Wednesday Whackaloon: Dave Winer

It’s been a while since I bagged on the cranki­est man in tech­nol­ogy, Dave Winer, but he posted some­thing recently that called out for abuse. In a blog post titled Why Angry Birds is so much fun Dave attempts to fig­ure out why the iPad/iPhone game Angry Birds is so much fun. Of course, being a socially mal­adapted freak, he gets it wrong in a spec­tac­u­larly hor­ren­dous fashion.

For those who are unaware, Angry Birds is an addic­tive game wherein you use a sling­shot to fling birds at forts con­structed by pigs. OK, that descrip­tion sounded retarded, but just look it up in the App Store, you’ll love it. Dave, in his quest to under­stand the appeal of the game makes the fol­low­ing observation:

I know it sounds mean, but it’s prob­a­bly the same kind of plea­sure you get from break­ing up your lit­tle sister’s doll tea party. Or your brother’s sand cas­tle at the beach.

Right here Dave misses the point. Yes, the destruc­tive aspect of the game adds to it’s appeal, but if that were the only rea­son why we like the game then peo­ple would just sit on level one blow­ing shit up. What makes Angry Birds so com­pelling, espe­cially to those of us with the tra­di­tional “geek” mind­set, is that it is a “puz­zle” game. The obscenely addic­tive com­po­nent of the game is attempt­ing to destroy all of the pigs using the most ele­gant solu­tion. That Dave Winer misses this, while not sur­pris­ing, is highly ironic.

But it’s not the above lack of under­stand­ing on Dave’s part that raises this post to true whack­aloon stan­dards, it’s what comes next. The rusty cogs of Dave’s mind lurched for­ward into another thought:

Another thought hit me. When the elab­o­rate pig forts top­ple it kind of looks like the Twin Towers com­ing down on 9/11. And the birds, well they’re a lot like a sui­cide bombers. Well, actu­ally they are totally like sui­cide bombers.

They’re so damned angry at the pigs that they don’t mind killing themselves.

Whuzzat! If this were a pod­cast I’d be legally bound to insert a sound effect of a nee­dle scratch­ing or a car col­lid­ing with a tree. Yes, Dave Winer thinks that part of the appeal of Angry Birds is that it’s a 9/11 sim­u­la­tor. The mind bog­gles. That Dave, who cur­rently resides in New York City mind you, would think that this is an appro­pri­ate com­par­i­son to make proves that he has no con­cept of how actual human beings func­tion. He might actu­ally have top­pled Stallman as King of All Spergelords. On the other hand, no one has video of Dave Winer eat­ing his foot-pickings, so Stallman’s reign is prob­a­bly secure.