Ben-DutkaNow I'm starting to worry.
Let me start by saying this: The PlayStation Network was experiencing issues and I didn't notice. Why? I have a life. I'm busy.
I actually found out because a friend of mine said one of his coworkers was totally losing his sh** because the PSN had been down for "over an hour." Apparently, he was actually throwing stuff at the TV. Of course, that's an isolated incident so I shrugged it off and didn't think too much about it. Then, on my way home, I was in Target getting a game-related gift and I overheard one of the employees bitching endlessly about how much the PSN sucks, and why he "can't even use it anymore."
…something is seriously amiss. The people I know who have lives really weren't aware of this PSN issue and if they were, it would have little to no impact. If your life is so dramatically impacted by this, you need to reevaluate and re-prioritize. Rapidly . Yes, I know it can be very frustrating and yes, I believe that when you pay for a service, you expect it to be reliable. But "reliable" is a very relative term, is it not? Whenever I want to use the PSN, it works. Almost always. 99 percent of the time. Usually, when it's down, I don't notice because I don't spend my entire life online. And when I do notice, I do something else .
After Hurricane Irene swept through all those years ago, I enjoyed seeing the result. So much so that I wrote this article . Maybe somebody needs to pen something similar for when our precious PSN disappears for a few hours.
People throwing things when stuff isn't going the way they want it to is nothing new..I believe that used to be called "being a spoiled brat" and it's not just a video game problem. It's an issue with parents not wanting to take the time to raise their kids to act responsibly. Now maybe it is more prevalent in the video game community, because it is a market that does seem to be flooded with self centred, entitled spoiled brats.(or millennials).
But let's look at it in a different perspective, just to play devil's advocate..let's say you have a busy life, and have time to only do a few extra-curricular activities with your friends…so you decide to go play a sport. I am Canadian, so I'm going to use hockey for this example. You set it up with your friends, put down money to rent the ice, and get excited to spend some time with your friends, who you only get to see every time you play hockey.
So after spending all day waiting for some "ice time", you show up at the rink and instead of your buddies warming up, there is a note on the door that says closed for maintenance..You can call a number, but no one will tell you anything, and you can't contact your friends to tell them what's happened. You don't know if you'll get your money back, and no one is giving you answers, even though you've been a good customer and renting the same rink every night for the last 2 years. At what point do you or one of your friends start getting frustrated and start throwing things?
Last edited by CH1N00K on 2/2/2016 11:14:33 AM
That being said, I didn't know that PSN was down…I think my wife said something about having a problem with Netflix. I do have to wonder though, out of the millions of people who bought a PlayStation and actively game on it, how many of them actually freaked out? Is it that bad? Or are the ones that did throw a temper tantrum just getting more attention about it then they should? If you rounded up the number of people that have lost their mind from the Internet, and real life, including the 2 that Ben knows of, and compare them to the number of people who game, who just don't care about a little down time, I think you'll find the percentage rate to be a lot lower then you are making it out to be…
Good thing for the internet eh, shows a lot of immaturity, thinks a lot for this bandwagon sh**!
From my point of view… if the PSN is down, find something else to do.
For the vast majority of the world i would say yes your right. I had a friend on PSN that had stage 4 bone cancer and all he ever wanted to do was play Sacred 2 online with me, his nurse, and a random fourth person. Everytime PSN went down he would get so mad but he wouldn't whine about it, even though if he would have i absolutely would've understood. He has since passed away but atleast he was able to do what he loved with the little time he had left.
This friend is the reason i don't like this article because it assumes everybody can just go do something else.
I was just thinking out loud (in print?). Not really making an assumption. Just commenting on what I read. No predisposition added from previous points of view or anything.
Again, the article is about people who behave beyond simple disappointment. I really didn't think there was much more to it than that. But maybe I'm not reading into the hidden subtext or something…
Where do these people exist Underdog? Personally I saw people on line complaining, but nothing beyond that. To think someone got so mad they threw something at their television is preposterous. I can understand the second person being vocal about, saying it sucks and then moving on. That's what my friends and I did, complained, joked, and then moved on.
I find both scenarios in this article to be completely unbelievable.
You've never interneted much before, have you?
Visit basically any page that talks about a network outage for any system. You will have no difficulty finding multiple people losing their sh!t.
People are insane, Deadman. From swatting pranks to crazy forum posts to people dying from not sleeping because they can't stop playing a game… etc. etc. I can see you saying it's not the majority, but to find it unbelievable?
Take me to your Utopian paradise.
Last edited by Underdog15 on 2/3/2016 11:00:48 AM
Hey maybe I don't "internet" much nor do I go out of my way to find people behaving in this manner. Fact of the matter, venting online in a comments section or social media is a far cry from smashing your tv because your online don't work, or any of these other "extreme" instances that psxe reports on occasionally.
Im not going to argue that there aren't insane people, but to go and act like all people are insane is well…insane.
If anyone was saying all people act out insanely, I would agree with you.
I used to work at a youth centre, and I promise you many of the youth there would have been unreasonably upset about it. It happened every damn time XBOX live went down. (We had a 360) There would be cursing and swearing… smacking a chair or pounding on a table…
Heck… nevermind the service going down… they would act like that if they got kicked from a game if they were doing well or winning!
And yes, they would do something else because I was there to facilitate activities, but when I read this article, I immediately thought of the half a dozen youth that would have overreacted in just our youth centre alone.
Last edited by Underdog15 on 2/3/2016 1:43:41 PM
Well, I know now. I played my PS4 pretty feverishly the first month I had it, but now I find myself playing it <maybe> a couple times a week. Maybe that will change when some new games drop, but not even Fallout 4 was able to keep me glued to the screen (currently letting someone borrow it despite having not come anywhere close to beating it). I gotta agree with the sentiment here.