Zeroed In
Heather Mallick has an article up on CBC entitled, rather titillatingly, Porn is in the air that we breathe. Hey, with a headline like that, how could I possibly ignore it? And I was rewarded for my keen sense of exotic editorial excavation with a fabulous picture of Madonna in a corset (circa 2004) and this gem of a quote concerning the explicitization of society:
Snoop Dogg popularized hard-core rap, daughters started demanding Bratz dolls (dressed like hookers) and glittery abbreviated stripper clothes, sons began rapping and killing prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto.
So what you’re saying is that the abject downfall of society only just started up after 2001, and didn’t even accelerate until the dastardly San Andreas edition of GTA hit the shops, being the one that features all that nasty rap music. Right? (Not to mention how Mass Effect only made any sales because everybody wanted to see the lesbian alien sex.) CBC commenter Social_Programming was on the same wavelength as me, posting this seminal work of prose:
Oh, but come on man. Some of those pros in Grand Theft Auto are just asking to get smoked. Like the other day I was on a drug run and walked past this lippy whore who started casting dispersions in my direction. Homie, I had no choice. I had to crack that trick in wig just to set the situation right. But this crazy broad don’t learn, come at me swinging like a crazed she-devil and thats when I pulled my gat and put the wench down! Crack! Crack! Crack! Two to the chest one to the dome! Girl dropped like a tone of bricks, ha, haaaa!!
Then I turned to the gathering crowd and was like, “Yeeeeeaah, thats right!!! Who wants some of this!?!?!? Step off fool!! Yall best be paying me some respect!”
It was gangsta!
It was indeed quite gangsta, my countercultural counterpart. I particularly like the reference to the Mozambique Drill (my own preferred assassination technique ever since I saw Tom Cruise use it in Collateral, although not always the most efficient move in the GTA control scheme; it’s simpler to use the auto-targeting and hold the button down until the other guy drops or the clip empties out, or sometimes both.)
Here’s what’s interesting: in an editorial concerning the ignorance of sexual detail in our modern society, guys like me and the above commenter both zeroed in on a passing reference to a video game, instinctively rising to its defense (or at least taking the time to put together something satirical as insidious reverse psychology, or possibly just to troll the author.) We don’t care about the indictment of news anchors or the reference to Abu Ghraib, but allude to any given piece of electronic entertainment and suddenly we’re up in arms.
It’s something I notice every day at GamePolitics: the second a story goes up, the local commenters there are on it like dogs on a chunk of meat, particularly if that meat is in the form of some misguided public servant. All politicians are evil, all game companies are trying to screw the consumer, and all FBI raids on mod chip manufacturers should be condemned (we just use them for homebrew, really!) It’s a black-and-white view of the world. The comparison to the us/them good/evil worlds of 99% of video games would be too easy and I would hate any other journalist who made it, but I’m in the mood for some self-loathing, so there it is. Don’t blame gamers for taking away focus from life; we’re the ones who are so focused, we can’t even be shaken from our concrete beliefs.
Tags: the media
December 14th, 2008 at 0041:12
I think it’s because most gamers seem to think that the first thing that will happen anytime
someone comments on our hobby is that it’ll get taken away and we’ll be killed. It could help a
little if they would stop treating us as savage monsters without morals and brains. Everytime I see
gamers reflected in the news, it’s after a murder or something like that, the killer just happens
to have some violent games floating around in their house, from DooM to GTA. I think these fierce
arguments could stop a little if each side would understand each other a little more
December 14th, 2008 at 0044:11
Oops, sorry about that, the browser I used showed it a little differently
December 19th, 2008 at 1146:01
It’s sad, but rather true, both sides are more likely to just jump to the extremes than even take a little bit of time to truly understand the other side and sort the facts from the fiction.
Then again it is human nature to fall back into an offensive mode when offended. Target a completely different group in a similar way as gamers have been by legislators and the news and everything else, I’d bet that they’d react in a similar way as the serious gamers. Imagine what the response would be if say, a religious book was found containing information about some wars (as object lessons about the power of the religions god/s/ess/esses in turning an unfavorable fight into victory for their side, something not at all uncommon in most world religions) and the media used this to say that the killer decided his/her faith would protect them as they killed all the unbelievers. My guess is the immediate response from the members of that religion would be similar to the responses that can be found on game politics, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar sites spring up if the lawmakers tried to get the religion declared as not a real one and thus able to be a legally forbidden faith (compare to the attempts to get video games declared as not art and therefore able to be banned under anti-obscenity laws).
This holds true regardless of what group is targeted so long as it has members that are passionate about the group, because it triggers a fight or flight response once the members feel their way of life is threatened. When the choice is to fight it, like all combative situations, becomes an us or them situation in the minds of those involved. This leads to there not even being a desire to actually understand the other side, and eventually leads to an increasing number of kneejerk responses whenever something new is posted.