Word Choice

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to an on-line art exhibit featuring side-by-side pictures of real-life individuals and their on-line game avatars. I made particular mention of this picture of a gamer with a disability. His name is Jason Rowe and he’s interviewed in this NPR story on people and their gaming personas.

Rowe wears a ventilator mask that reporter Ketzel Levine describes as “ominous”. Ominous? Really? These are things I find ominous: Jabba the Hutt’s laugh, Dick Cheney’s petrified scowl, anything by Nine Inch Nails, the rattling sound my van just started making. A ventilator mask? Not so much.