GTA IV/CONSERVATIVE KIDS

Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
Gen, 11, 7

Oh, my God! Or OMG as they say. What's the fuzz about GTA4 again? That it's a violent video game? Fuck, didn't we have discussions when GTA1, 2, 3 and when ALL the damn games in between came as well!?

Well, it's a violent video game... And that's it... Now move on. Parents are gonna buy it for their kids, but some parents also lock their kids up in their cellar for 24 years, rape them, and threaten to gas them if they squeal.

Some parents give their kids drugs. Some don't give their kids anything. Fuck, I even saw one of those white-trash moms on the bus here the other day with a pram - in it sat a fat little baby eating lollipops and shit. The kid was probably one year old and had rotten teeth before they've even grown out.

So should we ban fucking lollipops!? No. Parents buying GTA4 for their 8 year olds is not a reason to ban the game. That doesn't even make sense. Parents are retards, like most people. Get used to it.

And so fucking what if they buy it to their kids anyway!? There's no established link between violent games/movies/music and actual violence and aggression. Whatsoever. None. NO LINK. Researchers and fucking professors in behavioral psychology and all kinds of nerds have been trying to prove this a thousand times. They can't.

I used to work as a media teacher at a high school. Every now and then I tried to pick the students' brain a little bit and make them think just a tiny little bit. So one day, while doing a course on censorship in media, I asked them what they thought about porn on TV all day, violence in movies etc. etc. I tried to make them think about where the buck should stop.

They were ultra-conservatives. They seemed to think that people couldn't think for themselves at all. I tried to tell them that, if I wanted to, shouldn't I be allowed to watch porn/violence/play violent computer games etc. as long as it doesn't hurt anyone?

They hadn't really thought about it that way. They're so used to having a government choosing what they can watch/play and not that they had lost faith in grown ups' right to choose for themselves and their children.

Quite scary, if you ask me. Kids nowadays expect the government to screen everything, ban shit, tell you what to do.

They think that everyone is dumber and more easily affected by violence than themselves. You know, oh, I'm not really affected by video games, but it should still be a rating on them.

I asked them whether that's not pretty damn condescending, to think that everyone is more stupid than you are. I don't know if they agreed... I thought young people were supposed to be all radical but the ones I taught were fucking conservatives. I suppose that's what living in the world's wealthiest social democracy does to you.