I never wrote about this and for a very simple reason. I don’t like redundancy that isn’t finalized to something and I always considered Jack Thompson a jerk that just doesn’t deserve the attention. In fact we know he’s a troll and we know that the attention he’s getting is exactly what he is asking. So why should we feed the troll?

Why we cannot ignore him? I know for sure that he is one of those silly internet commonplaces. Like those songs that you cannot get out of your brain for a month and that are getting replaced the month after, or the priests melting faces in WoW. The gossiping of the internet, the redundant chatter. Catchphrases, transitory cultural figures that become popular for the comedy value.

There is, in fact, the comedy value. Jack Thompson became so popular because of it, for the most part. But this type of comedy value is also of the transitory type. In the long run it becomes incredibly boring. And it IS incredibly boring now. In fact I’m writing about this because I’m wondering why the hell I still find his name everywhere.

Why he gets all this consideration? Why people still write seriously about him? He became one of the most popular figures of the internet, I bet he even works like an ad banner, if you write about him your site could get so many more hits. Soon we’ll have even the live webcam of Jack Thompson. He is the hot topic of the moment and this darn thing just doesn’t want to go away. Attention, importance and charisma strongly depend on the people, not on the subject. The people are making Jack Thompson so popular and relevant and this is why I consider it unacceptable. I usually write about everything passing by but in this case I just didn’t want to give relevance to something so irrelevant. Jack Thompson is, in fact, totally irrelevant. He is internet garbage. The internet itself vomited him. The comedy value is over and he is still around to litter the place. People are still feeding him and giving him a space.

So I started to think if there’s another reason behind. Behind his persistence and popularity. Maybe Jack Thompson isn’t a danger for the game industry. He is the antidote. We are keep feeding him because he is a trojan horse to use instead of suffer. He is an ally, not the enemy.

I believe that Jeck Thompson is needed right now. He is convenient for the game industry and he is probably the best thing that could have happened. With or without him, we knew that there was going to be attrition between games, law and morals. We knew that this was going to be a hot topic. It was already a dormant problem just waiting to explode. And there isn’t anything better than a so stereotyped nemesis like him. An occasion to not let go.

This is why I think that the game industry doesn’t want to forget him like an awful dream. The game industry is keeping feeding him because he is their best resource. They know that a more judicious antagonist could bring up more solid arguments and positions that would be WAY HARDER to deal with and survive. The game industry is scared by that type of confrontation and scared by the actual, real responsibilities that are still only implicit.

This is why we have Jack Thompson and why the game industry is in love with him. This is why he is only apparently a transitory annoyance.