BattleFight Vol. I: Voldemort and Twitter VS. Darth Vader and iPhone 3G

Posted by on Jul 9, 2008 in Uncategorized | 9 comments

For the first BattleFight debate, two behemoths of darkness go head-to-head accompanied by their favorite communication technologies: 

Lord Voldemort and Twitter VS. Darth Vader and the iPhone 3G.

Darth Vader/iPhone

Strengths: 

  • Crazy lightsaber skills
  • Telekinetic choke hold
  • Exceptional pilot
  • Widescreen video and the ability to shop for music with just one tap

 

Weaknesses:

  • GPS locator – opponent can track location and progress
  • Limited phone service
  • iPhone arrogance and false sense of superiority
  • Paternal love

 

Voldemort/Twitter 

Strengths:

  • The Unforgivable Curses (Imperius, Cruciatus and Killing Curses)
  • Concise microblog posts (140 characters in length!)
  • Instant updates via SMS, RSS, and email
  • A snake

 

Weaknesses:

  • Twittering is addictive and a time-drain
  • Spam Twitterers that follow you in hopes that you will follow them
  • Love

 

Place of Battle: the battle will take place on the construction site of the new Twins stadium at dusk.

Special Rules and Conditions: 

  1. Both Darth Vader and Voldemort will be in their prime (Empire Strikes Back and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, respectively).
  2. Voldemort will have access to free Minneapolis public WiFi.
  3. Darth Vader will have a Bluetooth Headset connected to his iPhone 3G
  4. Voldemort will have a MacBook Pro (Tiger operating system) in order to Twitter
  5. Darth Vader’s machine body parts are immune to magic
  6. Voldemort has over 286 followers on Twitter
  7. Voldemort won’t have any horcruxes
  8. Vader can deflect projectile spells with his lightsaber
  9. Vader has a $50 gift certificate on iTunes

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  • http://eatongolden.com/index.html Courtney

    John makes a good point, however I’m going to have to put my money on Vader + the phone…

    I fear that Vader’s only real threat, is the potential army Voldemort could conger up from his 286 followers on Twitter. Yet, Vader’s resistance to magic and his ability to deflect Voldemort’s spells with his lightsaber, could potentially destroy any twitter army Voldemort has.

    As for the technology war, Twitter doesn’t stand a chance. The friendly little application is simply no match to the small, light-weight, multi-functional cellular device, with a much more reliable connection and potentially even more connections + resources with it’s allies iChat + the Omnigroup. It’s a done deal.

    Darth Vader and the iPhone would win for sure.

  • John R.

    Since Voldemort would be able to send constant tweets to his army of Dementors, I give him the edge.

    BUT — if the BattleFight takes place today, in the summer, the tree leaves might interfere with the reception on his free city wifi. Edge: Vader.

    Vader can use his iTunes certificate to download a copy of “Who Let the Dogs Out.” Blasted at high, continuous volume, this would certainly drive Voldemort insane.

    Still — overall, I like Voldemort’s chances.

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  • http://www.fasthorseinc.com JohnR

    Ouch! Well played, sir!

    Still, could not Voldemort tweet a curse to disable the iPhone?

  • http://www.fasthorseinc.com/blog/ Amanda

    I know this technically should be a fair fight, but Voldemort’s reliance on Twitter is going to down him. He’ll tweet marching orders to his minions and he’ll get… the Twitter fail whale. He’ll direct message a reminder to his top lieutenants and receive no love back.

    Vader will be suffering through his own issues if he attempts to fight the good 3G fight outside of a major metro area (let alone a “galaxy far far away”). However, the Twins stadium site should pose no risk and he’ll vanquish the undermatched Voldemort.

  • Miranda

    Hmmm.. Well this is a tough call. But my money’s on Vader as well. Though is false sense of superiority does pose a threat, Vader’s machine body parts are immune to magic. Of course, this does not make his human-heart filled with fatherly love any less vulnerable to the Cruciatus curse. There is a clear possibility that while Vader is teary-eyed and listening to “butterfly kisses” on his pink silicon-covered iPhone, he may suddenly be forced to tap dance, turned into a farrot, or killed.

    But clearly Voldemort’s incessant twittering will pose a significant disadvantage. Everyone knows that Voldemort is a superior typist, always using correct posture to avoid carpal-tunnelizing his milky white hand flesh. Because he always uses both hands while keeping his wrists off the table, he has little mobility left for wand wielding. Coupled with his highly addictive personality, it is certain that just as Voldemort is finishing 60th tweet of the minute, “still wants to kill Harry Potter,” he will be suddenly stricken with the light-saber that will end his life until he next boils up out of a giant creepy pot with such ingredients as “bones of the father unwillingly taken.”

    And so, with that, I vote Vader.

  • Jp Pollard

    With respect to John, the board seems to be predicting a Vader/iPhone landslide, and at first blush I’ve gotta go with the board on this one.

    Breaking it down Voldemort was conceived under the love potion Amortentia — administered by the witch Merope Gaunt to the Muggle Tom Riddle whereas our boy Anakin was conceived by tatooine woman Shmi and… a concentration of midicloriens, a procedure possibly performed by Darth Sidious (Palpatine)? So despite being a Half Blood, I think Voldemort has the stronger origin … or at least the less complicated one.

    Each are able to really take and dish out some abuse. Though whereas Voldemort will take years or even a decade to lick his wounds, Good old Anakin never had a problem slappin on some hardware and gettin right back into the thick of things! So points for vader for hussle.

    And as for their technological counter parts, twitter and iphone, it’s really an example of software vs hardware. And like all software, assuming Voldemort doesn’t use the optional PIN for his SMS messages, Twitter can be manpulated by Vaders iPhone and http://www.fakemytext.com/ to pwn Voldemort and any army he “might” be able to summon. On the other hand Vader’s crippling AT&T bill might keep him from using the iphone “too much”.

    At the end of the day though, I just have to give it to Darth Vader and the iPhone. The cold efficient tenacity employed by both Vader and Macintosh respectively (wiping out jedi and PC) show a force not afraid to get it’s hands dirty. Killing hundred of Jedi with a laser sword is just much more intense than just tossing Avada Kedavra around.

    Killer’s Edge goes to Vader and iphone.

  • Taylor

    Wow, well played.

  • http://www.unjournalism.com Mike Keliher

    Dudes and dudettes, Vader will prevail.

    One simple reason: the fail whale.

    During this epic battle, there’s about a 75 percent chance Twitter would be down (and Robert Scoble would be too busy playing with FriendFeed to notice).

    If Voldemort were a PHP and MySQL whiz (let’s be honest: he probably is), he would have been smart to establish his own instance of the open-source microblogging platform Laconi.ca. It likely would have been more stable and, considering it’s self-hosted and completely customizable, one could only imagine the havoc he wreak with that.

    And, it would have been OpenID-enabled, a huge boon to his efficiency, freeing more time to hard-code more tweaks into his battle-ready Laconi.ca microblogging software.

  • http://www.justinyee.com Justin “The Yellow Dart” Yee

    Darth wins, hands down. I mean, we’re talking about him at his peak right? That means this ice cold killer was willing to chop off his son’s hand (as he did in Empire). Total gangster. I mean he can block all of Voldemorts spells? Are you kidding me? He is a pimp with a light saber. Also, he’s mostly machine at this point, so he really doesn’t have to block anything that isn’t aimed towards his organics.

    I see people are making the argument that Voldemort can summon a posse with the twitter. I say this… what, like Darth doesn’t have any homies? Of course he does, and he can call ‘em up with the iphone 3G. He has enough homies to take over planets, and homies that operate Death Stars. He really only needs to make one phone call, and that’s to the Galactic Emperor, who’ll summon storm troopers and Walkers and those other kinds of walkers I can’t remember what they’re called right now. This fight is so heavily stacked in Darth’s favor, it’s ridiculous.