Uh, yea, I think you are overreacting
July 14, 2005 – 14:39 | java, pokerLet me first admit that I play poker myself and I love the game as much as I love Java (uh, probably not Sun though), so I myself might be overreacting below to Angsuman Chakraborty’s comment on the Unholy Combination of Sun, Mobile and Texas Hold’em Poker, and here’s my preemptively extending hand – “With all due respect…”
Well, with all due respect, here are my counter arguments to Mr. Chakraborty’s points:
Chakraborty:
Firstly these poker companies, especially texas hold’ems, are responsible for majority of spam in mailbox and blogs around the world.
Running a couple of web sites myself, I absolutely hate email/blog spamming. And I do realize a lot of spamming come from gambling related sites (not sure if it’s the majority though, I still see more soliciting regarding certain body parts). Does that automatically prohibit them from utilizing legitimate advertising channels? Does that automatically make whoever provides legitimate advertising channels to these sites morally bad? I don’t think so, and no, I don’t think so.
Chakraborty:
Secondly it is gambling which may be legal in certain places but definitely not well accepted in most societies due to its well known perils.
Is playing Texas Hold’em automatically equal to gambling? Did Sun’s advertisement reflect any gambling aspect? Is Sun’s advertisement irrelevant to any technology? Again, I think “no” on all counts. The banner merely showed how to leverage one of the technologies that Sun’s promoting in better entertaining people. It’s not like Sun just took advantage of the traffic and put up some banner directly linking to a poker playing site which doesn’t have anything whatsoever to Java. Now that would have been too low.
Chakraborty:
Forthly it is not the only offending piece. Now you can also have a virtual girlfriend on your mobile as I was informed from java.com. It was hard for me to believe it was a page from Sun.How could a company as respected as Sun stoop so low!
This further reflects the fundamental difference between my opinion and Mr. Chakraborty’s. Do we have any right to be so morally judgemental on another person, or another company – just because they put on a banner about being able to play a card game, or to have a virtual girlfriend on a mobile phone? Just because you don’t like these two things? What about the things I don’t like? What if tomorrow Sun puts on a banner about browsing wines over mobile phones and people who think drinking is a bad bad thing start complaining?
Chakraborty:
Maybe we should start a fund to donate cash to ailing Sun. I think a PayPal button would be a good start. All we now need is a catchy slogan.
How about this:Donate now and save Sun from being bought by poker companies!
or maybe something simpler like – Save Sun Now!.
I bet you for every advertisement every respectable company puts out there, there’d be some people who wouldn’t like it on a moral basis – I mean, I know there are people out there who would even relate a simple US flag to “promoting the Bush Doctrine”. Are you going to create a Paypal account for each of these cases?
To wrap this up, what’s particularly ironic and humorous to me now is that that very blog page of Mr. Chakraborty’s itself is filled up with poker related google ads – oh, the all too clever google adsense…
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2 Responses to “Uh, yea, I think you are overreacting”
I realize the irony of what AdSense is doing on the post. However I am running out of space in competitive ad filter
I wish there was a way to say to indicate banned words per post or even per site.
I think Sun’s decision was in poor taste. This definitely doesn’t augur well for Sun I worked at.
As for sensibilities I am talking about normal people not religious bigots fundamentalists.
By following the thread of your argument we can equally well say that explicit sex on tv is fine too, or show more Janet Jackson N-fiasco’s. The point is that we cannot satisfy everyone all the time, especially not the religious bigots. But at least try to do something acceptable for the rest of us.
Companies like Sun, IBM normally avoid wine and poker companies for that simple reason. Yes many people play poker including some of my close friends. Personally I don’t see anything wrong in someone playing poker, that’s what personal freedom is about. However I think it is wrong to inflict such ads to the public in general.
Lots of life have been destroyed by gambling and their likes. You may not be one of them and your genetic makeup may make you immune to addiction (yes there is an identified gene) but that’s not the case for the rest of us.
By Angsuman Chakraborty on Jul 16, 2005
But please realize that sensibility is very subjective (if not the most subjective). In other words, everybody probably thinks himself “normal” in terms of sensibility, and the next guy to the right or to the left more or less a “bigot”, religious or not. What I pointed out in the blog was exactly the risk of over-applying one’s own sensibility without realizing the subjectivity of it.
Prohibiting explicit sex/”wardrobe malfunction” on _public_ tv would _not_ be following the same thread of argument, because that’s done on a legal not moral ground. There are laws prohibiting those things not out of moral judgements but in order to protect minors. On the other hand, HBO and other fee-based channels have been having shows containing explicit sex scenes or even softcore films for years, and most people including me think it’s fine.
By Jing Xue on Jul 16, 2005