The reported outsourcing of blogging and podcasting to China was a superb prank. Its boasted business model lacked any sort of credibility, making it seem like hundreds of other internet start ups and - thus - completely believable. This report, however, seems too good to be true. Chinese ‘farmers’ are being paid to build up character points in massively multiplayer online role-playing game (mmorpgs).:

Guan Wei, a 19-year-old from rural Anhui, stares at a computer screen. His job is to collect virtual gold in online fantasy worlds and advance the status of characters for players who want to get ahead in the game but do not want to spend time doing [it.] For their efforts, Mr Guan and the other gamers each make 1,000 yuan a month - more than the wages of people toiling in shoe factories or on construction sites. [O]ften described as “Chinese farmers,” the business in China brought billions of dollars into the country with the help of underground banks.

Talk about outsourcing. Talk about globalization. Getting a Chinese migrant youth to spend 12 hours a day in a smoke filled cybercafe in Shenzhen to “pump up” your fantasy player—all without leaving your chair in Redmond, Silicon Valley or whereever—is just lame. But on the other people, at least in China, are relying on your sloth to make a living. (b/w of the LC CyberBlog)

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