Blarginess

I was recently looking for the latest episodes of "Der Dragon Warrior" when I noticed the website that hosts it didn't have it's usual face. Instead of the friendly screens leading either to the amusing flash animations or the odd forums, there was a set of pages that were excerpts from the forums. At first, I skipped through it all hoping to find that at the end I'd find those quirky flash animations I liked. Finding no such thing, I figured the answer with whatever it was I skipped.

While I eventually found the flash animations, watching them left me with a sour feeling in my stomach. Here's why.

The previously skipped forum thread detailed, in usual confusion normal to forums, a series of events which shed no good light on the makers of "Der Dragon Warrior". There was a different website that hosted some music in mp3 format from various Super Mario games which these forumers dubbed illegal. While the legality of the mp3s is not known to me, what the forumers did was far from the mature actions one takes when one perceives something is not right.

Instead of doing the right thing, namely alerting parties who could legally do something about it if it were necessary such as Nintendo, they hot-linked the mp3s to various thread pages in their forum. The upshot of this was a large increase in bandwidth and cost for the person running the site of unknown legality.

I don't know if the person who ran the targeted site was previously a member of the forum before this all happened, or if he joined later to protest what was happening. In any case, he was met with a level of hostility and ridicule on a scale akin to the ill treatment of POWs. As far as I can tell he tried to be reasonable, but nobody ever met him halfway in that regard. There were continual citings of "one email to Nintendo" and the potential of said email to bring his site down, which seemed ridiculous to me. If that were the case, why bother with the immaturity? The only reasons I could think of for not doing the obvious were supiriority complexes and sadism.

Judging from the fact that navigating to the website hosting the immature bunch immediately lead the thread in question, I'd say that these (obscenities) are probably proud of what they did. They probably think it's the greatest laugh in the world. It irks me a lot that such people can prance around, cyber space or no, and treat anyone that way. It irks me because they think well of themselves for what they did. They probably think they've done the world a service, and praise themselves for it. They probably consider themselves just. But I can see neither justice nor good done in what happened. Those who seek to do good should not seek reward, or boast of their deeds. What they did is designed to do both of those things. Their reward is the badgering of their victim, and their flaunting of the events their boasting. Were they truly interested in the betterment of mankind, they would have simply told the relevant authorities of what they thought might be an illegal activity.

Because of this, I can no longer enjoy the handiwork of these people. The flash animations where I once saw humor have been irreparably tarnished. I will watch it no more.