The Problem with Googling Mahjong (content generation)
There’s been a trend by a few websites aggregating news relating to mahjong simply by saying “dear google, mahjong me my website, me love you longtime”. Now, I’m not writing this out of a spiteful feeling towards a specific website, as I’ve seen it in a few places, so I’ll put my disclaimer at the end of the article. But here we go: Why is some suicide in the backwater of Hong Kong relevant to mahjong?
(kid to mom): ‘Goodbye, daddy and mummy. Mum, don’t play mahjong again,’
This isn’t going to foster growth, generate real content, or entice people to play, no matter if you intend to promote riichi, MCR (whatever that is) or mahjong in a general touchy-feely way. It relives horror stories to the Asian player base about someone’s uncle’s cousin’s (insert relative here) that lost his restaurant or plays her senior time away 17 hours a day, 17 days at a time, gives stereotypes to non-Asian people that mahjong is a game that is even “worse” than poker’s wild wild west days (just think Clint Eastwood without a gun, replaced by a rocket launcher), and turns the game into a source for gossip rather than a tactical and intellectual game.
I’m not going to say that people have a moral obligation to generate content with a plus-value attached. I’m not pulling the best weight around here, but then again, there isn’t a site that does related to mahjong. (IF you want to raise one exception, it’s Sloperama, Tom’s been putting up with a lot of crap from people missing basic skills, like the ability to read and understand for well over a decade). We try our best and do what we can. I just don’t think that you can replace not posting with crap talking about solitaire, or how mahjong ruins society, or believe it or not, creating false impressions comparing people from region A with people from region B alluding that they’re equal at game A trying to rub off some of their glory at game B.
P.S.: There’s also the concept of an individual googling for mahjong information, a topic not discussed here at this time, but will be soon after writing about a different topic.
P.S.2: This article may have warranted a slight review, but we’ve got content to generate now!
Disclaimer: Yes, we saw this on www.mahjongnews.com – I’ve seen it elsewhere, and this is by far, not the only article to come up in the newsfeed of that or any other site I frequent. There’s no prejudice here, I wanted to talk about the article and its implications, not its source or the most prominent place the article was displayed.
