How a shipping warehouse employee became the face of Nintendo

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/03/how-a-shipping-warehouse-emplo.html

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Not a bad gig.

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What rubbish, he doesn’t even have a moustache!!

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I tried listening to that video, but the narrator has vocal fry…

Vocal … what?

I didn’t hear anything wrong with the narration.

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I remember feeling sad when Howard left NOA. Howard and Nester may have been my favorite part of Nintendo Power.

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Life must be hard for you. :frowning:

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Mine too.:cry:

It’s this thing where people go down in pitch at the end of sentences. Think Ira Glass at this American life. Some people hate it, especially when women do it, but at this point it’s pretty common to hear.

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The politician blasting video games is emblematic of the times. I believe that is Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. TV evangelism was huge and both parties scampered to cash in on the morality vote by turning everything related to teens into the work of the devil - video games, D&D, anything with remotely occultish symbolism (as when a small model pyramid was presented by a public prosecutor to try to convict the falsely accused McMartin family) and the ancient scapegoats of weed & rock n roll.

In the shadow of the cold war in the 80s, video games were both fun to play and an escape from judgemental authority figures and what appeared to be a pretty crappy future.

What’s wrong with this voice?

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I think you’re referring to something other than vocal fry - down pitching at the end of a sentence just an intonation thing that’s usually regional, so I think it counts as a dialect characteristic.

Vocal fry is the raspiness/creakiness thing where you have extra vibration going on in your throat. Just googled an explainer, found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqW8jdlaSk

I relistened to some of the narration and there’s definitely some of that going on occasionally, but it’s not nearly as “bad” as a lot of people who I’ve heard who basically use it on their entire sentences all the time. It can certainly sound whiny in those cases, but I’ve generally gotten over my annoyance with it, especially since I’ve seen the critique come from a misogynistic bent far too frequently.

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Nintendo should hire him back. Reggie Fils-Aimé’s act is growing a little bit too tired.

No, not hard. I enjoy life. Just didn’t enjoy the narrator’s vocal fry (the way someone’s voice goes low at the end of sentences).

Sorry, are the BB comments only for praising everything posted? I missed that rule.

Ha! Love Stephen Fry. No vocal fry there. :slight_smile:

Agreed - there’s some downpitching in the narrator’s voice, but plenty of croaky vocal fry, too. It’s too bad. I like the topic, but if you don’t like the sound of the narrator’s voice, it’s hard to listen to something they narrate.

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Baffling.

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No, that’s not vocal fry. That’s her voice and she’s actually projecting properly.

It’s more often than not about some men not really wanting to listen to women, and trying to find an excuse that doesn’t sound sexist… or thinking they’re not being sexist and not realizing that it’s them not wanting to listen to women who are speaking authoritatively on an issue.

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