Sick of the Hypocrisy and Terrible Changes.

[Shru1kan]

Ah, lurking without a PC really sucks. But I do have to say, these forums are changing drastically over the last few months. And no, not for the better.

First off, this movement about "parenting". I cannot fathom it, but what really pushed me over the edge and made me sign in on my iPod to write this was the recent news thread about 'we dare'. The uproar in the UK over it's 12+ rating. People saying it isn't that bad, that parents should know what their kids play. It goes much deeper than that, but let me start off with this.

With that rating, the parents do not have to consent to their purchase. if little Suzy decides to go buy that game with her allowance, she doesn't need mommy or daddy to go help her. Automatically, that puts parents at a massive disadvantage to controlling their kid's exposure to the game. Before we touch on the fact that parents cannot physically watch their kids 24/7 short of implanting a camera in their corneas and installing a GPS tracker module under their skin, we must look at experience. I am willing to bet that 99% of you have had something that you hid from your parents. Some of you may still have a stash of something. Cigarettes, porno mags (not as common, but this is my example from 8 years or so ago), alcohol, weed, most likely at some point before you were of age, you had something you weren't supposed to. hell, even one of my overage friends is hiding a small tattoo from his parents, lest they cut off his college tuition. It doesn't even have to be illegal, just something that you know would get you yelled at or worse.

In other words, we don't agree 100% with family values. Most of us even actively circumvent them. So when you get all up in arms when some parents flip out and want the industry regulated when Joe Blow finds out that his kid is playing a war game like Black Ops, chances are he was doing some shady things to get around dad knowing what games he was buying or even had. One major way I got around the whole "no mature games until you are 17" rule was to go to a friend's house. Play there. Hell, borrow it. Hide it with the porn stash. One weak parent in the friend circle meant that everyone got it, and nobody can deny that stuff gets around when one kid gets a hold of something he's not supposed to.

Am I advocating regulation? No, because it would still find its way into the hands the regulation was passed to keep it away from. Does it work with porn, alcohol, tobacco? Not in my experience, or the experience of anyone I know, which spans countries and even continents away.

For the hypocrisy part, we all hate internet filters, right? We all hate overprotective and overly conservative parents that force their ideas on us. Yet we demand that kids just a few years younger than the average user of this site are controlled and monitored 24/7. What would you have done if you were monitored with the scrutiny of an eagle 24/7? I'd bet anything that you would have devised several attempts to get the watchful eyes off your back. But nope, those kids that are just a bit younger, yep, they'll be totally okay with it.

Oh and I am sick of people basing America. Really, I am. I don't want to go to war with everyone, I don't weigh 5000 pounds, and I don't live solely on McDonald's. I know how to convert to metric even though most people I meet who use it cant convert back to imperial. Yeah, thats totally better than picking the other one and not learning about that opposing. Oh wait.

It's not cool, and I am honestly surprised at what people get away with without moderation. Because if I tore into the UK or Australia I bet I'd be probated or suspended before I hit "post".

To avoid taking away from the first part of my post, I will simply leave it at that. Take a look at yourselves before you bash everything that comes across your sights. It isn't "cool", despite your thoughts. It just pisses people off, and its tiring to keep reading and see less and less people stand up against it because they know its all but useless now. If you really hate America so damn much, just go burn a flag with the others who actually have a reason to hate us. They might not kill you along with Americans if they get a chance, maybe.

 

[Del-Toro]

To avoid taking away from the first part of my post, I will simply leave it at that. Take a look at yourselves before you bash everything that comes across your sights. It isn't "cool", despite your thoughts. It just pisses people off, and its tiring to keep reading and see less and less people stand up against it because they know its all but useless now.

In the interests of fairness I'll point out that a lot of people here are that wonderful combination of high school age and socially retarded, all they know is what they currently think.

Not only is that probably the best way to have put it, but it made me lol as well.

It's also worth noting that a lot of the non-Americans on this site (no offense to the guy I'm quoting if he's not American) especially Europeans, although my fellow Canadians are awful for this as well. Seriously, I fucking hate it when Canadians act like we all stormed Vimy Ridge or we all invented Penicillin. Yanks don't claim to have all invented the aeroplane. I singled out Europe because they have developed a habit for calling Americans out for things their countries developed (into what they are today) on, and were much worse than the US could have ever hoped to be. It's irritating.

 

[Dark Knifer]

In the interests of fairness I'll point out that a lot of people here are that wonderful combination of high school age and socially retarded, all they know is what they currently think.

A lot of people here have zero actual experience of the world and I'm sure you know how hard it is to see teenage behaviour from the inside. They'll say something jaw droppingly thick but they won't actually get that it's unreasonable because they don't have the experience base to know why it won't work.

EDIT: Having said that there are plenty of reasonable people here. It's easy to miss the diamonds through the muck but they're there.

This, though there are plenty of reasonable teenagers and socially inept out there, like myself (not meaning to brag). It's mainly because the escapist has had a population explosion recently, so new people might not be familiar with what the community is actually like when it's at it's best. But even with these people saying stupid things, at least they could be learning something, which sounds pretty good to me.

 

[Chrono180]

For your first part, minors under the current legal system are not "people" so much as "property". Its stupid, but that's the way it is. While I would like to give equal rights to minors, most people like having the governments permission to oppress the young, much like blacks were oppressed before the 60s and homosexuals were before the 80s.

As for bashing America, to be fair we have done a lot of nasty things. We unjustly invaded Iraq due to an intelligence failure, we wrongly intervened in Somalia to stop the warlords from starving their people, we led a coup in Cuba and wound up putting Castro in power, and there's dozens of other examples. Not to mention that our nation was built on the genocide of the Native Americans, which has been estimated to have casualties of around a hundred million dead.

 

[shreedder]

I have to agree with you about hiding what you play. My mother hated the idea of me playing any war game, or any grand theft auto. So I went to a friends house and played it their.

Agreed about the hate on America, however to quote Lewis Black on america, "If a coworker came in everyday and said. I am the greatest fucker here and you would all die without me! By the end of the week you would have killed him..." That is how I feel about us Americans. We as a society are asking to be hated, because a very loud minority won't shut up about how great they think we are.