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Stephen Johnson’s book Everything bad is Good for you, caused quite a stir when released last year. In it he made the argument that popular culture is more sophisticated and challenging than ever before, that complex games, films and TV-dramas, are not just a more sophisticated way of delivering stupidity, but to quote the publisher’s Blurb “it’s actually making us more intelligent.” I’ll leave the merits of that claim for others to discuss elsewhere. But speaking of the poverty of content in most games, Johnson notes “There’s no psychological depth here, no moral quandaries, no poetry [my italics]…..” Johnson’s attempt to exclude poetry from the world of gaming, is based on an ill defined formulation, and a lack of awareness, of poetry. In fact, games such as Tetris and Myst, do in fact have a large poetic quality in them, and various forms of impromptu poetry can easily be found among the online communities inhabiting multiplayer online games. Johnson is not arguing against books or indeed poetry in his thesis. I mention this only because I think some poets are just as likely to accept the fallacy that the universe of gaming is one without poetry. This is not the case, as you can see proof of this elsewhere on these pages.