On Feb 15, 2005, at 6:52 PM, feenyx wrote:

Though I hate stating the obvious..... You rock.
Moreso for having the danglies to fend for your Nation even though the public
is a constant critic. I don't hate Americans, I just don't like the people
running the show. You know what they need? A marketing department.
The Marketing Department of USA, to make harsh realities more acceptable for
the proverbial (dumber-than-thou) man in the street.
I hate to see your nation succumb to the whims of a monkey on a leash =/

/rant

Just letting you know there's hope yet :)

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naku's response
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hahahahahaha dude I could totally design the US website. I can see it now.... it will have ghei pastel colors reminiscent of easter time and maybe a flash animation of a squirrel in a rocket ship with a cute sound effect.... and the words will fade in........... one love

fade to black

fin

It will be perfect :D hahaha *writes letter to my congressman*

Thank you hehe
/Naku

On Feb 15, 2005, at 9:52 PM, joe wrote:

Just wanna say I'm a long time LG reader and the rants are some of the best ^_^. Thanks for stickin up for all us American gamers, I personally try to be a nice as can be to other people and hope for the same. Just cuz we're run by a retard doesnt' mean we are retards. Keep up the good work

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naku responds
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Thank you :') I'm not sticking up for american gamers... I'm sticking up for the gamers that are out there and don't care where people come from, they care about enjoying the time spent in the game. That was my point. There are bad gamers that use gaming as a means to make themselves feel bigger and better than they really are. There are ALSO gamers that spend the time wisely and help others become better... make the new comers understand how to play and learn from your mistakes. It should be a community and should be a good experience... especially since you pay a gorramn monthly fee for it hahaha! ;D

Anyway, thank you for the letter and kind words. Take care!
/Naku

On Feb 15, 2005, at 10:33 PM, Joshua wrote:

Hi,
Out of all the “ranters” on Little-Gamers I prefer your rants by far. But I’d like to point out one thing that may or may not fuel your anger on the issue regarding the U S of A and the rest of the worlds perception. I personally have no issues with the Americans, heck I even have relatives and co-workers from the much more sunny south (I’m from Canada eh [might as well say it before anyone else does ;-) ]). Anyways I too play ffxi (Bismarck server) and I can honestly say that the only troubles I’ve ever had from other players are American ones that seem to have been blinded by the media or some malarkey like that. Oddly enough this used to happen quite frequently even though I don’t bring up politics or nationalities at all. The other strange part is that it seems that they were “venting” their anger at me as they think that we didn’t support the US during the recent war in the Middle East, which I find aggravating as all hell. Not that I agree with the war or not (that’s another matter) but it’s the fact that we as Canadians probably have the most retarded politicians going. No no… Don’t argue… Ours are quite stupid. A la Jean Chretien publicly denouncing the war and generally being unpleasant towards the States thus straining our relationship BUT we ended up sending our troops and ships off to aid the effort without publicly announcing it. So I get told a lot “GEEZ! You guys didn’t help us at ALL! And we’re your neighbors!” to which I reply “So 9/11 doesn’t ring a bell? Your planes would’ve been lawn darts otherwise you know.” To which I get “So what about the war?” and again “Ummm… you guys have all our troops already…”
 
I suppose it doesn’t help that the media in the States also seems to be a huge political engine more than a news organization (Fox news and CNN’s news are a bit, shall we say, Skewed? From time to time.). And also there are the lovely broadcasts of people in your country trashing the rest of the nations. Probably doesn’t exactly brood much faith on either side.

I’m not saying that we’re totally innocent of it either or other countries are either. But I just wanted to give you an opinion from your rather frozen neighbors (We had freezing rain recently… ohhh goodie).

I think that the truth lays somewhere in between, and I think that a major factor in this is the news everywhere being anything but unbiased as it should be.

 Heck with this… I’m starting my own country.

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naku's response
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another wonderful canadian letter :D I'm seriously emigrating dude... please check this out, I wrote it earlier....

http://naku.org/archives/2005/02/i_love_canada_l.html

gonna post the link on LG tomorrow... think I came across wrong. My point was just that I wanted everyone to think about what they are saying in game as well as out of game. People are only as good as you treat them unfortunately.

It's too bad you're not on Phoenix server.. we have an amazing community of cool people on there.
Take care and thank you for writing.. means a lot. And watch out... I may steal my BF and make him emigrate to .ca with me ;D haha Have a great night
/Naku

On Feb 15, 2005, at 8:27 PM, Michael wrote:

I read your comments and I'm from the UK and I feel
guilty, even though I never play games, never comment
like that about Americans nor any nationality.

A handful of people don't relate to the thousands who
never play on games nor their thoughts. I doubt you'll
leave the plane on European soil for us to batter you
with fish and chips and Daily Telegraph papers.

I know you were just getting it out of your system,
but most British people don't hate America per sec,
somethings your President has done we kinda disagree
with, but we don't hate the populous, or I don't.

I hope that someday you will get on a plane, you will
visit Europe, especially the UK. Trust me, if there is
a mob there, I'll make sure you survive it, hehe. But
please don't be put off, please don't think all
British people are always having a go at the USA,
because some of us don't, we like the US, I have many
online friends who are from the States.

Anyway, this is me commenting about your rant, no need
to reply. I hope you take some time to read this and
hope one day that you visit the UK, London, all the
sight seeing places and actually enjoy yourself, take
tons of piccies and have a fab time.

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naku's response
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Hey ^_^
I thank you for taking the time to write. I will tell you that I've always dreamed of visiting Europe and seeing every beautiful sight I have time to see. Especially since the person I love lives there hahaha. I know that there are amazingly cool people there and I would have a great time if I visited. I also am weary knowing that there is a severe dislike of 'my kind' among the normal people over there haha! Someday I would like to visit Sweden and see what life is like for Madsen and Christian who are wonderful people. I just fear those moments alone with no one around to point me in the right direction... how would I be treated? Especially with this terrible east coast rough neck accent?

I lay in bed and think of seeing that wonderful world over there.... and I know I'm a good person and would make people smile that met me. The thing that scares me the most is the fact that over there, would I get the chance to make people smile or has my idiot government fscked that up entirely for me?

I am happy you wrote. I think there is a serious amount of good people in the US that deserve to be heard and bring some honorability to this rock we live on. We're not all ridiculous. Most yes, but just keep in mind some of us just want to eat pizza and fight you in Tekken while shouting profanities and laughing our asses off. Well, maybe that's just me but the good people in the US deserve some voice and recognition too ^_^ hehehe
Have a great night dude and thank you!
/Naku

On Feb 15, 2005, at 5:16 PM, Skander wrote:

Hi!
I just read your current rant on little gamers and simply couldn't resist the urge to try to add my own little grain of salt to the topic (although your inbox will most likely be populated by lots of "America sucks!"/"Europe sucks!" mails by now).
So I'll try to keep this as short as possible.
Alright, so Brad wasn't exactly very diplomatic about his opinion a few days ago... a headline like "Americans Go Home" is probably enough to send even a lot of non-Americans on the barricades. Also, Generalizations are usually not the best way of making other people understand your point of view.
It was a pretty offensive rant, even if it was supposed to be funny.
On the other hand, you pretty much did EXACTLY the same thing. Let's just look at the sentence "I think the main reason this just won't leave my head is the attitude of europeans against americans in general.", shall we?
It's just as offensive as the stuff Brad said and it's exactly where the problem originates. (asides from being a ridiculous generalization)
Of course, his criticism wasn't very well-put. But by saying "all those fucking Europeans hate us, anyways", you just add more fuel to the fire (and also enrage other Europeans, like me).
I don't even think I want to know how many internet chatrooms or message boards have been through this whole topic before, but if I remember correctly, a lot of Americans used to consider little gamers "anti-American" because Madsen used to make jokes about the US (and still does).
So what? He also makes jokes about Europe or Japan. Big deal.
NOBODY needs to jump in the gap for "the poor wee usa". The poor wee usa are already annoying the rest of the world to death, which is why Americans tend to think that everyone hates them. The whole world watches American movies and TV series and is constantly confronted with patriotic content when they just want to be entertained. The whole world watches the USA as the only remaining superpower (guided by a monkey in a suit) do however they please right now.
And we're ANNOYED by it.
Most people keep that feeling to themselves and start watching anime or something when they're a little fed up with patriotic Hollywood movies, but the next person who walks into the room and spontaneously proclaims that he's "proud to be an American" usually attracts a lot of hidden aggressions.
(please note that I'm only trying to explain my thoughts on the subject here without trying to be offensive, although I might not be too good at that)
So, of course there are a lot of annoying French, German, British and whatever gamers out there.... but they're usually just being assholes in general and don't make it as obvious where they come from. Examples:
-The whole 1337-sp34k-thing can be very annoying and is mainly used by American teenagers. Simply because many foreign people don't know English well enough to use it.
-Americans like making fun of bad English. Even though many of them don't know any foreign languages at all and their spelling is usually a lot worse than that of people who had English as a second or third language.
-A lot of American kids will start making fun of foreign countries as soon as they notice that other chatters/gamers are not from the US. (just like most guys on the 'net will immediately start hitting on you as soon as they notice you're a girl)
Now, of course you've got a point. People from other countries do stuff like that, too. But I haven't made nearly as many bad experiences with, say, Swedish or French people online as with Americans. One of the reasons for that is actually fairly simple: TIME ZONES.
Let me provide a personal example in order to illustrate what I mean:
A while ago, I used to play Far Cry online, which was pretty fun. I usually played during the European afternoon or evening time and made mostly positive experiences. Most of the servers were pretty mixed with lots of people from France/UK/Germany/Netherlands, you name it. And they usually got along with each other just fine, simply because they were used to it. Anybody who felt like being a prick simply got bankicked and usually didn't return. And when I got on a server where I didn't understand the language, it usually didn't matter much. For example, I only know a couple of words in French and ended up on this French server one day. A couple of people tried talking to me and my nickname was pretty much the only thing I understood. So I managed to explain to them that I don't speak French and they actually tried to be polite and use English most of the time.
Then, one night, I got stuck with the game for a looooong time (you know the feeling). I just kept playing and playing and suddenly was left with lots and lots of assholes on the servers. There simply is no other word for it. People just out to offend you, teamkillers, campers, cheaters... you name it. That's when I noticed that most of the European gamers had gone to bed and that I was mainly left with Americans. No longer a mixed bunch from lots of different countries who keep to rules like "no rocket launchers on this server" and are used to getting along with each other, but lots of obnoxious, 1337-speaking, annoying American idiots who didn't give a crap about teamplay and complained that the European servers were too slow (they're not. but there's this tiny ocean in between....).
Simply put: it was no fun. What hat started out as a fun gaming experience made me shut down the computer and go to bed as a raging little ball of computer gaming fury.
And it has happened more than just once, on many, many servers, with many, many games.
When you stay online for too long as a European, you suddenly have whole hordes of American school kids and college students joining the games, many of which feel like being complete morons as soon as they go online.
And that's probably what made Brad angry.
I know that it's made me angry before.
And when it happens to you, it just makes you go "fuck Americans".
I don't want to say that all Americans are idiots. They're not. I've got a whole bunch of American friends and I LIKE America. But a LOT of American kids mutate into complete assholes as soon as they go online. I don't know why. Maybe they should get out more often. Maybe they don't have much of a real life. Maybe they're the ones who always get picked on in highschool. But they cast a really, really bad light on the rest of the American 'net users and they're always the ones who tend to stick out.
Errr... did that make any sense?
Probably not.
Let's just say that Americans like keeping a high profile. Which makes it pretty easy to single them out and blame 'em for everything.
I can sympathize with Brad. And I know that you've got a point, too.
Just try visiting Europe some day, and you'll find out that it's pretty nice, too, and that not everyone hates America, even though a lot of people are a little touchy about the subject right now. ;-)
(most likely including me, since I just wrote this incredibly long mail about a rant I read on little gamers)
Oh, and about that link in your rant... the pic came from this place: http://www.iso10s.net/main.htm
(in case you didn't know)
Still reading?
Probably not.
If you are, you may stop now.
Cya! :-)
/Skander

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naku's response
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Hey dude ^_^
First off... amazing letter and I thank you.

Secondly, I will say that I DO know where Brad was coming from and I can relate. However I cannot blame a country for being in game at a bad time. I wonder what Brad would rant about if he were a real life GIRL and had to deal with all the idiot game angst that came with that? Someone calling you a british fsck small potatoes compared to the stuff I have had to blow off while enjoying my favorite game. Does it make me angry? Yes it made me angry dealing with obscene and idiotic people. Did it make me feel the need to blame the country the said offenders came from? NO. This is my point.

I have had more wonderful in game experiences with beautiful people that just want to play and enjoy the game at hand than the small handful of yucky experiences that (at the time) made me re-think what the hell I'm doing playing at all. I really, really understand Brad's angst against the people that were assclowns to him while he was just trying to unwind and have a good time. I know it all too well. That is why I felt I was the perfect person to retort about what he wrote targeting americans. Brad is funny, scary smart and really cool. I know he was just driven to the edge by a bad night of gaming that all of us have been victim too.

It's just that LG has a lot of readers... from all over the world. I just want them to realize that some of the best gamers and most generous gamers.... are american. Call me fscking patriotic if you will but I have pride in myself and my friends who live here. My friends who live a few states away and I can call them when they fall asleep in Rangemont Pass and need to be there to represent.

In closing, this wasn't a bash on Brad.... he's the win. It was a bash on people that get their kicks in making other gamers feel bad. It's dishonorable and hopefully someone will read this that acts like that in game and takes a good look at themselves and makes a change. The best way to deal with a no0b is to hold your hand out and teach them. The good ones will take it and he bad ones will be added to your /blacklist ;)

thank you... Your letter makes all the sense in the world
/naku