In a game like Mafia Wars, you can get in-game currency in a number of different ways. One of them is by accepting offers from third-parties.
It's this third method that an anti-reform group called "Get Health Reform Right" is using to pay gamers virtual currency for their support.
Instead of asking the gamers to try a product the way Netflix would, "Get Health Reform Right" requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Rep:
"I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have."
So congressmen and women are getting swamped with these letters from facebook gamers. This would be fine in and of itself, except that they are sent by people who just want a new gun for a video game and have absolutely no interest in or knowledge about healthcare reform, and are not actually working with any grassroots organization (hence, "astroturfing"). Who they are working with, knowingly or not, are all the organizations associated with gethealthreformright.org: insurance companies (see the list in the article).
It's one crazy, terrifying future to think that insurance companies are gearing up to change healthcare forever with their facebook gamer army.
13 comments:
This is just too horrible to swallow all at once. I mean, how do you even fight this?
How can this even be real? Isn't there....no I guess there aren't rules against this sort of thing.
You know if the left ever even considered doing something like this they'd all be strung up by their entrails.
I knew there was yet another reason to stay the hell off of Facebook.
if it has any significant impact, we deserve what we get, rotten country full of subhuman vermin that we are.
I had a related conversation with my brother-in-law last night. We were talking about Second Life and WoW, specifically, people using real currency to buy in-game currency, which they use in turn to buy virtual real estate, magic weapons, etc. My brother-in-law thought this whole concept was utterly stupid.
I pointed out that he plays golf, and has used real money to buy magic golf clubs to improve his in-game score. He looked at me like I was some very special kind of idiot.
That's a superb analogy, Pony.
I had drinks with a guy last night who's family is divided between golfers who watch Rush Limbaugh, and post-car atheists. That really has nothing to do with anything, here.
I had drinks last night with a gentlemen who works at McKesson Medical. He used to be a vacuum salesman, and as the filter for one particular vacuum he used was apparently .8 microns tight, and he wasn't very successful, he needed a new closing act. He used to vacuum the houses of old people for a few minutes, pull out the filter bag with nasty contents, and poor milk into the bag. He would then drink the filtered milk.
i'm sort of glad there are still vacuum salesmen, and that they use old school methods like this.
I had drinks last night, and wished that there was some in-game currency for the drawing I was working on.
To drag us off topic even further, Litcube's story reminds me of this.
Embarassingly, Pony's link reminded me of this
It's the time of year to also be reminded of this.
"Fascinating is a word I use for the unexpected. In this case, I should think "interesting" would suffice."...
and
this.
Post a Comment