Vancouver Homeless Game iBeg takes Gamers to the Mean Streets

Um, WTF?

Vancouver’s homeless depicted in iBeg.
Photograph by: Screen grab, Web

A Vancouver studio Last Pick Productions is touting its planned new game iBeg  as Vancouver marks Homeless Action Week this week.

In its blog <http://lastpickproductions.com/blog/&gt; , the company  suggests it is hoping to keep awareness of homelessness on people’s minds  outside of the traditional charitable giving times and it would like the game to  be used as a tool to let people donate to Vancouver charities “on an ongoing  basis.”

“The game takes a third-person view of a homeless character and as they  purchase in-game items to help themselves out, a portion of that money is  donated directly to charities that provide real help for people affected by  homelessness. We strongly believe that this can become a legitimate way of  fund-raising in the near future,” Last Pick founder Chris Worboys said in the  blog post.

“We are building a game that will bring awareness to the issue of  homelessness in our city and provide people with a new means to donate funds to  an issue we are committed to helping.”

[...]

In the game, the player takes on the avatar of a homeless person on the  streets of Vancouver. The goal is to earn money panhandling, busking, collecting  cans and doing odd jobs and to keep your avatar fed and safe from the  weather.

However, while still far from its planned release, the game already seems to  be stirring some controversy.

In this story, Tyler Orton reports in 24 Hours Vancouver that Union  Gospel Mission spokeswoman Keela Keeping said the game raises concerns.

“You don’t ever want somebody’s pain and somebody’s worst place to be put out  there as entertainment,” she told 24  Hours.

If You Knew What She Meant by “Romance”, You’d Stop Buying Her Flowers

What Disney really teaches about romance.

I don’t have a daughter, but I am going to go out on a limb and  assume that Disney’s Cinderella is probably one of the first “romance”  oriented movies that American women are exposed to when young. When you  take a closer look at how the story is framed, you get an entirely  different perspective on what women define as romance. It turns out that  romance isn’t pretty.

To sum up the Disney plot line:
1) Pretty, but insecure girl is oppressed by – wait for it – other females (evil stepmother/stepsisters).
2) Pretty, insecure girl makes it to the royal ball and catches the eye of Prince Charming.
3) Cinderella is forced to flee to meet midnight fairy-godmother deadline.
4) Prince Charming moves heaven and earth to find Cinderella.
5) Happily ever after ensues, Cinderella tells stepmother/stepsisters to go suck it, she got the prince.

[...]

This story and all its derivatives are basically a tale of a lottery  winner, except in the hypergamous sense. But for every lottery winner,  there are millions of poor, trailer-court occupants, pissing their dollars  away on a billion-to-one chance of living in luxury. Playing to this  impulse keeps women spending their youth on a shot at alpha lottery  winnings that, for most, will never come. In isolation, this story would  be just a fable. But our culture is made up of an unhealthy amount of  this kind of thinking, and the additive effects of it are a key  contribution to setting young women up for a lifetime of disappointment, followed by “settling” (defined as anything other than marrying an alpha).

And the lesson for beta males everywhere is that your notion of  romance could not be more different than a woman’s. For most women,  romance is an alternate definition for sexual conquest, and triumphing  over her rivals.

BTW, the original, non-Disney, Brothers Grimm story of Cinderella is somewhat different.

One commenter linked this related excellent graphic:

The Top Three Qualities That Make A Girl Good Girlfriend Material

Excellent post by Roissy.  (HT: Ray Sawhill)

1. She exercised and ate healthily before she met you, and she continues to do so after you start dating her seriously.

2. She rarely disparages her girl friends or snipes about their flaws behind their backs.

3. She has not had many past lovers, and she is not a constitutional flirt who will invite the temptation of more lovers.

Read the whole thing.

Divine Punishments

The game. Though not actually a punishment, Zeno might be my favourite.

The Church is Failing (and Losing) Young Men

I’m very sympathetic towards this commenter at Alpha Game:

As a 28 year old Christian man who just now stumbled across the concept of “game,” I feel like I’ve been lead astray. I now look at those that surround me in my local church and see them as the Gamma/Delta men that they are. It’s a disappointing thing to see. Since it dawned on me that I wouldn’t follow any of them.

This is a very important issue for Christian men and women alike. The evangelical church is very effeminate and barely tolerable for red-blooded men. Young women can easily be made to agree that something needs to done. They know better than anyone that those young men still in the church are often of questionable appeal. At some point I’ll be returning to this topic on my main blog.

The Ethics of Roosh

Modern-day Casanova Roosh Vorek is doing an AMA on Reddit. I asked him: “Do you consider yourself to be a bad person?” His answer:

I don’t think I’m a bad person.

As a man who wants sex, I will act in a way that gets me to my goal. In America, the more poor you treat a woman, the more likely you will have sex with them. I will do this even though my instinct is to treat a woman well, believe it or not.

Denmark is a weird place. Girls don’t want to be treated bad, they want to treat YOU bad by forcing you to listen to their inane opinions and put up with their masculine attitude. I did this in order to get laid.

In Poland, treating women like women, taking them out, having sweet conversation, and so on led to intimacy. This is why I prefer Eastern European women.