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A darker tale of DDR -- theft, hot chicks, destruction

Xeni Jardin at 10:09 pm Mon, May 24, 2004

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Dance Dance Revolution, the legendary electronic game cited in a CNN piece today, is apparently capable of inspiring both good and eeeeevil. Here's the sordid tale of a midwestern fanatic who became a thief to support his DDR habit.
Giles thought of himself as old school; he'd learned to play on early versions of DDR with dimly lit arrows, poor graphics and no speed modifiers, circa 2001. He called new players who sucked "nubs." He was certain he had groupies. "In every arcade, we have what's called a fan club," he says. "A group of girls, normally underage, that are just desperately, madly obsessed with us."

Before things turned bad, Giles would dance against anyone willing to do battle: the stud-wearing punk, the overweight high school kid, the middle-aged Sprint worker, the preteen with the overprotective mother. "It's not just some little stompy-stompy crap," he says. "It can go crazy on you."

When he danced, he moved so fast his sneakers began to blur. Sweat beaded and fell from his brow like raindrops. Following the arrows, his feet accelerated in time, playing the commands like a musical score.

Link (Thanks, Joel Johnson!)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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