Outrage in Waiting

It seems that outrage has become the new pastime here in America. Accuse first and do the research and ask questions later

Scribblenauts' is a game for the Nintendo DS that lets you write words and have the object appear on the screen which can be used to solve puzzles in creative ways. Did the game's develoepr 5th Cell really think they could let people use an estimated 20,000 words and not figure out a way to outrage themselves somehow?

Sure enough within a week after release a post appears: And yet "WASP" produces some sort of insect

Entering the word "Sambo" results in something, that from the blogger's perspective looks like a watermelon. And since "Sambo" is a racial slur (albeit one that I hadn't heard used in a long time), and watermelons are a stereotype, it must be a hidden piece of easter-egg-racism. (  Ignoring the fact that it could just be a "Sambo"  )

Cue the overreaction by a number of blogging sites (Kotaku , Consumerist , Joystiq ) the first of which, I believe posted their original story before hearing back from the developer - luckily, however, while the internet never forgets, it's easy to amend - and all the stories carry the developer's response.

Now, I don't actually believe that we as americans get outraged that often. Given all the stuff going on in the world, I would really be surprised if things like this actually generated an emotional response of outrage. I think we have become such attention hounds that people will write anything they think could get them the page views - my favorite is the fact that as bloggers we view ourselves as just "raising the question," not actually responsible for the result of our words or for a modicum of research to prevent the resulting cacophony. Just like the birthers are "raising the question" of whether president Obama is a US citizen or not. [ And in response, people are "raising the question" of whether or not Glenn Beck Raped and Murdered a young girl in 1990 - I personally don't think he did, but I haven't heard him refute it ]

Regardless of the reason, the bottom line is - even if you don't say or think anything racist / sexist / controversial on the internet - as long as there's one person out there looking to get angry or make a name for themselves, all they have to do is take what you've written, put a personal racist / sexist / classist interpretation on it and you'll end up spending the rest of the week trying to convince people you don't run around the office in white hats - 5th cell's need to resort to writing that they have a number of black employees, also known as the "black friend" defense was a little sad.