Geekdom should be Free!

The things I do for Fun

Ever played Final Fantasy online? No? Neither have I. I've got it all installed on the computer. Been there for about a week now. Cost me $28.95. I even endured going to Wal-Mart to get it. But I haven't played it. And why haven't I played it? Why haven't I, Mr.222, the greatest of the internet geeks, played the best game ever made? The coolest thing ever created for my kind?

I don't have a credit card.

Remember the good old days guys? When all you needed to be a super geek was a ten sided die in your back pocket? When if you knew the weakness of any given zombie based enemy you were the cool kid on the street? And it was free! Free! You didn't have to debate if you wanted a credit card just to be yourself or if you wanted to shed enough of your hard earned self respect to go to...Wal-Mart.

Although there was this cool guy in line wearing an army jacket. Cool guy, hated Wal-Mart about as much as I did. He said he hated the lines, but I explained how I can't stand the smell and he agreed after thinking for a quick second. Saw him a few days later at Shaws', explained my current problem, and we had a good chuckle over it, but enough about him. We need to focus.

Granted I should have read the box more carefully, granted I should have figured they wouldn't let me play online for free, but look past that for a moment won't you? I'm being charged a monthly fee to be me. It's like waking up one morning and someone making you give them a dollar or they shoot you in the head. I want to wake up free of charge, without having to worry that I left my wallet on the kitchen table and will I have enough time to roll out of the way when the bullets start flying? Will this be the day when my luck runs out and I get caught in a hailstorm of gun fire simply because I didn't want to pay the daily waking charge?
Just call me crazy, but that's not the kind of world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where I wake up every morning without the grinning gunman pointing his piece at me. Is that so wrong?

I don't think so. But that's what it's coming to, it starts with 'give us your credit card number so you can play the super fun game with your other dork friends' and ends with an explosive high speed car chase through downtown North Conway.
Maybe I'm getting off topic...

The thing is is that I shouldn't have to pay a monthly fee to play the greatest game ever created. I can perfectly understand Square's desire to turn a profit and I'm sure operating costs of all those servers can get up there, but that's why the devil in his annoying infinite mischief invented pop up ads. They're the gift you wish you didn't get, but serve the higher purpose of making services free. Instead of paying a monthly fee with money you pay a daily fee of mental energy putting up with the constant bombardment. And with the proper pop-up blocking technology it can be totally free, but the brilliant part is that the people paying Square to advertise still pay the money to Square. Everybody wins! Except the people who are paying Square, but they're expendable what counts is the mission.

I know what you're thinking, why don't I just suck it up and get a debit card? Why don't I join the rest of modern society and run into debt like a good little suburbanite? 'Think of it Mr.222', you're saying, 'think of all the pretty things you can buy with your new card. You can play all the online games you can stomach, you can buy all those Witchblade comics at Charlies you've always wanted, you can finally accessorize your room the way it should be accessorized. B5 posters bought on e-Bay, so many collector action figures that they blot out the sun, just give in...'

I'm not that kind of dork. I'm a low budget dork. I believe that you don't need fancy action figures to be the coolest nerd on the block. Being a nerd shouldn't be about how many fancy comics staring half naked woman with breasts bigger than your head you own. Being a nerd shouldn't be about how much you spend on online games no matter how cool. Being a nerd is about self respect. It's about looking in the mirror and knowing you watched the re-run of sci fi's Dune while everyone else was at the senior prom. It's about watching anime because you like the opening song even though it's in japanese. It's about using your brain to be better than everyone else, not your brawn.

At some point, probably during the late eighties early ninties, the dork/nerd/geek lifestyle got hijacked by corperate America. How big a dork you were depended on how many comic books you collected or the amount of action figures you owned in their original packaging. If you wanted to be a cool dork you had to go out and buy things. You had to get a credit card.
Well not me! I'm getting no such credit card! I'm going to sit in my basement watching my old B5 tapes (the ones I didn't buy on DVD!) and keep fighting the good fight. I refuse to be a party to their evil anymore. If I want to go on epic multiplayer quests, I'm make up imaginary friends and we'll go fight equally imaginary monsters in the woods. The way my dork forefathers taught me! I'll get out the old wizard cape I still keep in the closet and I will stop the FinRac from taking over the back field! Just you watch me.

Course the real shame of all this is that I'm now out $28.95. I mean I could have spent that on a new wizard cape. The one I've got is really starting to fall apart. I saw this real nice one at Wizardshop.com. They accept personal checks too. Damn convient if you ask me.
-Mr.222 Jan 11, 2005

by the way in case you're wondering, any zombie type creature is weak against Cure or any other sort of life based spell. Anyone knows that...