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Beyond the Carnage: 7 Life Lessons from GTA IV
Buried deep within GTA IV's high-speed police chases, vehicular homicides, cold-blooded killings and large-scale armed robberies, there lie hidden gems of wisdom that you can apply to improve your own life in the real world.
1) If you wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. GTA IV teaches you that when you want to accomplish something, you should go for it without worrying too much about stepping on other people's toes. When you carjack an old lady and only have 30 seconds to make it from the gun store to the respray shop, some people are gonna get run over in the process. If you want your boss's job, you might have to get him fired before you get the position. When you get what you want, people may get hurt. It comes with the territory.
2) Trust no one. Everyone you meet has an agenda. Let me repeat that. Everyone you meet has an agenda. Of course, some may have a more malicious agenda than others. Regardless, everyone around you is almost always looking out for #1: themselves. Look at Ghandi -- that guy was practically begging to get 15 minutes of fame with some sort of "MTV True Life: I'm a Revolutionary Peacemaker" documentary. Think about it. GTA IV lets you experience "friends" lying, cheating, stealing and stabbing you in the back to get what they want. Only trust yourself.
3) Plan for the best, but prepare for the worst. Pretend you're in GTA, you just got assigned a new mission, and you envision yourself kicking ass: running, ducking, diving, all while taking out gangbangers with expertly timed shotgun blasts and never getting a scratch on you. So do you walk in to the gun fight with one-third of your health, no body armor and low ammo? Hell no. You stock up. You prepare for the worst. Shit, buy some rocket launchers while you're at it. Why not. In life, you never know what could go wrong. It always pays to be prepared.
4) The more nice shit you have, the more people respect you. We live in a shallow society folks, and GTA IV understands this by letting your character get all types of shit that doesn't have anything to do with the actual game. You can buy nice suits & expensive shoes, move into penthouse bachelor pads, and of course, drive baller whips. If you pick up a chick on a date (yes, the game lets you do this), she'll verbally tell you how impressed she is when you pull up in a luxury car similar to the one 2Pac got shot in. Art is modeled after real life guys. People notice these things. Respect yourself by getting some nice digs.
5) Get revenge when it counts. Don't let people walk all over you. Donald Trump has touted this for years, and its actually good advice. If people know they can screw you and you won't do anything about it, prepare for it to happen with greater and greater frequency. If someone wrongs you, get them back, and make absolute sure everyone sees it so they know you're not one to be messed with. In GTA IV when someone disrespects your crew, you don't sneak around and poison their morning tea -- you roll up right on the basketball court and blow his brains out in front of all of his homies plus a few random bystanders. See how everyone else runs away? This is called leading by example.
6) If you want something, you have to work for it. America is the land of opportunity, not the land of uh-here-take-this. Don't expect things to be given to you on a silver platter, or for the world to be fair. Sometimes when you want something, you have to be prepared to take it. When Niko arrives in Liberty City, he has nothing. By the middle of the game he's got a highrise apartment and a pile of money, not to mention tons of guns and bitches. Get out there and fight.
7) Go off the beaten path. Don't blindly follow the guidelines that society lays out for you. If you followed every traffic law in GTA IV you would get so bored playing that you'd eventually turn off the game, which in real life would be the equivalent of killing yourself. Make life interesting. Think outside the box. There's no one right way to do something. Steve Jobs took the mobile phone market and turned it upside down with the iPhone, a device no one had ever seen before. In one GTA IV mission, Niko dresses up as a gay guy to take another gay man out on a date for the sole purpose of killing him. This type of unorthodox thinking is what you need to succeed in the work place as well as in life. Make it happen.
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Genius. Well written. Well executed. Great idea. Love it :-)
Wish there were more Assassins Missions. They were the best. Hope they keep them in the next version. And wo cares about the iPhone. Its a GTA4 thread. And man I could go for some eggs right now. Did I spell it right.
The hell it isn't!
you all are fuckin retard bitches that have no lives. if you try defendin yourselves your jus provin my point. I bet every single one of you will say somethin. please do.
p.s. fuckin dirty ass eater fuck maker hilygins! who the fuck cares about the fuckin spellin differences? oh yea, you do!
aboogadawoogada
It is spelled "Omelet" in the Unitd States.
News Flash to the American's out there: I wouldn't boast about the U S of A spelling.
"The World Fact Book prepared by the CIA[6] claims that the U.S. literacy rate is 99 percent, but defines literacy as being able to read and write when a person is 15 years old or older. A person who can only read a few hundred--or even a couple of thousand--simple words learned in the first four grades in school, is only marginally literate" [1]
Enough with racial remarks. Racial discrimination and uneducated remarks from trash US citizens reflecting badly on the minority of intelligent, educated and worldly US citizens. Congrats! People like you have managed to make the world a shit whole in a matter of 8 years.
I lived in the States and actually loved it. It is unfortunate to bump into people like you. Have a wonderful life correcting people's spelling of omelet and calling them terrorists if they disagree with you. You are such a joke.
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
In soviet russia, omelet spells you
lame
NB I'm writing from the UK:
As he said, terrorists.
UMLIT
is the correct way to spell it.
Omelette Du Fromage?
I prefer waffles.
Mahmoud, you're drunk, take a nap.
GTA IV is not a computer game.
in Texas we make omelets out of ovums while a girls is ovulating, or on her period, and then sprinkle the omelet with leftover fetus from the underage abortion clinic. And then put some hot sauce on it. Yummy
Let me guess, John -- you tend to vote republican.
Real wisdom is knowing why 'trust no one' is, on the long term, a losing strategy, despite the ease with which it can be rationalized and adopted. It's easy to believe that everyone is selfish when you have your own selfishness to project.
wtf,ikno i shouldt b doing this, but i thort i would help people out. As it seems they need help with Omelettes...
http://www.aussiecooking.com.au/articles/omelette.html
"How to make the perfect Omelette"
Cheese omlettettesomethingish is the way forward.
I spell it 'It's scrambled eggs again, I'm afraid'
lmao nice omeeellleettte spelling going on!
Nevertheless this post is an utter WTF??? Is this just to shock people or you do really believe in everything you wrote? Damn, what a sad bastard you are. Use your 2 neurons to think how a f*cked up society would be if those rules were followed by everyone. The only one I can agree upon is be prepared for worst.
If you like those rules, move your ass to Uganda, Zimbabwe or Bronx, you'll be happy there, stupid motherf*cker.
Now I know why this article got "stumbled upon", not for the article but because of the insane discussion on how to spell omlette/omlett/omlet.
roflmao.....
Over here we don't have homosexuals like you do in America.
1 I agree with as a project manager what you have said, breaking eggs isnt always a good idea especially
if u dont know what leads afterwards, testing the egg first is helpful.
2 Yes i agree and i think the read-between-the-line is that you trust only yourself but you put faith only
in those that you can see are trustworthy but push the ball only as far as it need go.
3 Yeah, common sense states this though
4 Yeah, nice shit can get u more shit than nice in front of it. A lot of ppl with 'nice shit' might
'get what they want' but they alway sget screwed by the lower classes in some way or other be it taxes or
damage to gear.
5 Yeah I agree, revenge with what? Because the only revenge ive seen that seems to work is to move away from it
suing isnt always a viable option its expensive.
6 Some things you work hard to get and other things do come with time whether you
work for them or not, but if you excite things to work for you then what you want comes quicker with less
effort.
7 Yes, suffering is not really a good idea, however thinking outside the box doesnt have to come with breaking
laws its immorale to bend some laws but its not illegal... learn the ropes bc ppl react to either side especially
high profile companies
i spell it OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMlette
yeah, only terrorists and every other english-speaking (or french-speaking for that matter) country in the world
It's actually Om-nom-nomlet.
lmao, ..Damn terrorists.
There's only one intelligent comment in this thread the 2nd to last on the previous page.
This is a sharp post about a video game on digg. Very Darwinian. Did you really expect intelligent comments? Now I'm down for scrambled eggs. Omelettes are too much work.
Yeah, we spell it "omelet" here in America.
Owned.
this comment board has the dumbest remarks i've seen in a while. is everyone on here 11?
stop spelling omelet. you're neither funny nor are you creative in your omelet "jokes".
Actually it's spelled OM NOM NOM NOM LET.
YUMLET is how we spell it in America
Er, first sentence should read: 1 Breaking Eggs - not completely untrue, but people take that to mean "making disruptive changes means progress."
Almost 100% wrong. By points:
1 Breaking Eggs - not completely untrue, but people take that to mean "making Ever been involved in a project where someone thought that making arbitrary, blind decisions was a form of initiative?
2 Trust No One - This is counterproductive in real life. Like it or not, you live in a society of people, some of whom you will have to trust. Picking who to trust and how much is an essential skill.
3 Plan for best / prepare for worst - ...can't really argue with that one.
4 Nice Shit = Respect - This is a self-selecting kind of thing. If impressing superficial people is important to you, yeah, you will need to spend some money.
5 Get Revenge - No. Making a point of "getting even" with people will quickly mark you as someone who can't be reasonably dealt with. Lots of guys in prison only have the satisfaction of wasting the one guy who dissed them while they spend the rest of their lives getting screwed.
6 Want Something / Work For It - I'm simpatico with this one, although the American landscape is littered with contrary examples. Niko Bellic himself is an instance of someone with loose scruples taking the easy way.
7 Go Off Beaten Path - Sure, but be prepared to suffer. There are lots of different paths in life, and there's no shame in taking a mainstream one for a while if it gets you where you want to go.
wow diggbait
yes, in amerika we spell it omelet. we have enough trouble spelling words with audible letters, much less silent ones!
I Germany - we spell it Omlett---
Has anybody else missed the main point?
War not only ruins a country, but the individual lives of everyone participating in the war.
Niko Bellic is practically a sociopath due to this.
"During the war, I did bad things. After the war, I thought nothing of doing bad things."
This boring, bowlink rules.
Look at me, I am anonymous.
"All your posts are belong to me".
Right, so if you're Ayn Rand GTAIV does a fairly good job of satirically championing your views.
I honestly non-ironically think you've missed the point, champ.
god i want an omelet,
Americans can't speak English
Everyone is named Anonymous...
"tthe iPhone, a device no one had ever seen before." WTF dude?! The iphone is nothing new. There's been phones like it around for ages. It's better than most of them, has a bigger screen and better interface yes, but's not a new thing. Plenty of phones out there are better.
OMELET...PREVAIL!
LOL YOU BAD.
Nom, nom, nom, NOMELETTE!
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