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Sorry, my mistake “Band these evil games” – but hey, give or take a few consonants and it’s the same thing.
It’s summertime and once again we have the inexplicable death of a child to fall upon and feed, to gorge ourselves on the nasty details and revel in the vileness that is the death of a kid.
Be it The Soham Murders, Gloucester Road…it’s that time of year when news is slow and the days are hot. So yet again we enter the realm of violence towards children.
And as an added bonus, this year we get to pick over the bones and beat away the flies with a rolled up copy of The Daily Mail screaming “BAN THESE EVIL GAMES”.
Yet again that hoary excuse is trotted out, dusted off and held up to a slavering public standing in the village square with flaming torches and “GET THEM!” shining in their eyes.
Are we really that stupid? Do we, in the 21st century, still point a finger at something else and scream about it being evil?
Evil is an overused word these days, it’s lost the sting. Saddam Hussein was an “Evil Madman” (nice way to dehumanise and allow readers to distance themselves before piling on the purgatives ).
So we are halfway through the 1st decade of the 21st century and we’re shouting about banning evil videogames.
Does anybody else look around and feel like Heston waking and seeing the chimp on the pony?
Or is it just another cynical ploy to sell papers to those gullible idiots that don’t know any better?
Could it be that a videogame influenced a child that appears to have a drug habit and needed the money for dealers to murder another child?
It’s as likely as Jamie Bulger being killed because 2 kids watched Child’s Play 3 once – oh you forgot about that one did you? No worries, these tired old cliché-arguments are squeezed out with such dreary regularity that it’s easy to forget and get them confused.
But the media love to blame entertainment. Be it music (Judas Priest subliminally telling their fans to kill themselves), movies (Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a dangerous vile film. Oh, until a few years ago when suddenly it was ok and available again) or games (GTA3, Manhunter blah blah blah influencing moron kids to commit murder).
They’ve always pointed the finger and shrieked about how so-and-so corrupts and influences “the children” to bad places. Elvis Presley was filmed from the waist-up only after his appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in the 1950s promoted *claps hands to cheeks* lewd behaviour and possibly promiscuity.
DH Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was the subject of an obscenity trial and wasn’t available in the full and complete edition until 1960, and there was mass book burnings outside the High Court.
This intelligent, tolerant and mature nation of ours gathered to burn books. Because it was a threat and would promote sex.
Well I hate to tell you, but people have been having sex ever since we developed gills and hauled ourselves from the swamps (sorry fundamentalists, besides, The Bible tells us of Cain killing Abel, plagues and firstborns being slaughtered by Herod. So let’s band The Bible).
Just as kids have been killing kids since waaaaay before video games. What influenced Mary Bell? (go look her up yourself, I’m not doing your research for you). What influenced Ian Brady & Myra Hyndley?
What influenced Ian Huntley? Or The Wests? Or Jack The Ripper? Or…you see my point here.
It’s lazy blameshift to say “Oh well this game made little Bazza kill”, it’s far simpler to demonise an outside influence than it is to look at how that child has been raised, or the situation around it. It’s ignoring the problem and burning an effigy to appease the bloodthirsty yokels who rampage through the town looking for the witch.
Ask anybody, anybody that plays games, if they’ve killed somebody because of it.
I’ll bet money on the answer. You know it and I know it.
Games do not influence you to kill somebody. Movies do not influence you to kill somebody. Books do not influence you to have an affair with a swarthy gardener in incur the wrath of your peers causing no end of emotional upset.
They may trigger something in an already unstable person, but then anything could.
Note the “already unstable” part of that sentence before you set fire to your console and thank the gods that you are now protected forever from all ills in the world.
But with somebody already wobbling on the ledge, it could be a videogame or it could be too many sugars in their morning coffee that sets them off.
It could be anything at all.
But that aspect is roundly ignored by the media and ignorant parents desperately clutching their offspring to them and screaming “Why? Tell us why? What can we do?”.
What you can do is take some goddam responsibility for raising your children correctly and stop trying to blame something that hundreds of thousands of other kids the world over own, play and enjoy with no murderous outcome.
And somebody needs to say that by the way, not every parent is responsible and adult enough to raise a child properly. And don’t give me the crap about single parents families, broken homes etc because I come from a single parent family and, should I follow the view of The Daily Mail and other associated news, I should be knee-deep in the flyblown carcasses of children, hunched over a copy of Natural Born Killers and ejaculating wildly as I inject heroin into my helmet.
But I’m not.
So what does that tell you about the typical, lazy excuses offered? Does it mean I, and countless others in the same situation regarding social history and parental situation, am an anomaly – or does it suggest that easy scapegoating serves no purpose other than inflame a situation and help to distract from the more important issues of children roaming free at 10pm because their parents are disinterested and just want peace and quiet?
But the rational view is never taken, our viewpoint is never heard. Why?
Because that doesn’t sell newspapers. And that’s what this is about at the end of the day. Making money, profiting from the death of this child by sticking “BAN THESE EVIL GAMES” as the headline instead of “Child murdered”.
And The Daily Mail is the worst of the worst.
I don’t count The Sun, The Mirror etc because it’s generally accepted that these rags are little more than wrapping for tomorrow’s dinner.
But The Daily Mail positions itself as the bastion of moral decency and people actually read it thinking it’s anything other than a right-wing daily edition of Mein Kampf.
Every single day there are stories about immigrants committing crimes, with no mention ever of people that have fled their countries because of genuine fear of death.
Every single day there are stories about teenagers drinking and having sex.
Every single day there is a snidely written article about homosexuality.
Which is why, whenever I reference that vile toiletpaper, I use the phrase “darkies and bummers”, because that’s the level of that newspaper.
It’s a hateful, ill-informed odious dishcloth that masquerades as a newspaper – typically read by narrowminded white middle-class people that think we’re on the verge of being overrun by darkies and bummers, where every single person that uses the internet is trying to seduce their child, where anybody under the age of 45 is binge drinking and having unprotected sex (possibly with darkies or bummers), where video games instantly turn your nice polite perfect little angel into a slavering hellbeast intent on slaughtering his classmates with gleeful abandon.
In Tuesday’s edition, there was an article about “Reasons we don’t need Sven Goran Erickson” with 20 reasons offered. And number 2 was, and this is word for word,
“We thought we’d stopped the Vikings coming over here stealing our money and sleeping with our women nearly 900 years ago”
????????????????????????????????????
Not only woefully ignorant of history (they came, they saw, they kicked our ass and then left because they were bored) but stunningly racist and BNP in attitude.
But let’s humour their Victorian jackbooted writers for a moment shall we?
Let’s say, without a shadow of a doubt, that entertainment can influence your behaviour and shape your morals ok?
The safest way to protect your child is to ban television. That’s far more dangerous than Manhunter or watching Child’s Play 3 or reading DH Lawrence (the first two come with age restrictions anyway, so what the hell is a minor doing with them?).
I can turn on way before the watershed and watch Trisha. This programme shows me people sleeping with each left, right and centre. It shows me parents screaming at their children on television, haranguing them and almost coming to blows. It shows me drug addicts, former prostitutes and all manner of “criminals”. This is at 9:30 am, with no age restriction in place to prevent me from purchasing.
Or I can watch a soap opera anytime in between 7pm and 9pm. These shows, watched by 16 million people nightly in the case of Eastenders and “Corrie”, have stories that involve murder, incest, robbery, rape, adultery, theft, blackmail and all these other things that I’m supposed to be protected against.
Again, beamed right into my house and I can watch with my family.
This is entertainment folks, and it’s just as relevant in the “Games made me do it!” argument if you’re stupid enough to be influenced by it.
I can watch 3-part dramas about the Vice Squad, I can watch imported American shows that show, in detail, serial killings, rapes, murders etc etc.
Or I can watch Sex in The City, which tells me that single women are having sex anywhere and everywhere because they don’t feel complete with a man.
Or I can watch Hollywood movies where the steroid-inflated hero massacres entire nations of brown skinned people and has a witty quip to hand.
Or I can watch the news and see footage of real-life death courtesy of bombs, car crashes, planes crashing, boats sinking etc etc etc.
So by all means ban these evil games. But also band these evil television (influencing millions more people nightly than a shoddy beat’em up game) and ban these evil movies and songs and books.
Let’s all exist in cotton wool with no external stimulus shall we?
Ooops, we had that already in the 1900+ years before television and the 1980 years before video games didn’t we?
People were murdering people back then, which doesn’t make sense because I’m being told by my newspaper that video games, teenagers having sex, darkies and bummers are responsible for all the problems in today’s society.
Nevermind a Prime Minister that is only too willing to, by proxy, kill 11,000 Iraqi civilians based on non-existent weapons that were never a threat anyway.
Nevermind a culture that rewards the lusty pursuit of trivia and the mundane by allocating 15 mins of fame for living in a television programme for 3 months beamed 24/7 into your home.
Nevermind a falling literacy rate that is on a level with Peru.
Nevermind a generation of children raised on burgers and parented by screamingly loud, colourful shows trying to flog their merchandise to you.
No, don’t look at the wider picture where you might have to stop for a moment and realise that raising a child might actually require more than you birthing it and screaming for it to “Fakkin’ shat up” when it cries in a shop because it’s hungry or tired and you have to purchase that new England top in time for the next cup league.
Don’t look at any of that.
It was the videogame/film/book/song that made me do it.
Now you have your answer, all is well and you can go back to sleep safe and secure in the knowledge that your newspaper is looking after you, but you’d better lock your door and put massive gates around your frontgarden in case any darkies or bummers try to break in and play those evil games.
It’s summertime and once again we have the inexplicable death of a child to fall upon and feed, to gorge ourselves on the nasty details and revel in the vileness that is the death of a kid.
Be it The Soham Murders, Gloucester Road…it’s that time of year when news is slow and the days are hot. So yet again we enter the realm of violence towards children.
And as an added bonus, this year we get to pick over the bones and beat away the flies with a rolled up copy of The Daily Mail screaming “BAN THESE EVIL GAMES”.
Yet again that hoary excuse is trotted out, dusted off and held up to a slavering public standing in the village square with flaming torches and “GET THEM!” shining in their eyes.
Are we really that stupid? Do we, in the 21st century, still point a finger at something else and scream about it being evil?
Evil is an overused word these days, it’s lost the sting. Saddam Hussein was an “Evil Madman” (nice way to dehumanise and allow readers to distance themselves before piling on the purgatives ).
So we are halfway through the 1st decade of the 21st century and we’re shouting about banning evil videogames.
Does anybody else look around and feel like Heston waking and seeing the chimp on the pony?
Or is it just another cynical ploy to sell papers to those gullible idiots that don’t know any better?
Could it be that a videogame influenced a child that appears to have a drug habit and needed the money for dealers to murder another child?
It’s as likely as Jamie Bulger being killed because 2 kids watched Child’s Play 3 once – oh you forgot about that one did you? No worries, these tired old cliché-arguments are squeezed out with such dreary regularity that it’s easy to forget and get them confused.
But the media love to blame entertainment. Be it music (Judas Priest subliminally telling their fans to kill themselves), movies (Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a dangerous vile film. Oh, until a few years ago when suddenly it was ok and available again) or games (GTA3, Manhunter blah blah blah influencing moron kids to commit murder).
They’ve always pointed the finger and shrieked about how so-and-so corrupts and influences “the children” to bad places. Elvis Presley was filmed from the waist-up only after his appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in the 1950s promoted *claps hands to cheeks* lewd behaviour and possibly promiscuity.
DH Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was the subject of an obscenity trial and wasn’t available in the full and complete edition until 1960, and there was mass book burnings outside the High Court.
This intelligent, tolerant and mature nation of ours gathered to burn books. Because it was a threat and would promote sex.
Well I hate to tell you, but people have been having sex ever since we developed gills and hauled ourselves from the swamps (sorry fundamentalists, besides, The Bible tells us of Cain killing Abel, plagues and firstborns being slaughtered by Herod. So let’s band The Bible).
Just as kids have been killing kids since waaaaay before video games. What influenced Mary Bell? (go look her up yourself, I’m not doing your research for you). What influenced Ian Brady & Myra Hyndley?
What influenced Ian Huntley? Or The Wests? Or Jack The Ripper? Or…you see my point here.
It’s lazy blameshift to say “Oh well this game made little Bazza kill”, it’s far simpler to demonise an outside influence than it is to look at how that child has been raised, or the situation around it. It’s ignoring the problem and burning an effigy to appease the bloodthirsty yokels who rampage through the town looking for the witch.
Ask anybody, anybody that plays games, if they’ve killed somebody because of it.
I’ll bet money on the answer. You know it and I know it.
Games do not influence you to kill somebody. Movies do not influence you to kill somebody. Books do not influence you to have an affair with a swarthy gardener in incur the wrath of your peers causing no end of emotional upset.
They may trigger something in an already unstable person, but then anything could.
Note the “already unstable” part of that sentence before you set fire to your console and thank the gods that you are now protected forever from all ills in the world.
But with somebody already wobbling on the ledge, it could be a videogame or it could be too many sugars in their morning coffee that sets them off.
It could be anything at all.
But that aspect is roundly ignored by the media and ignorant parents desperately clutching their offspring to them and screaming “Why? Tell us why? What can we do?”.
What you can do is take some goddam responsibility for raising your children correctly and stop trying to blame something that hundreds of thousands of other kids the world over own, play and enjoy with no murderous outcome.
And somebody needs to say that by the way, not every parent is responsible and adult enough to raise a child properly. And don’t give me the crap about single parents families, broken homes etc because I come from a single parent family and, should I follow the view of The Daily Mail and other associated news, I should be knee-deep in the flyblown carcasses of children, hunched over a copy of Natural Born Killers and ejaculating wildly as I inject heroin into my helmet.
But I’m not.
So what does that tell you about the typical, lazy excuses offered? Does it mean I, and countless others in the same situation regarding social history and parental situation, am an anomaly – or does it suggest that easy scapegoating serves no purpose other than inflame a situation and help to distract from the more important issues of children roaming free at 10pm because their parents are disinterested and just want peace and quiet?
But the rational view is never taken, our viewpoint is never heard. Why?
Because that doesn’t sell newspapers. And that’s what this is about at the end of the day. Making money, profiting from the death of this child by sticking “BAN THESE EVIL GAMES” as the headline instead of “Child murdered”.
And The Daily Mail is the worst of the worst.
I don’t count The Sun, The Mirror etc because it’s generally accepted that these rags are little more than wrapping for tomorrow’s dinner.
But The Daily Mail positions itself as the bastion of moral decency and people actually read it thinking it’s anything other than a right-wing daily edition of Mein Kampf.
Every single day there are stories about immigrants committing crimes, with no mention ever of people that have fled their countries because of genuine fear of death.
Every single day there are stories about teenagers drinking and having sex.
Every single day there is a snidely written article about homosexuality.
Which is why, whenever I reference that vile toiletpaper, I use the phrase “darkies and bummers”, because that’s the level of that newspaper.
It’s a hateful, ill-informed odious dishcloth that masquerades as a newspaper – typically read by narrowminded white middle-class people that think we’re on the verge of being overrun by darkies and bummers, where every single person that uses the internet is trying to seduce their child, where anybody under the age of 45 is binge drinking and having unprotected sex (possibly with darkies or bummers), where video games instantly turn your nice polite perfect little angel into a slavering hellbeast intent on slaughtering his classmates with gleeful abandon.
In Tuesday’s edition, there was an article about “Reasons we don’t need Sven Goran Erickson” with 20 reasons offered. And number 2 was, and this is word for word,
“We thought we’d stopped the Vikings coming over here stealing our money and sleeping with our women nearly 900 years ago”
????????????????????????????????????
Not only woefully ignorant of history (they came, they saw, they kicked our ass and then left because they were bored) but stunningly racist and BNP in attitude.
But let’s humour their Victorian jackbooted writers for a moment shall we?
Let’s say, without a shadow of a doubt, that entertainment can influence your behaviour and shape your morals ok?
The safest way to protect your child is to ban television. That’s far more dangerous than Manhunter or watching Child’s Play 3 or reading DH Lawrence (the first two come with age restrictions anyway, so what the hell is a minor doing with them?).
I can turn on way before the watershed and watch Trisha. This programme shows me people sleeping with each left, right and centre. It shows me parents screaming at their children on television, haranguing them and almost coming to blows. It shows me drug addicts, former prostitutes and all manner of “criminals”. This is at 9:30 am, with no age restriction in place to prevent me from purchasing.
Or I can watch a soap opera anytime in between 7pm and 9pm. These shows, watched by 16 million people nightly in the case of Eastenders and “Corrie”, have stories that involve murder, incest, robbery, rape, adultery, theft, blackmail and all these other things that I’m supposed to be protected against.
Again, beamed right into my house and I can watch with my family.
This is entertainment folks, and it’s just as relevant in the “Games made me do it!” argument if you’re stupid enough to be influenced by it.
I can watch 3-part dramas about the Vice Squad, I can watch imported American shows that show, in detail, serial killings, rapes, murders etc etc.
Or I can watch Sex in The City, which tells me that single women are having sex anywhere and everywhere because they don’t feel complete with a man.
Or I can watch Hollywood movies where the steroid-inflated hero massacres entire nations of brown skinned people and has a witty quip to hand.
Or I can watch the news and see footage of real-life death courtesy of bombs, car crashes, planes crashing, boats sinking etc etc etc.
So by all means ban these evil games. But also band these evil television (influencing millions more people nightly than a shoddy beat’em up game) and ban these evil movies and songs and books.
Let’s all exist in cotton wool with no external stimulus shall we?
Ooops, we had that already in the 1900+ years before television and the 1980 years before video games didn’t we?
People were murdering people back then, which doesn’t make sense because I’m being told by my newspaper that video games, teenagers having sex, darkies and bummers are responsible for all the problems in today’s society.
Nevermind a Prime Minister that is only too willing to, by proxy, kill 11,000 Iraqi civilians based on non-existent weapons that were never a threat anyway.
Nevermind a culture that rewards the lusty pursuit of trivia and the mundane by allocating 15 mins of fame for living in a television programme for 3 months beamed 24/7 into your home.
Nevermind a falling literacy rate that is on a level with Peru.
Nevermind a generation of children raised on burgers and parented by screamingly loud, colourful shows trying to flog their merchandise to you.
No, don’t look at the wider picture where you might have to stop for a moment and realise that raising a child might actually require more than you birthing it and screaming for it to “Fakkin’ shat up” when it cries in a shop because it’s hungry or tired and you have to purchase that new England top in time for the next cup league.
Don’t look at any of that.
It was the videogame/film/book/song that made me do it.
Now you have your answer, all is well and you can go back to sleep safe and secure in the knowledge that your newspaper is looking after you, but you’d better lock your door and put massive gates around your frontgarden in case any darkies or bummers try to break in and play those evil games.
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Well put, Goatbi - an outpouring of most sane people's thoughts. This tediously crude Daily Mail scapegoating is getting rather tired.
I can only hope that if I decided to take a hammer to my best friend they'd be able to come up with a better reason for it than me owning GTA.
I can only hope that if I decided to take a hammer to my best friend they'd be able to come up with a better reason for it than me owning GTA.
Goatboy hits the nail on the head.
Again.
Good stuff.
Again.
Good stuff.
Scottish Daily Record had an article about it today - it was crap. Besides, I agree with you're argument, Goatboy. Point proven exceptionally.
UW.
UW.
Excellent way to put it that sums up pretty much the way most of us feel.
Why do people accept such crap in newspapers? Even worse why are there people who read it and take it as the truth?
Why do people accept such crap in newspapers? Even worse why are there people who read it and take it as the truth?
This is such a crap decade to grow up in, wish I grew up in 60s/70s. Everything was better then.
SHEEPY wrote:
> This is such a crap decade to grow up in, wish I grew up in 60s/70s.
> Everything was better then.
I'm sceptical. I saw this documentray on how lame the 60s was. I know it was rather one-sided, setting out with that agenda.
But the racism was rife, by the looks of things, and people were screwing money out of the 'peace and love thing', which didn't seem to be working all that well...
They seemed to have most of the same problems as today actually. Only everyone was more open about their biggotries, greed and manipulation.
Or maybe they just showed clips which showed the down-sides more openly.
Either way, I think it's a case of the grass always being greener...
> This is such a crap decade to grow up in, wish I grew up in 60s/70s.
> Everything was better then.
I'm sceptical. I saw this documentray on how lame the 60s was. I know it was rather one-sided, setting out with that agenda.
But the racism was rife, by the looks of things, and people were screwing money out of the 'peace and love thing', which didn't seem to be working all that well...
They seemed to have most of the same problems as today actually. Only everyone was more open about their biggotries, greed and manipulation.
Or maybe they just showed clips which showed the down-sides more openly.
Either way, I think it's a case of the grass always being greener...
Free Love though?
Apparently
Apparently
How much do you have to pay?
£3, £300?
Hey, I'm not trying to negotiate a price with you :^D
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