Dec 23, 2011

Greg Edelston, Age 9: Internet Connoisseur

So when I was 9, I spent a fair amount of time on GameFAQs. For those unaware, GameFAQs is a game discussion website, with walkthroughs, cheats, general game info, and message boards. 9-year-old Greg loved the message boards for the game Golden Sun. He would spend a fair amount of time each day reading the fora, contributing to discussion, answering questions, playing forum games, and just generally having a raucous good time.

After a hefty amount of time on these boards, some higher-up saw it fit to make me into a moderator. Obviously, my 9-year-old contributions were profound enough to mark me as one of the community's top contributors. At least, enough so that the administrators and whatever other powers that may be decided to make me a moderator.

As it happens, it's actually a pretty big honor to get modded. Not just anyone can become a mod. But I didn't know that at the time, and thus didn't go about bragging.

By virtue of being a mod, I was endowed with some powers. My favorite modly activity was to review recent punishments. I could see what an offending post was, and decide whether it was "too lenient," "far too lenient," "too strict," "far too strict," or "just right." Problem was, I didn't really know what the word "lenient" meant.

But I was a smart cookie. I knew what "strict" meant, and could extrapolate. Problem: solved. ...Sort of. Unfortunately, despite being able to work past my first roadblock, I was somehow unable to figure out the grander scheme of the process. My 9-year-old brain registered "too lenient" as "should be more lenient," and "too strict" as "should be more strict." Also, sometimes I would just get bored, not want to read the entire post, and just choose whichever option I hadn't chosen in a fairly long while. So, uh, I apologize to the several dozen people who received grossly unfair punishments as a result of my actions.

But alas, soon would my day come. One fateful day, there was a thread created by some 20-something-year-old, asking whether he was too old to be playing video games. In flooded the adults: 25-, 30-, and 40- year olds, all professing the pleasure they find in video games and taking recourse in the fact that they weren't the only ones. For whatever reason, I thought it was appropriate to chip in my two cents: "I'm only 9, but I don't think there's anything wrong with playing video games at any age."

Turns out, you're required to be at least 13 years old in order to have an account.

And from that day forward, the moderator account i_like_cheese was no longer present on GameFAQs.

No comments:

Post a Comment