PETA: Bloody Mario Was 'Tongue-In-Cheek"

[The Great JT]

Maybe you should make a game spoofing the dog-neck-snapping scenes in Call of Duty next. I mean, what did those dogs do to deserve getting their necks broken? Be loyal to the guy supplying their meals, you say? Well that hardly seems fair.

 

[CulixCupric]

Picard, Riker, you know what must be done.

 

[Xanadu84]

...Ill give it to em.

Oh, there activism is HORRIBLE. It undermines humans in favor of animals. Its silly. But once you accept the fact that there core belief is stupid, the way they go about trying to express that opinion is pretty reasonable. If you thought that a tanooki was as sentient as a baby, this game would be a clever, reasonable Mario deconstruction with a poignant message.

 

[Tommeh Brownleh]

Hey, you know what PETA? Just for that, I'm going to go out, eat about 3 burgers, buy a couple of fur coats, and then go hunting.

 

[spacepoliceman]

PETA seriously needs to go away now.

They have taken a legitimate issue and keep abusing it to make themselves money.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

really? I mean really? Come on PETA what happened to freeing tortured animals from cosmetic companies? smh

 

[zarix2311]

Well. HA HA HA That was soooooo funny. So either they're trying to bullshit their way out of this, or they really did mean it as a joke and it's just that no one can tell when they're being serious because of all the asinine shit they've protested before. I don't know why, but I'm not mad at PETA for this anymore, just astounded. Once again, with feeling HA HA HA.

 

[gyroscopeboy]

PETA's entire organizational history is full of comedic campaigns.

And boobies...lots of boobies

 

[Knight Templar]

I would rather PETA do something good or at least productive, like prevent the death of animals in their care or at least make jokes at the expense of people and entities that are part of the problem.
Sure you got attention, but was the cause furthered? How many people would dismiss this without thinking because of how absurd placing blame on Mario is?

I suppose their legal action to make animals people is also a joke.

 

[Saltyk]

It is true that they overreact, but it is a fact that games make people desensitized to violence. Anybody who denies that denies all scientific research in the area.

It does not mean that one will be violent, but it is desensitizing which does allow a greater possibility of violence. PETA is not a human rights organization, it is an animal rights organization. For that reason, it only takes stances against things that desensitize people to violence against animals. Anything else would be outside its mission statement.

Yeah, but desensitisation doesn't mean anything. The most desensitised people to gore (apart from soldiers obviously) are doctors, as they deal with blood and gore every darn day. It's there job to look at your mangled torso and then get elbow deep right up in there. Are they any more violent than the rest of us? Well I've never heard anyone even think of researching a link between doctors and violence.

All desensitizing means is that when you see something horrible you don't immediately go BLEUGH! And there is still a humungous gap between videogame violence and real life violence, that doesn't really transfer at all. I can cut a mans arm off in a Star Wars game without a moments hesitation, last week I was playing Mortal Combat on the SNES and laughing at the crazy violence with my friends, but in real life I can't look at deep cuts without balking, I still wince at the gross stories of people breaking their arms and stuff.

I believe that playing a videogame only desensitises you to the violence within the game, so that the first time you perform a gory action you may be weirded out, but after the 100th time you just regard it as another move in the game, another impersonal, necessary step to progressing through the game, which is what it is, because these are only pixels, not people.

Thank you. I agree so much. I'll play a game like God of War where I cut a centaur's intestines out, rip a cyclops's eye out, tear off a harpies wings and poke out Poseidon's eyes. I'll think that's awesome and fun.

Do even a fraction of that, even in a movie, and I'll cringe. Do it in real life and I'll throw up. Video games do not desensitize people to real life violence.

Oh, and soldiers aren't as desensitized as you think. It's a proven fact that a large number of soldiers will turn their gun away from even an enemy. They don't actually want to kill anyone. Maybe a hardened soldier who seen his share of action, but not the rookie that just shipped in.

 

[Saltyk]

And, for the record, I don't buy that they were just playing around and joking before. PETA isn't smart enough to do that. They were serious. They just saw the backlash and realized that they should backpedal from it. I'll bet that is the case in most, if not all, of those previous "comedic" campaigns, too.

If anybody but PETA had made a game where you follow Mario as a raccoon trying to get your fur back this site would have talked about it as if it was a clever thing and all of the people posting here about how bad PETA is would have laughed their asses off.

I don't support PETA, but I have to side with them more than most of the people I've seen talking about it on this one. It was clever. It was clearly a joke. Anybody who takes this seriously forgets, first of all, that its parodying an 80's video game, and second that PETA's entire organizational history is full of comedic campaigns.

Nicely put, this is exactly the kind of shit I do in Critical Miss and no one bats and eyelid. On the other hand, PETA does have a history of being outraged over silly shit in video games. Not in a funny way, either.

There's a difference. When you do it, it's actually funny. When PETA does it, it's just backpedaling from their asinine antics after they anger people.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

What the fuck is Dog Wars?

(Also, to the people suggesting that if this weren't PETA we'd all accept it as a joke: The difference is that this is PETA, an organisation that regularly does things exactly like this that are not jokes.)

 

[xitel]

You know, I've been saying on IRC ever since this whole thing first came to light: PETA doesn't even take PETA seriously anymore. I mean, let's look at the reality. They used to do some good stuff, back in the days of seriously fucked up animal testing and whatnot. Then they went off the deepend and started funding domestic terrorists and whatnot. Then they went fairly quiet for a while, and now they're just doing whatever is funniest. They protested against killing a rat in a video game, a creature which is recognized as being nothing but a vermin in the same category as roaches and the like. Hell, if you look at the number of deaths caused by rats, like the Bubonic Plague, they've claimed somewhere around 200,000,000 lives over the many many years. I mean, for god's sake, PETA registered a full on god-damn porn site. Their main spokeswoman is Pamela Anderson, a woman who is probably more plastic and silicone than flesh and blood by now. Because she has the two main qualities they look for: 1) She's dumb enough to not get the joke, and 2) TITS BOOBS LOOK AT THOSE FUCKING TITS, GOD DAMN IT TIIIIITS.

Seriously. Want to stop getting angry at PETA? Think of them the way they think of themselves: a comedy troupe.

 

[WeAreStevo]

...I can't even begin to describe the level of face-palming this can induce. I... I... I just can't.

I think your avatar says it all when I think of this story...

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

"In games like Call of Duty, where characters shoot and kill animals..."

You mean the attack dogs trained specifically to kill enemy soldiers and that will rip your jugular out of your throat if you don't kill them?

Perspective, people. Perspective.

Exactly. Hey man, I have an idea, wanna kill 11 random people (10 with hardline!) and use that to set attack dogs loose among PETA and see what they do? "Aww, look at the cut AGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" No but seriously, how many animals do you kill in COD? not alot!

 

[WeAreStevo]

You know PETA, it's not fun to get tons of flak for something stupid, is it?

I find this horribly ironic because if I was famous and said "I am all about PETA. People for the Eating of Tasty Animals!" *rimshot* Then I'd be metaphorically burned at the stake by PETA and their members, regardless if I said "hey chill PETA, it was a joke!"

I can't stand them...

 

[Brad Shepard]

Why do we care about PETA? I heard they where doing porn now and that was the stupidest thing ever, and now this. let it go people.

 

[Broknhead]

I call bullshit. This move is John Stewart-eque.

Say something provocative to try and send a message that you believe in. Then when the move backfires and more people end up angry at you than angry at the issue your were trying to promote, try to pretend that it was all a joke.

I call this move "Putting on the clown nose"- and a great form of cowardice.

Go to hell, PETA.

glenn beck is that you??

JON STEWART IS A COMEDIAN. you should be expecting everything he says on his show to be a joke.