Tuesday, June 21, 2005
People are stupid.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/320618p-274211c.html
I mercilessly slaughtered hundreds of aliens after Space Invaders was released.
I developed an eating disorder after playing Pac Man.
I went to the zoo and murdered all of the gorillas after a few levels of Donkey Kong.
Tron made me chuck a frisbee at my sisters's head.
Frogger... oh man you don't want to know...
If Pac-Man affected us as kids we'd all be walking around in dark rooms eating magic pills while listening to repetitive electronic music. -Karen Price, Nintendo Representative
Taken from a website that I totally agree with:
What more do you want, parents? There's a rating system on the games now. Your only -- and may I say flimsy -- excuse was that you had no way of knowing what type of content might be found in a given video game.
Because lord knows you couldn't ask your kid. I mean, talk to your own child? About his or her interests? Being a part of your son or daughter's life? Crazy! Good thing you cried to the government instead. Now we've got that rating system you can completely ignore as if it was your kid.
I mean, seriously. They'll buy their twelve year old kids video games that simulate "realistic" violence and it's someone else's fault how, exactly? Would these parents let their kids wander into a porno theater with $50 and be surprised when they witness something as innocuous as Chitty, Chitty Gang Bang?
Of course not. You wouldn't let your kid within a mile of that place.
But when a video game box has "Rated M for Mature" plastered all over it, tells you what happens in the game on the back along with a couple screen shots, has a cover splattered in blood and a title like "Kill, Kill, Kill the Cops All Day Long", these mouth-breather parents throw their hands up in the air and lament to the government how can it possibly be legal to allow an industry to subsist entirely on chicanery and lies for no other purpose than to expose precious little Chandler Hunter Morgan to the 21st century's Clockwork Orange?
It's not like you're picking up a box that says Happy Sunshine Love only to find out that it contains a game that encourages you to skullfuck dogs and says things like All The Cool Kids Hurt Animals.
When precious Hunter Morgan Chandler gets his driver's license and careens off a cliff, are you going to sue the video games for having cars and cliffs that obviously trained your son to drive off a cliff because, "Everyone else was doing it, you get 10,000 points for a good explision," or are you going to sue automakers for building cars that move forward? Hell, why not both! Awesome!
I think what bugs me the most about this tripe is that it's an argument built out of fantasy. And it's just the latest one. Is there a genetic timebomb inside of every generation? Does it go off at the exact moment the generation, as a collective or spirit right out of Planetary, realizes that its fate is not its own; that it's the next generation that'll keep the world running in the very near future? Does the sheer horror of that truth force them to imagine phantom threats to distract themselves from the inevitablity of change? Don't worry about the world you're giving to your kids, or that you've done nothing to prepare them intellectually or emotionally for the responsibility of running it. Worry instead about the comic books, the rock and/or roll music, the violent movies, and now video games!
"It's not my fault my kid doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, or fantasy and reality, it must be those darn video games I kept buying him in lieu of parenting."
| {Old Posts here}
I mercilessly slaughtered hundreds of aliens after Space Invaders was released.
I developed an eating disorder after playing Pac Man.
I went to the zoo and murdered all of the gorillas after a few levels of Donkey Kong.
Tron made me chuck a frisbee at my sisters's head.
Frogger... oh man you don't want to know...
If Pac-Man affected us as kids we'd all be walking around in dark rooms eating magic pills while listening to repetitive electronic music. -Karen Price, Nintendo Representative
Taken from a website that I totally agree with:
What more do you want, parents? There's a rating system on the games now. Your only -- and may I say flimsy -- excuse was that you had no way of knowing what type of content might be found in a given video game.
Because lord knows you couldn't ask your kid. I mean, talk to your own child? About his or her interests? Being a part of your son or daughter's life? Crazy! Good thing you cried to the government instead. Now we've got that rating system you can completely ignore as if it was your kid.
I mean, seriously. They'll buy their twelve year old kids video games that simulate "realistic" violence and it's someone else's fault how, exactly? Would these parents let their kids wander into a porno theater with $50 and be surprised when they witness something as innocuous as Chitty, Chitty Gang Bang?
Of course not. You wouldn't let your kid within a mile of that place.
But when a video game box has "Rated M for Mature" plastered all over it, tells you what happens in the game on the back along with a couple screen shots, has a cover splattered in blood and a title like "Kill, Kill, Kill the Cops All Day Long", these mouth-breather parents throw their hands up in the air and lament to the government how can it possibly be legal to allow an industry to subsist entirely on chicanery and lies for no other purpose than to expose precious little Chandler Hunter Morgan to the 21st century's Clockwork Orange?
It's not like you're picking up a box that says Happy Sunshine Love only to find out that it contains a game that encourages you to skullfuck dogs and says things like All The Cool Kids Hurt Animals.
When precious Hunter Morgan Chandler gets his driver's license and careens off a cliff, are you going to sue the video games for having cars and cliffs that obviously trained your son to drive off a cliff because, "Everyone else was doing it, you get 10,000 points for a good explision," or are you going to sue automakers for building cars that move forward? Hell, why not both! Awesome!
I think what bugs me the most about this tripe is that it's an argument built out of fantasy. And it's just the latest one. Is there a genetic timebomb inside of every generation? Does it go off at the exact moment the generation, as a collective or spirit right out of Planetary, realizes that its fate is not its own; that it's the next generation that'll keep the world running in the very near future? Does the sheer horror of that truth force them to imagine phantom threats to distract themselves from the inevitablity of change? Don't worry about the world you're giving to your kids, or that you've done nothing to prepare them intellectually or emotionally for the responsibility of running it. Worry instead about the comic books, the rock and/or roll music, the violent movies, and now video games!
"It's not my fault my kid doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, or fantasy and reality, it must be those darn video games I kept buying him in lieu of parenting."
| {Old Posts here}
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