- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Whatever the -blam!- that -blam!-ing means.
I had hoped that by this time, Bungie would have given some sign of events concurring with the nonsensical countdowns at ilovebees.com, in order to further fuel the speculation and maintain interest - alas, it seems that, if the countdowns mean anything ("system peril distributed reflex" as "single player demo release" being my own personal pipe dream), we'll have to wait until the next one.
This brilliant piece of classic Bungie bizarreness is already waning in interest, and the bloody thing hasn't even been around for a whole month. I think, if something significant had happened when 'network throttling eroded', we would have seen renewed interest in the entire ilovebees.com phenomenon.
Right now, to me, it seems as though the fan response that there has been was somehow not the kind of response that Bungie was after, and aren't going to do anything more with the site - perhaps they hadn't anticipated an entire nation of fans calling the phone number registered with the website, or flocking to the small UPS store where the web site supposedly originated. Maybe the incessant attempts to hack the email account of the fictional 'Dana' character have somewhat soured the entire experiment.
In the end, I think the problem is that precious few people have actually gotten into the mystery and suspense this beautiful piece of anti-hype created. I, for one, found myself captivated by the disturbing and imaginative stories told throughout the site, and I found the entire construction to be simply delightful. The rest of the public, it seems, simply saw this as a possile source of hard Halo 2 information and stripped out every possible line of text and piece of data they could, all clamoring for some actual hard facts about Halo 2 - when they didn't find them, they scorned this very original and unique piece of 'anti-hype' (it can't really be hype when it doesn't actually advertise your game) simply because they are greedy commercialists who can't appreciate wierdness for wierdness's sake.
Like children who are so engulfed in the idea of getting presents they are bored by stories of Santa Claus, these fans have taken away the magic of ilovebees.com with their consumerist, literalist cycnicism. The disdain for ilovebees.com is born out of greed and the disappointment thereof - these commercialist whores want it ALL and they want it NOW, and the idea of a chilling and fun experience unfolding slowly, the idea of simply allowing themselves to get caught up in the experience, simply doesn't satisfy their mainstream, mass-market lust for gratification.
What has happened to the Bungie fanbase?? When was a sizeable yet compact group of thinking individuals replaced with this drooling crowd of product/trend-whores? Halo, of course. Suddenly a game that had total appeal to almost everyone, and now they can no longer trust the fans to be respectful and self-controlled. And the internet, too. No-one is trustworthy, nothing is sacred, nothing is below the mass of idiots who break things simply to laugh at those who made them.
[Edited on 7/28/2004 2:51:34 PM]