I cringe a little, yeah. I always do when I hear someone talking about games like they know what's what, when in fact, they do not.
Case in point: I was watching local news one morning before hopping on the bus. The Super Smash Brothers Brawl Midnight Launch had gone down the previous night (or earlier that morning, depending on how much you want to nitpick). Must have been a slow news day, because my station decided to do a bit of fluff news on it.
Typical "games in the news" stuff; if the game isn't billed as a "murder simulator", the fans are portrayed as rabid, obese and lacking in hygiene skills. I wasn't surprised. As we all know, this kind of stuff is hardly new.
No, what made me cringe was when this ditzy anchor starts talking about the game like she's so thrilled to be discussing it.
"The game, which allows players to participate in virtual battles with popular video game mascots, was released last night for the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii."
See, it's actually a fairly accurate description, which leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe, someone actually did a little fact checking for this story. It's that last part that sends the whole thing down the crapper.
I cringed. I got over it. I got on the bus, and told myself that I had to stop watching local news first thing before leaving the house.