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Read other letters about this article
"In his frustration with the conflict, and desire to do something, he is deluding himself into thinking he is making a difference. He is not."
Bingo.
The thing I hate most about those magnetic yellow ribons is not the conceit of the message ("Look at me! I support the troops, unlike everybody else!) or the subtext ("Shut up about the war."), it's the thought that putting this thing on your car actually does anything for the soldiers in Iraq. Displaying this ribbon takes a miniscule amount of effort. They are in fact, magnetic, so you don't even have to spend 45 minutes or so with some Goo-Gone to take it off. Is this starting to sound similar to what Joseph DeLappe is doing in America's Army?
I have a BA in Fine Art, and I think I "get" comtemporary and modern art. Art does not nessecarily take effort or craft, but labeling the act of posting messages on an in-game chat channel as art stretches even this rather loose definition past the breaking point. America's Army is really just another forum, not unlike a street corner or the editorial page of a newspaper. If what DeLappe does in America's Army is art, then so is what I'm doing right now.
As far as political statements or activist statements go, it is, but so what. This is the internet we're talking about, after all, and provacative messages, whether the motivation is political or just to piss people off, are common.
The closest thing to a common experience all three generations born after World War II have had is the constant and relentless message that we shouldn't have to wait for anything, everything should be convenient, and everything should be easy. Recently, when President Bush was asked about why the American people had not been asked to sacrafice anything in either the war in Iraq or the war on terror, he answered that we had, indeed, been making a sacrafice; we had been paying taxes. Our burning desire to avoid any personal sacrafice, be it of safety (or the the illusion of total safety), of life and limb, or the loss of prestige, was the raison d’être for the Iraq war in the first place. To me, this is the same mentality that confuses posting messages on the internet as an important anti-war statement. In another time, DeLappe's act could be seen as comment on this pervasive attitude; holding an electronic protest placard in a simulation of a war. But nowadays, with real people dying, and a nation filled with people making token gestures, it hardly seems remarkable.
