Wired Magazine Used to be Cool
"Helio's target demo: the ultrahip, ultrageek technosexual"
The word "technosexual" summarizes the decline of Wired Magazine. No longer a seer of future trends, the magazine has devolved into a muddled mix of brightly colored factoids about essentially useless consumer electronics, after-the-fact pop culture blurbs, and full length articles directed at these mysterious technosexuals. (I have no idea what they do with the electronics they buy, but I can only hope it doesn't involve any sort of lubrication) Disturbingly, there are even sections in the magazine called "Infoporn" and "Fetish," virtually admitting that the content panders to techno-savvy hipsters with strange interests and an aversion to media containing substance. And as far as being a little late on some stories, the April 2006 issue contains a blurb about the new album released by The Flaming Lips, but the band released At War With the Mystics in March! You could have already owned their new album before reading about it in Wired! Hardly cutting edge material.
Another recent issue was basically one big video game lovefest, which is what I will be deconstructing in this article. The first part of the pro-videogamer propaganda is a piece about how video games enhance the imagination. "...they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens.... Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play.... the gamers mindset--the fact that they are learning in a totally new way--means they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption." Whoa now, slow down there. The scientific method is unique to video games? And video games are teaching children to be creators not consumers? What? How did you get that game? How did you get that console? Did you create them? Video games are not teaching children how to avoid being consumers. An exorbitant amount of money is spent on consumption in the video game industry, especially with people willing to shell out 600 dollars for a Playstation 3 and fifty or more dollars for a brand new game.
That wasn't the end of the celebration about how great video games are, though, the following page revealed an article about the leadership benefits of online Roleplaying Games. "...he had an additional qualification his prospective employer wasn't aware of, one that gave him a decisive edge: He was one of the top guild masters in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft.... The day may not be far off when companies receive resumes that include a line reading 'level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft.'" Yeah, if parents start demanding applications before letting their geeky, college-dropout children go back to living in the basement. I can't even believe that this is printed in a legitimate magazine: wasting countless hours playing fantasy games on the internet is not an admirable quality and these individuals should receive less consideration for a job, if anything.
Next, true to Wired form, is an article about digital, interactive sex opportunities on the internet. Look, that's just gross. And it's also suggesting that these online gamer types aren't as cool as the previous articles made them out to be. (For the slow, if they weren't losers they'd probably be with real women) On the page opposite from that disgusting display is a little eight paragraph essay about a guy who dubs talk show conversations into scenes from the game Halo 2. "My favorite part is exploring the map as if it's a real landscape, so I started thinking of Xbox live as a social space and what I could do with it." You enjoy exploring the almost real landscape? Hey buddy, put down the controller and walk outside; there's a whole freaking planet out there.
You know what? I could go on and on, but I don't want to read the rest of that magazine, so this commentary ends here. And as a final note, I hear if you put a Wired Magazine and an Atlantic Monthly in a sealed plastic bag together it creates a black hole. Try it sometime.
© 2006, Michael Logsdon