Wednesday 14 September 2011

Some people have no sense of humour

An activist group in Italy has struck PR gold by launching an iPhone game which requires you to catch staff as they leap from phone factory roofs, oversee child labour down the coltan mines (it's a rare element essential for mobile phones) and generally engage in the dubious activities required to be a successful techno-capitalist.

Obviously, they knew Apple would ban the game because major corporations still can't spot an elephant trap. Result: instant win and the point's made. In fact, another good point is made: that Apple's developers and content providers are so in thrall to the company's apparent non-ideological position that they've internalised its ideological values to the point at which almost nothing is 'banned' because nothing 'objectionable' is submitted.

The best bit is one of Apple's objections to the game:
guidelines relate to depictions of "violence or abuse of children", and "excessively objectionable or crude content". 
So, in this hyperreal existence, it's OK to abuse children and adult workers for profit (remember, they'll always tell you that moving production to dictatorships and countries with lower employee and environmental protection is 'efficient'), but it's definitely not OK to play games in which you abuse children and adult workers for profit. One of these just isn't funny: but I can't help thinking that Apple's picked the wrong one.

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