A Few of My (Least) Favorite Things

Once again, April 1st is upon us. Maybe it is my inner Ebenezer Scrooge, maybe it is the curmudgeon in me, but I can't stand overt stupidity masquerading as humor. I'm used to the practice of not taking people, and especially websites, too seriously on this most wonderful day. Some of the pranking is actually amusing (this one comes to mind). A whole lot of it isn't.

One site I have a love/hate relationship with is boardgamegeek.com. I love it because it is a really nice resource for looking up and hearing about board games. I hate it because of a fairly significant element in the site's community. There is a smug, almost condescending attitude there among many of the BGG users. There is a passive aggressive defense of the group-think that persists. The admins can do no wrong, even when they do wrong. Any mention of dissatisfaction is almost immediately met with a defense of the site. There are many positive, redeeming aspects of the community, but there is a lot of trash in there. The trash tends to be very vocal, and as long as their vitriol is adequately packaged in veiled, passive aggressive, indirect language it is given a pass. Say the same thing in a direct manner, and you will receive a temporary banning (of escalating severity with repeat "offenses".

Boardgamegeek.com, being run by almost deified admins, does a regular April 1st prank it would seem. Last year it was a news item link on the front page mentioning how (your username here) is being announced as a new admin or moderator. Click on the link and it shows that old video of the Russian guy singing the Trololol song. At least it wasn't that stupid Rick Roll. That said, it was at least a clever set up. Being aware of the date and that I would never be announced as a site admin without previous contact, I knew before clicking on the link that it was a "joke". It was met with all kinds of yes man affirmations from the sheeple. Mildly amusing, but at least it didn't get in the way of using the site. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people didn't even see it.

This year they decided to up the ante. Now when you go to the site, instead of the familiar, but still craptacular UI, you get some moronic Google knock-off using the defunct Geekdo name. When I landed there I was annoyed that I had to wade through the regular April 1st moronics. When I saw that there was no hidden "click here to go to the BGG home page" button, I was really annoyed. I have to play along with this unfunny joke just to get to basic site functionality. Apart from some "Easter eggs" in the faux-search page, it just spits out a series of 100% Monopoly game results. There is a "click here to go to the BGG home page" kind of thing, or you can actually go to the Monopoly page and then to the home from there, but it is a bunch of time wasting steps with no payoff. A joke is not a nuisance, no matter what MTV is trying to social engineer into our consciousness with crap like Jackass. Now with a site that is more like a blog, this kind of thing might work, but a resource site that people use to look up information shouldn't do this kind of thing. Imagine going to wikipedia and getting some crappy counterfeit google search page that will almost always give you a series of hits that are all a bunch of superfluous Britney Spears entries. I want to get a summary of the Van Halen lead singer soap opera, and I have to look wade through a joke to do it? I don't think they really thought this through. And leave it to the sheeple to ensure they don't learn their lesson.

So please, please, don't do stupid April 1st "jokes", and please don't validate the bone heads that insist on the tradition.