RA: Online Gold Farming (WoW)

This rhetorical analysis deals with a video on MTV’s website which reports online mining in China. This is where companies (a lot of US) will hire out groups of low paid workers to play online games, harvesting money, which will then be sold to gamers who desire to simply purchase gold on the web (a big game for this is World of Warcraft).
The audience is mostly to views of the MTV website. However, I found other articles that linked to this site meaning that their audience is more expanded than just their own website. Primarily their purpose is to educate the masses on the “supposed” gold farms and the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who work there. The report goes through several different interviews, the most important being an interview with the head of one of the main virtual gold brokers (IGE), a manager of a gold farm and individual workers.
The rhetoric is very persuasive to the audience as it shows footage inside of the farms with tired and poor looking Chinese teenagers. The personal interviews have the greatest impact as the workers state that it’s a decent job but hard as they have to play every single day for long hours and it’s not good on the eyes. There is a really great juxtaposition where they ask the head of IGE if they exploit their workers in China to which he replies, “There is no exploitation.” The scene changes to the manager of one farm who states outright, “There is exploitation.” It makes the audience believe the poor Chinese manager and the personal interviews of low paid farmers against the belief of the rich, money making White President of IGE.
The clip has a lot of information but is done in short, rapid-fire segments which fits perfectly to their audience.