About This Web Site: Who Needs Drugs When You Can Read “The Ghetto”?
In 2004, my web design teacher smelled like pot. In order to ignore that smell, I took to a school computer and The Ghetto was born.
Originally host to a scattershot of opinion (a MySpace blog meeting “Joey’s Cool Geocities Page”), you’d think less of me if you read it. But don’t blame me. The American system of education did very bad things to my brain.
2005: Wikipedia stole my design. I will sue.
So for some time, my writing remained raw. And in the face of an article claiming the monstrous 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the work of terrorists (employing a hurricane machine once owned by both Hitler and the Vietcong), “lacked focus” would be an understatement. So let me utter words never to be spoken again: I would like to thank the Battle.net forums.
The Warcraft III General Discussion Forum was playing guinea pig to the reign of Blizzard moderator GFrazier, a man affectionately known as “GFuhrer”. And since the cyber-athletes™ were posting on a Warcraft III forum (and by extension, playing Warcraft III), they were starved for entertainment. But why diversify your talents when you can unlock the comedic potential of a real-time strategy game?
2007: Needs more text.
The ensuing efforts managed a niche. But nobody had qualms about letting me know when I shat a brick. Despite sharing nothing in common with Maddox, I was showered with unwarranted comparisons to his dirty mouth, getting bad enough that I wrote a series of articles where “Maddox” would mock my web site. So even as The Ghetto ascended to legendary heights and even garnered more web traffic in a day than the Bayou Billy discussion forum on GameFAQs, I never got a chance to become complacent. And that proved a very good thing.
Unfortunately, your mom’s MySpace and her “funny cat picture’s” were still kicking my ass in the ratings. That had to change. By 2007, Warcraft III ceded any mainstream appeal it had (i.e. none) to the World of Warcraft. So how could I make my mark in Web 2.0? Social networking? Porn? I put down a “Fuck that!” on The Official Brazilian Scat Fan Club of Facebook and added a blog to The Ghetto in December of 2007.
2008: “You say there’s a blog but I can’t find it.”
Ideally, it would place my previous exploits alongside a blog that wouldn’t require hours of per-post formatting. Realistically, it split my web page into “the front page that nobody reads” and “a blog audience expecting three to four updates a week”. And when the real world doesn’t care about your personal time, that isn’t a desirable outcome.
2010: Snazzy.
So this is the next step. Not fooling with this. When you turned to the front page and discovered “The Gospel of a Gaming Cynic”, I wasn’t kidding. When somebody wants an opinion on the portion of the gaming universe I inhabit, I want people to say “This dude knows his shit.” And if I can’t do that, I’m doing a disservice to you and myself.
So what happens to the previous iteration of The Ghetto? Going down for now. Didn’t think you would be happy about that. But relax. I’m not pulling a “Sony removes backwards compatibility from the Playstation 3 to suit ulterior motives” thing. I’m doing it to embrace the opinions I’ve formulated. I want to improve them. So if an article was worth its piss, it will find its way into this website roundup.
That’s all there is to it. If you’re new to this world I’ve created, welcome aboard. Engaging the hypocrisy of video game culture and its game development overlords is a hell of a lot more fun when you do it together.