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Viral web FlareUps are entertaining to watch. This week’s FU began on Fox news. Supposed-psychologist Cooper Lawrence was being interviewed about video games, sex, and violence. She ranted on about the XBox game Mass Effect – claiming that “You’ll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex”. Turns out, Ms know-it-all hadn’t played the game, and (before you rush out to buy it) Mass Effect doesn’t have any graphic sex scenes…

The gaming community turned into a mob – attacking Amazon’s listing of Lawrence’s books and sending her ratings plummeting! It got so bad that Amazon intervened and removed all user reviews and ratings. Now the gaming mob is accusing Amazon of censorship, and threatening a boycott! The mob even sent Lawrence’s MySpace page into private hiding!

There’s one lasting effect left on Amazon: User-generated tags. The top tags for author Cooper Lawrence: ignorant, hypocrisy, garbage, hack, junk, biased, stupid, uninformed, unprofessional… the list goes on…and on… nothing too flattering.

There’s a few issues worth considering:

The profession of psychology is always degraded when pop-tart authors spew uninformed opinions.
Despite Lawrence’s lame-ass opinions, did the gamers over-react? I don’t think so. They are gamers after all, and this was just another combat zone.
Amazon should have pulled Lawrence’s book (at least temporarily) instead of simply deleting reviews and ratings.
For any “supposed experts” being interviewed anywhere, do your homework first!

This indeed had a Mass Effect. I just hope it doesn’t boost her sales of “The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace with Your Inner Overachiever”. Barf.

Tags: Cooper-Lawrence, Amazon, Fox-New, Electronic-Arts, Mass-Effect, Censorship, Being-Wrong, Pop-Psychology

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