Some time ago I was hanging about in Rachet as Bouganvillea, when all of a sudden a swarm of unclothed, low-level gnomes (and one or two human males, equally nude) appeared out of nowhere and began to dance with anyone and everyone they saw. This caused considerable ire among the gnome-haters, but I thought it was brilliant. I haven’t laughed at a bunch of naked dancing small people in such delight since my younger sisters escaped from the tub and went running down the street at age five. Or maybe since Ally McBeal made me regret I’d known about the Dancing Baby meme before most people I knew.
Of course, because I was Horde and they were Alliance, I had no way of asking the gnomes what was going on. So I /whispered Jess. She was pretty sure it was part of one of these marathons which goes on in game, where everyone develops a gnome character and sends it racing, unclothed, through the world, dying and levelling up slowly as it progresses. Which would explain why few of the gnomes I saw were over level 5.
However, after a note from another classmate, I’m now wondering whether these kids were on their way to a protest. I’d heard of these going on in Star Wars Galaxies, but this is the first time I’d heard of it in WoW. Like the marathon, this was predominantly naked gnomes, most of which seem to have green hair for some reason.
And they have great names, some of which you can see in the pictures. Wewontgo… Malcolmx… Unionrep… Weneedlovin… Fixdisclass… Mixed in with Ankleshanka, Stinkyfeet, and Shatpants. And the guild name is Warrior Union. Utah Phillips meets Penny Arcade. We have ideals we draw on when we take up protest, apparently, and it’s being done as creatively here as it’s done in the streets of Seattle or Philly or DC at protests against the multinational organizations. Interestingly, the same commands are issued by the authorities when the protest gains force, and the same complaints about the protest are made in the comments as I’ve heard made against the WTO protesters:
(from a GM:) “We appreciate your opinion, but protesting in game is not a valid way to give us feedback. Please post your feedback on the forums instead. If you do not comply, we will begin taking action against accounts. Please leave this area if you are here to disrupt game play as we are suspending all accounts.”
(from commenters): “What it looks like is that a lot of people are unhappy. They dont want to take the time to think about how to fix this issue, they just wanna demostrate in game that they are unhappy. Although many players might not pay attention to the forums, I guarantee you the community relations team and the designers read suggestions. The people you need to get through to are not going to “crack” because 50-100 asshats sit on a bridge dancing. Besides who would take a mostly gnome protest seriously….”
“You showed up, you got noticed, you made your point. They asked you to leave, you didn’t, you got suspended. Good for Blizzard. If you aren’t going to listen to the referee then get the hell off the field. If you make the referee throw you off, you shouldn’t even be allowed to come back. That just tells me you’re an ass and shouldn’t be playing games online. Learn to have a little respect for other people before coming back into a multiplayer environment.”
And of course, there’s a dozen posts reading GET A LIFE, THIS IS ONLY A GAME, THIS IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST LIKE TIANANMEN SQUARE, DON’T FLATTER YOURSELVES. True indeed. My question is, if you participate in a protest in-world, does it begin to make you wonder if you could do the same in real life?
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