil' is telling me I have to use my real name. Well, I dropped Google+ rather than dropping my username.
I guess Facebook is looking for the same treatment from its users. I understand that supposedly they have had a 'real name' policy all along, but that hasn't stopped people from using aliases. Their defense of their new enforcement policies is that this standard “helps prevent bad behavior, while creating a safer and more accountable enviornment”. If they think they are going to control the behavior of a billion people, I laugh out loud. Accountability and safety are not provided by using real names. Community is not enhanced because people are using their birth names rather than something they chose for themselves. And some people will be killed for using their real names in some of the communities Facebook allows.
The bottom line is I think this is a dumb move by Facebook. I may not use their services much, but if they are going to attack me for using an alias, I will chose not to use their services at all and they can stop gaining data mining information from me. It's not like all their and Google's marketing, data mining, and privacy selling is innocent after all.
#LoL #LeagueOfLegends #Eve #Facebook #Google