Sunday, March 6, 2011

Kelly from GOMTV

Here is a pic from Kelly, the new commentator on GOMTV for the Code A matches. She's from Singapore and flew into Seoul to help out Tasteless and Artosis so they can ladder more. So far she's done very well, she knows her stuff and does her best to join the nerd-love-always-ready-to pun-banter of the Casting Archon. But like anything, I couldn't help but notice several trolls, haters, whatever word you want to use to describe them attacking her for her accented English.

This is one of the difficulties of the globality of online games such as Starcraft 2. For all the rhetoric of breaking down borders, barriers and connecting people, the internet, for all the supposed freedom from identity or locality that it is supposed to provide, is a great way for people to find new ways of reproducing their particular identities of actually invigorating them to new levels. Gaming is one such way for the United States and for English speaking communities. Although the majority of people on the internet are not English-speaking, the internet is a place built around English. The sites which connect places to each other have a heavy dose of English or originate in a place like the United States.

As the internet has connected people in the United States to the rest of the world virtually, it has done little to challenge their mindsets linguistically (and in other ways as well). There is still that almost unbelievable expectation that everyone speak English and that even if they already do speak English, that they speak it "correctly" the way they are used to. It almost boggles my mind.

Good luck to Kelly as she continues her casting. If you are on Twitter you can follow her there. Or you can check out her blog a diva and her demons.

(Otro fino'-ta) the player that Kelly is posing with in the picture is oGsNada, who is considered to be one of the best Starcraft players ever in the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment