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this is all g.r.r.m.'s fault, anyway
Let's be clear: i don't like The Oatmeal. I found Matthew Inman's humor juvenile but inoffensive at first; even in the cartoons that had material that i liked, his delivery seemed off in the way that the dorkiest of nerds have when they overtell or overexplain a joke. He finally lost me with his issues-revealing Utilikilts cartoon, and that's colored everything else that i've had the misfortune to witness (and you'd call me an idiot for continuing to follow links there, and you'd be right). His approach to things in his life is relentlessly adolescent, and his current comic about how HBO has forced him to torrent the "Game of Thrones" series, which has been pounded across my social network with much delight by my so-called friends, is a prime example of this: entitlement and rationalization in the face of unenlightened self-harm (and, yes, the fact that it's about the much overrated "Game of Thrones", which book many of my friends inexplicably love and consequently turned them into morbidly obsessed fans of the HBO series, doesn't help).
Here's the thing: HBO doesn't owe anyone the "Game of Thrones" series outside of the terms in which they make it available (i.e., pay a shitload of money a month to the local cable monopoly and be glad that they deign to convey their munificence to your hovel). Is Inman truly advocating that we should we bend or break the rules every time an incompetent business doesn't offer us their product in a timely fashion after we've declined to adhere to their idiotic terms and conditions, simply because we really, really want it?
If you're going to torrent it, torrent it, but don't waste time rationalizing it. Just because the MPAA is acting like Javert doesn't mean that you're Valjean, and "Game of Thrones" isn't a piece of bread.
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The strip was funny, to me, because I had taken a very similar series of steps, and ended up sighing a fuck-you-HBO sigh. The devil on my right shoulder, in this case, was shouted down by the avatar of laziness, rather than any sort of angel. I don't have to reach the same conclusion as Inman in order to appreciate the thought process.
Is your ethical stance moved at all by the fact that HBO uses well-established mind control techniques to create demand for their product, and that they very likely engage in unethical business practices on a regular basis?
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