Experimenting, Waiting, and Ranting...

Journal of Clarity – 037 – May 20, 2013 / May 21, 2013

As of two days ago, I officially ended my college career. No longer am I an annoying kid attending an educational facility run by empty-headed instructors who only teach to a test in order to meet the bare minimum requirements set by the government, which are vastly outdone by schools around the world, like Japan or anywhere in Europe for the most part… I kid, not all my teachers were empty-headed, just a lot of them. But now I can move forward to a career in the field I desire (film/writing) and hope that things will work out. If not… I guess I can just become a hobo and ask for handouts. That’s what most everyone else does, right?

I got bored this morning and I didn’t feel like working on something just then. So I was perusing the internets and found some “dating” sites that offer a different kind of experience than what I’m essentially used to. Basically, they are sites with the primary goal of introducing you to promiscuous women (or men as the case may be) for no-strings-attached sex. I made a couple profiles, both of which pretty much said, “I am bored at the moment and just seeing what happens when I make a profile here.” For those interested, I tried this on “ashleymadison.com,” “adultfriendfinder.com,” and “xdating.com.” Yeah, I really should have been working on editing instead, but I was bored and felt like seeing was going on with these sites here.

First, let me just say unless you have a script/ad blocker or some kick-ass anti-virus, I’d avoid these sites entirely. Luckily, I was okay, but just as a precaution. So, I guess the rules in sex apply here as well, have protection. (ha). So what did I learn and are these sites at all worth checking out?

Ashleymadison.com is a site completely devoted to helping people already involved with relationships (married, attached, or otherwise) and help them find someone to cheat with. In fact, it is in their tagline, “Life’s too short, so have an affair.” Now, I’m all for people freely choosing whatever way they wish to ruin their lives and the lives of people around them, but this is kind of sad. Not to mention the fact that there are payments required to do just about anything on the site. Men cannot initiate interaction with women without paying (but the opposite is not true), however men can respond for free (I think). Now, me being cheap and only just seeing what these sites had to offer, I find this to be annoying. Perhaps a better payment option would be to make it so you have to pay for certain features (like instant message, uploading more than one image, etc), but I would think that messaging people for a site that, at its core. is social networking (with a focus on getting laid) would make messaging people a free and basic function. But that is entirely not the case… and this would not be the first instance of this happening.

“Adultfriendfinder.com” gave me a little more to do, but that’s like saying that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 gave me a little more to do than Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. (OH! I JUST WENT THERE!) As far as I can tell, you could message people here, but you couldn’t view profiles at all, not even a person’s small and hardly descriptive introduction. How on earth are you supposed to find people you’d want to know, talk to, fuck, marry, etc if you can’t learn a damned thing about them beyond their screen name and a possibly fake/old/modified image?

Don’t even get me started on “xdating.com” because that site is just one evil tease for the most part. The same gimmick here applies that you can’t actually do much without paying for it. However you can interact with other members for free. Each profile has a button that says, “Do you like this person?” If you click it, it will say that “You like this person.” That person will then be notified and they can do the same to you. However you still cannot message them or anything, making that almost completely fucking irrelevant. Even if one was just interested in having sex with random strangers, how are you supposed to do it on that site without giving away your credit information to a less than reputable site? You can’t meet these people without sharing some kind of information, which you can’t do without giving away more valuable information to a faceless entity! I’m sure there are people on there who use these features to the fullest and probably have sex with random strangers from online on a regular basis. But it’s free to use Craigslist and easier to communicate with people. Plus the “like this person” gimmick is a joke. I didn’t have a picture on my profile nor did I even say anything about myself that would give a decent impression about me, and I got three or four people liking me back. So either they’re incredibly desperate to the point where any potential chance for sex will get their interest, or they’re fake accounts/bots used to goat people to actually put in their credit information, only to pull the rug out from under them. I’ll never know the real truth because I have a credit rating and a reputation to maintain. That was just my fun little experiment for the morning in between episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and designing minecraft challenges.

EDIT: So I got a message from someone on the site “Xdating” and thought to myself, “Okay, let’s see what happens when I respond.” Because I was under the impression that I could at least respond to people. Nope. Apparently it costs money to interact with anyone in a message format no matter how you do it. The message, however, was interesting, saying she thinks she had seen me elsewhere on the web before (based on my name as I still had yet to include an image). Being as this was the first time I used “CaptainRadical” I decided to test this. I copied her image from her profile and did a google image search to see where else she were else she was and perhaps see if there was a site I could respond for free rather than give out credit information. Turns out the image is very likely a fake as it is on several different Russian sites. So… yeah… going to assume that site isn’t necessarily safe for your wallet. :P

I also like how said site’s ladies are trying to get me to interact with them by saying how they want to know more about me which can only be done if I spend money to actually get permission to send messages to people. It seems more obvious than anything it’s all a scam or that most of these people are absolute idiots. Ha.

With all that aside, one could assume that my recent interactions with an attractive woman who has been deemed “absolutely perfect for me” by several associates has ended… But that assumption would be mostly wrong. Again, the above story, it was me just goofing around and seeing what the hell was going on with these “sex-dating sites.” As for the lady in question, we have a date for Tuesday (tomorrow, at the time of writing). The last time we had planned to go out, she had to cancel due to work stuff coming up that went on much later than she had expected. This time around, there may be issues with homework, but seeing as how we have a set time and plan, I’m feeling doubtful that will be the case.

Do I think things will work out? I’m confident that so long as I take everything I’ve learned from my previous failings in relationships as well as just keep calm, be myself, and have fun that things will be alright. That said, I’m sure something will happen where things go into the shitter because despite my best efforts, the cruel hand of fate, also known as God, likes to toy with me when he isn’t busy causing kids in Africa to die of hunger or AIDS. I know what you’re thinking. “Aaron! This isn’t being optimistic and confident! This is being pessimistic and somewhat fearful.” And while that’s true, I’d like to say that I am merely just acting realistic. Shit things happen when we least expect them to happen. Ergo, I just take the side of caution and expect shit things to happen all the time so, at the very least, the disappointment when they do happen isn’t so surprising.

But I think my number one reason I have any doubts of this working out is merely that it’s hard to hold a conversation down with her. Granted she’s busy, but I feel like there’s more to it I’m not aware of. And maybe I’m just making a big deal about nothing.

UPDATE: So… yeah… second date got canceled as well. I’m starting to think that there’s something going on here that I’m not aware of either because she isn’t being direct and telling me or because I’m being paranoid. Either way, this is getting annoying. I just want to take her out, get to know her more, and hopefully keep my presence as something she’s aware of so I don’t get forgotten for some other guy instead. But how can I reasonably do that if I keep getting pushed aside like this every single time? Worst of all, she is going out of town this week and will be gone for about a week and a half which kind of pushes back me being able to see her or do ANYTHING anytime soon. This is starting to give me flashbacks to winter break all over again. I’ll make one last attempt to make things happen before I ask the direct question of whether or not I’m being avoided for whatever reason. But, anymore, I feel like I’m wasting my time because I’m the only one putting anything into this thing that resembles the base of a relationship… which is getting rather annoying.

What else… Hm…

New Sonic the Hedgehog game was announced last week, which I’m greatly excited for since I love me some more blue blur. Arkham Origins is looking more interesting with a new trailer and details about the voice acting. Once I see some gameplay, I’ll be able to decide if I’m in or not on a pre-order. Same applies to Deadpool. Come on guys, show me some fucking gameplay! I refuse to pre-order anything anymore without seeing gameplay first (with exceptions to Bayonetta 2 since it is already pre-ordered). That said, expect me to pre-order the next Sonic game if it comes with anywhere near the amount of swag that Generations did (if that bonus comes to AMERICA).

Also, new trailer for Red Vs. Blue SEASON 11! So we have that and RWBY starting soon as well as Breaking Bad later this summer along with Arrested Development’s return. Let’s also not forget the return of Legend of Korra and the premier of Agents of SHIELD later this fall! We also have Man of Steel and Pacific Rim this summer with Thor 2 in fall. Yeah, lots of good stuff happening in the coming months entertainment wise. Just need some more games, damn it.

OH! I got Radiant Historia, finally. It’s pretty cool so far. An RPG with time-travel elements to it. Essentially certain points in the story require you to make a decision and that decision affects the course of events that follows (obviously). However, sometimes things will not go well. In those cases, you use the White Chronicle to go back to that point and make a different choice entirely, which is really interesting. I can’t wait to play farther and see where that ultimately goes.

Xbox Reveal was disappointing. The XboxOne is a really strange name for a console, and I had to accept the fucking “Wii” and “WiiU.” They do realize there are parents buying this for their kids who are going to be all kinds of confused with that name, right? At least XboxInfinity sounded kind of cool. ANYWAY, the forced integration of Kinect (i.e. every console launches with it no matter what) seems like not only a waste of money on Microsoft’s part, but also just a pointless idea in general. Didn’t most developers give up on supporting that and the Move? Aren’t motion controls part of the reason Nintendo was ignored by most worthwhile developers last generation? Why can’t Sony and Microsoft get that no one fucking cares about their desire for waggle controls?

Also, only a handful of games were shown at the event. I’ve seen the argument that with E3 right around the corner, there’s no reason to show off games now. That’s a stupid argument entirely. That’d be like saying that since the Tank (in Left 4 Dead) won’t come up for another two minutes in this game, we can ignore this perfectly fine Molotov just sitting here and keep moving. You have an opportunity to generate interest in your console by showing off the new games for it; you should do it and not wait until you have to share the stage with Sony! This conference was their chance to say everything without having anyone else to share the spotlight with and they wasted it showing what is pretty much a PS4, but with a big green X on it and a Microsoft logo somewhere.

No backwards compatibility, so I have even less reason to have interest in it now, not that the Xbox or Xbox360 games had my attention, since I never bothered to mess with those either. No touchscreen or touchpad like the competition, so I’m curious as to why they’re forgoing that option unless they’re really banking that Kinect will work this time. Also took the idea of game capture in console AND apparently you can editing that footage in console as well. So, that’s a step up from the PS4. But the attachment to the archaic system of XboxLive is still going to be there. And, of course, there’s still the focus of it being an all-in-one entertainment device that is supposed to do everything… OH!  And play games too! Almost forgot about that!

Jim Sterling and Bob Chipman said it best ages ago before the WiiU had hit the shelves. The desire for these gaming devices to encompass everything and do everything is getting old and pointless. TVs already do most everything the consoles do unless their old, in which case, you can’t even get the most out of the console anyway since older TVs can’t play HD either. But, more importantly, this drives the focus of the consoles away from their original purpose, to play games, and towards features that I don’t care about or intend to use. This is, in particular, what annoys me about both the new consoles and their announcements as well as the long wait time for the WiiU to get anything new.

But, again, is any of this really a surprise? Last generation was pretty much a contest between Xbox360 and PS3 to see who can rip off the other best until they were both financially crushed by the Wii. Then they took the stupid idea of adding motion control gimmicks to their console, which also ultimately didn’t work out (see Steel Battalion for the 360 Fable The Journey and Wonderbook). Now their back to pretty much doing the same stupid thing from before of being exact copies of one another with only a few minor differences to set them apart. I’d say Nintendo is clearly winning right now if it wasn’t for their recent PR stupidity (again) involving the Let’s Plays copyright infringement as well as their recent remove of same sex relations from one of their 3DS games and calling it a “bug.”

So yeah… all big three console developers are idiots right now because none of them know how to stand out in ways that aren’t stupid.

My, this went on WAY longer than I wanted to. Umm… yeah. I’ll end here. See ya!