Akaran

I have to get this off of my chest. This is just one of those things that infuriates me so badly that I want to puke, scream and rifle a series of punches into someone's gut and face just for good measure. I tried to get here to post this over the weekend but I couldn't get access to 'Flames... site was down or something. This is relatively unimportant, but I have no other place to vent.


Sometime this weekend.. Sat, I think, while I was happily tanking Chelsith, some person in the lower chat channels started spouting off about how badly Grand Theft Auto sucked. It wasn't that the gameplay values were piss poor or that the storylines were crap - that's fine if you think so. It was because it glorified gang related activities, murder, violence, pimping, and the like. This individual even went so far as to claim that genocide should be used to clean up the parts of our society that fall under that category - gangbangers, drug addicts, ect and that they wished we could stop things like this from being made, if not for the "pesky first-amendment". Yes, that's a quote.

Now, please don't get me wrong. I fancy myself Christian. A piss-poor Christian, but I try. I swear too much, I've got a porn addicition, and I covet my wife's best friend. I do not approve of people shooting each other down in the streets or popping pills to get high. I'd like to say I don't approve of prostitution or public nudity, but, I can't. (I said I suck at my religion. I meant it.) I understand not wanting to have children play games such as GTA or Mortal Kombat or Postal or Age of Conan or other highly-violent games. I wouldn't want my kids playing them either.

But. People like this walking waste of dna offend me on an insane level. This is the worst kind of zealot. This is the kind of person that legitimately believes that all the worlds problems can be solved by purging the lower ranks of society. This is the kind of person that wants to stop people from making the -choice- of right or wrong or good or bad or wholesome or depraved. The great thing about this country isn't that we're progressive or open or willing to tolerate others. No. It's not. It's that we're FREE to make the choices here that determine what kind of life we live. It's that we're FREE to fuck up. It's that my neighbor can do stuff that's insidious and depraved and sickening and as long as he's not hurting anyone it's perfectly ok. It's that we're FREE to help people or not help people. It's the ultimate expression of the gift of reason that God granted us. "Here you go, here's life, choose how you live it, it's up to you." It's what makes us different from Iran and Iraq and other "religious" countries.

But this person? He thinks that because violence is glorified, more people are going to do it. No. That's not the case. Correlation does not equal causation. The way you stop that kind of unethical bullshit is through education. City-beautification. Quality of life improvements. You can't solve society's woes by banning a videogame... you solve it by helping the people that would otherwise fall into gang related activities make a better life for themselves. You remove the -reason- for drugs and pimping to be a more viable choice than math, science, literature or business. You help rehabilitate people placed in the Department of Corrections instead of shoving them into a 4x6 cell for decades on end so when they get out they can be productive members of society. You entice poor young mothers to stop being baby pods living off of welfare because it's easier than getting a job. You focus on those hurdles, and you solve the problem.

I'll never understand the thinking of people that want to legislate morality. I'll never be able to understand how someone can look at what someone else is doing (as long as no-one is being hurt) and say "you are bad". Yes, there are some things that our society finds unnacceptable that are legal. Alchoholism. Adultry. There are things that large swaths of the country don't approve of. Public nudity. Swearing. Exhibitionism. The death penalty. But that doesn't give you the right to judge. That right was not granted to us. Just because I beleive in the Christian God doesn't mean I have a right to say you are a bad person for worshiping the Muslim God or the Hindu Gods or whomever or whatever else. What's right for one person may not be right for another; that's their choice. It's not yours.

So unless I am breaking the law and harming someone (or myself through my actions)... kindly, shut the fuck up. My life is as miserable as I chose to make it. If you want to stop violence and corruption, go right ahead. But don't do it by trying to do an endrun around the Constitution. Don't do it by trying to legislate your morals. Do it by teaching people. Do it by making their lives better. Do it by being better than me. Don't rub my face in it. Be my hero. Be an example I can follow. Be an example everyone else can follow.

Otherwise...

Bugger off.


/endrant

Lyger

shrug it off and move on, not worth getting worked up over.

Akaran

I know I shouldn't but right now I'm in a fairly stressful time ofmy life and it's this kind of backwards ignorant thinking that makes me ill. *sighs*


And, much like my lunch - better out than in.

Tahl

I do think it's interesting that a person who wants to stop a video game o' violence, would then endorse killing a bunch of people irl. That's super awesome special.

__________________

Kyrsten

wait, what?

__________________
Dirge / Defiler / Guardian

Zahne

I'm not quite sure, damned ADHD didn't let me read the entire post.

__________________
Zahne - 80 Warlock
Rikko - 80 Guardian

TFGoose

I think this relates to another idea that I'll try to make briefly, which I happily refer to as "the fuckin' crackers". Bear with me.

Long story short, our society is much too engrained with the idea of assigning blame. Something bad happens, the public discovers the perpetrator played Team Fortress, and immediately the game becomes a vile fungus on the utopian skin of society, capable of turning a perfectly sane high school student into a bloodthirsty ogre with uzis for arms.

And this, my fellow gamers, is the problem. No well-adjusted individuals played Night Trap and were overcome with the urge to rape and murder scantily-clad cheerleaders who couldn't act their way out of a coffin. Anyone who DID, and then actually acted on it, was FUCKING CRACKERS. Some people just aren't wired right upstairs, and sooner or later are pretty much destined to snap. What puts them over the edge might be a game, a book, the 11 o'clock news, or the bumper sticker on some guy's car. But when it happens, and they unload 30 shells into the nearest Starbucks, the thing that gave him the idea isn't the problem.

Most people don't want to accept that because human beings almost NEED to assign blame in order to make sense of what happened. It gives us closure if we're able to say, "well obviously A caused B, and if only we could remove A we could prevent B from ever occurring again." But that thinking is way too rational, because the person who murders 8 strangers out of the blue isn't rational... he's nuts. That's it, end of story. Stop trying to figure it out. Just lock the dude up, throw away the room, and let the rest of us sane people get on with our lives.

The censorship road that is the alternative is a very slippery slope indeed.

--TFGoose

Ealthina

I think that is a recruit requirement to get into Tribes... 'least that's what I heard over channel chat.

__________________

kyros

what...the...fuck...?

Mihos

Just because we use Night Trap as our training video, doesn't mean we endorse letting Dana Plato out of her coffin.

__________________