I just thought ... - who made the video ? Someone who was there, at that time.
Was it just done by chance or did the person know what was going to happen ? On which side actually was the person who made the video ?
Edit : I'm reading through it right now.
And the more I read, the more I get disgusted.
The user "Opperator" sums what I think and feel very good up :
No respect for anyone or anything, apparantly not life itself. I would get angry with whoever participated in the destruction of that funeral.. but why waste my breath on people that don't have the intellect to respect something as simple as friendship.
Those people most likely felt like they knew that person very well, they might have been talking to him for years. Shared stories, laughter and heck, maybe even a few tears.
Then, when this person dies, the only thing they can do in a group activity to honor his life is an online funeral. In their own way, much like in the real world, they are saying goodbye to a person they might have cared for.
Is it really that crazy an idea? Yes it IS a game, a role playing game. A massively social game where people come together to do battle, make friends, chat up about one thing or another. Millions of people come together every day and share a few minutes together, maybe even hours.
This is accepted, yet when someone dies, we are not allowed to say goodbye? Suddenly we're geeks, prone to loudmouth 14 year olds who didn't have it in them to respect someone if their life depended on it.
MMORPG's are social events. If you want a game in it's purest form, go play an FPS.
User "Tentunf" writes :
For a culture that promotes apathy and aggression through "Pwnd" and all that, this is taken awful seriously. Especially marching through hostile territoy, come one, that is INVITING IT. There are so many other ways to express your grief or give condolences. Make a web site or something.
User "joshfu" writes :
OH! you think i actually have concern for that sort of thing... lol. It was a way of emphasising how friggen cruel this whole scenario was. Go crash the hell out of an in game wedding if ya want. All i am trying to get across here is that i am not upset about the actions in a game. the problem here is, people dont understand the idea..... Gamers live all over the world. One of them died, and they were trying to pay their respects in the only way they could. For the record, have you ever tried to organize THAT MANY people on an MMO when it didnt offer gold, exp or loot? If so you have my major gratz on that, cause its a friggen miracle. The only way that many people were there, lined up and being polite themselves is cause they cared about the person they lost. So in the end, yes i believe i could easily explain why i crushed the skull of a nanderfuck who crashed a FUNERAL. bottom line that is what it was, and if you want to get really anal and technical then call it a [nocando] wake. Eitherway, it was not for the purposes of gaming and exp etc that they were gathered. it was as i said. REVERING the dead. Crashing a wake in almost ANY culture is taboo. In fact i am more then a little curious how [nocando] in the head many of you have to be to think that crashing a wake is funny. If your too god damn pea brained to move with the times, and learn what right and wrong is, regardless of the medium. The toons? ALL REAL PEOPLE. the guild that attacked all real people. I am blown away that it has gotten to the point where any jerk kid can go around trash talking and acting tough BEHIND A MONITER. Shamefull. and more so because they dont even realize what total turds they really are. :P ciao
And user "AnAverrageJoe" sums things up in a rather philosophical way :
I saw this on FARK.com and had to comment.
First, I think it is sweet that people actually cared about a person (a girl most had probably not met in real life) enough to pay their respects in the small way they could. That is essentially non-"geeky" and non-"pathetic". It is maturity and compassion at their best, two ideals sorely lacking in online communities and the real world as a whole. Those virtual mourners lost their virtual lives celebrating the actual life of a living, breathing human being. However unknowingly, their actions have shown that reality is vastly more important than any fantasy could ever be.
Second, while the ambushers do show cunning skill and creativity in defining the harsh, relative reality of this gaming world, their actions at their base are sick and vile and point to some deeply rooted and dark pathologies scarily ever-present in the human condition. I think their parents would be gravely concerned, as would any employer, as would any decent member of society. There are strong correlations between virtual and real-life personas. Our online characters act as our Id incarnate.
Third, while I am certain all parties involved are guilty of some virtual evil-doing, this out-of-holistic-context video shows the polarized differences between good and evil; and though we can curse, mock, or appreciate aspects of either ‘guild’, I can’t help but believe that this stirs basic questions within us all about what is right and what is wrong. Where is the rally cry for justice? Where are the good and lawful in the WoW millions? Certainly, this ambush doesn’t necessitate any divine retribution from a moderator, but a bounty is more than in order, and a substantial one at that.
Lastly, I don’t claim to know much about WoW. I don’t want to. I know that hack-and-slash and role-playing games can be cathartic… in moderation; but, they are no substitute for the visceral, tactile world we live and die in. Don’t let your escape from reality become your prison.
Let FARK know what happens.
And User "Summon" finally says who did it :
Love us or hate us. Hi Im Summon Officer of Serenity Now on Illidan. You can check us out at
www.serenity-now.org. To any of the how could you be so mean crowd, some of us feel the nature of a game for fun demeans and memorial like the one that occured, or some of us really are heartless e-jerks. Intresting to see us on Spiked thanks for posting our stuff. By the way if you do log on WoW talk to the Women Shouldnt Vote crew, Bronnieman,Gwynnie,Azshira they made the vid what it is.
"Summon" later kind of defends his or her actions :
You have stricken me deeply. Mocking my grammar and spelling on an internet forum, what ever shall I do. I do think however regardless of my grammatical syntax or minor misspelling, my sentences are understandable. Im expending the majority of my grammar POWER on my mid term papers.
I wont even point out how the above poster meant to spell modicum. Online relationships lack a certain intimacy. Of those in attendence to the funeral how many really "knew" the girl? Ive always been one who hates celebrity funerals or funerals were people show up to vent some falsely constructed sense of grief, in order to make themselves feel better about thier glowingly warm humanity. About the baby comment come on, you can do better than that, we got one guy comparing us to Hitler.
The answer of "AnAverageJoe" to this "defending" :
Forget Hitler, Summon. How about Fred Phelps? Striking correlations between the neo-rad youth and timeless ultra-cons. At least they gank different soundtracks. Not even, as Fred would call theft a sin.
Why doesn't someone upload a video of a Phelp's rally? Then you all can make fun of the strangers who showed up to support the life of a gay man or a soldier who died.
No, instead you pick out so-called "geeks" and "nerds" and ridicule them. How hip. Why don't you coin a new slang to describe it? "Owned" or "griefed" doesn't connote its despicability enough.
Put yourself in the 'victims'' place. This is called empathy. This video isn't as funny or "cool" anymore, is it?
Then, grow up.
User "hybrisnemesis" is also disgusted :
Oh, wow, children, you ambushed a group of unsuspecting people! And you may have used some moticum of intelligence to do it! Unfortunately, this is not in the least bit impressive because there are MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE ADDICTED TO WOW, TOO, WHO CAN PROBABLY DO JUST AS GOOD.
And what's less impressive: the lack of respect and compassion you show for youf fellow human beings. I don't spend much time online and I know only a few people exclusively online. I spend a lot of time doing what you children call "partying" and I live in a house with four of my better friends. And I would say that those exclusively online relationships can be as valuable as real ones. Even if they aren't, they're still a relationship, and they still count for something. Maybe the person's online friends/acquaintances couldn't make the funeral; maybe they didn't have the money. WHO THE HECK CARES? They were paying respects in a way that was meaningful to them
THE GUY FREAKING DIED, PEOPLE. YOU DID SOMETHING IMMATURE AND CHILDISH AND DISGUSTING, and the fact that so many people are APPROVING of this just shows how completely out of touch with reality you are to think this is funny. You have no conception of the gravity of the situation; you're like five year olds laughing at the baby's head you've cut off because you don't know better.
Another post by "AnAverageJoe" :
Account, it could have gone down as just another WoW event, left to be told by the people who witnessed it. For reasons unknown, the ambush guild decided to make a propaganda video about it; and voila, it's all over the internet. The event has transcended the WoW boundaries.
There are profound social commentaries that could be argued, from violence in youth to cyber alter-egos to life and death (both real and virtual). The quick and easy action to take is to type-cast a person (or persons) based on your bias and laugh at them, or hate them... or kill them.
Ultimately, events become community "business" as they are offered up or collected. Curiosity is as strongly within human nature as the want to have a voice in the world; and, as we sacrifice our freedoms more and more, we rely on our voices and realms in cyberspace to regain a balance. That too, is a freedom diminishing. Watch what you say and do. Your cyber-words and actions may very well come back to haunt you.
User "Eldoran" goes a bit deeper into philosophically looking at this event :
AnAverageJoe,
I'm very impressed by your comments. I find them oddly insightful, considering the highly emotional responses that accompany such controversial events.
It strikes me as highly political to claim, however, that gamers turn to a virtual world to escape our rapidly diminishing freedoms of expression in the real world. I argue that virtual expression is an evolutionary step forward - an increase in the speed of communication from one individual to another on an unparalelled scale in human history that has a real impact on the physical world. Take blogs for example - they have become common culture, and represents a virtual community that can influence company stock prices, government elections, and more.
Arguably, the distance between virtual and real worlds is rapidly diminishing, and as more realistic games and virtual worlds appear, that difference will continue to shrink. The very controversy surrounding this topic is a perfect example of how this virtual world of the internet is affecting the real world more and more. Furthermore, more people will continue to be drawn into the virtual world, because it represents a shifting paradigm of thought between this generation and the last - a world of instantaneous communication and greater overall human intelligence.
To claim the internet is a social prison that will destroy opportunities for real-world expression is to deny a social phenomenon that, I believe, is an example of how man continues to evolve and become greater. Perhaps it is you who is in the mental prison.
On a lighter note, I laughed my [nocando] off as I watched this video, even as I knew it was cruel and heartless. What can I say? It was a funny video!
And finally, User "Valefor258" just states how the whole discussion is perhaps made up of two sides :
go to the person real funeral....there are two kinds of people in this world, people who were disgusted by this video not realizing how sad and disrespectful it is to throw a game funeral instead of showing respect in a more physical and spiritual fashion, and those who were laughing like hell while watching this video.
My own opinion is based on the death of two forum members here ... go figure.
