Discourse28: Idle Australia II: Dissafection

[Trollax]

Discourse 28: Idle Australia II
OR
The end of the Dreamtime

"Rainbow six Made me SAS!"
Nine-Buddhas McGee

"Dad always said the government should hire philosophers"
Jostein Gaarder ~ The Solitaire Mystery

In recent News, just 60% of adolescents who turned 18 before the last state election in Queensland enrolled to vote, reasons given by non-voters ranged across a very thin slice of the spectrum and centered around one issue: "my vote doesn't matter." Obviously, the debacle in Florida and the three-year shit-storm that has followed didn't filter down to these assclowns. So much for generation: X I've got a name for it... Generation: Meh. A buch of disaffected, lazy-assed halfwits with no interest in anything other than breathing... the children of instant gratification and the ontological masturbation of misinformed thought and shooting off at the mouth. If it can't be done in under three minutes forget about it. Microwave my steak, put my pop tarts in the toaster and shake
n' bake my pancakes. It makes me sick to think that the moniker of "land of the long-weekend" has come to mean "land of the disinterested prat"
What is it with these people? What the hell is so meaningful about photgraphs of fake blood on hands holding knives? Does your entire world revolve around a bunch of feelings half-felt? An empty-headed reaction to someone else's knee-jerk response? An endless parade of the same old crap with different names and places accross your TV screens? Open the blinds you thuddite, less I steal Eris' bitchslap and appropriately missappropriate its use!

In other news, the Australian Film and video securities office is moving to ban Hitman Contracts because it "teaches people to become contract killers" Yep. After an entire weekend of playing Morrowind nonstop I am now a high-wizard and am going to summon an army of Daedroth on your ass! After two years of playing Crimson Skies I can fly a sopwith camel up Errol Flynn's arsehole!
Does anyone remember when we used to make fun of Geeks who would assume intimate knowledge of military tactics after playing rainbow six? Or that they were now fully able to kick anyone's ass after finishing Mortal Kombat with a perfect record? But suddenly government officials say the same things and it's accepted as truth by the thuddite masses. Then on the same topic some fundamentalist nutbar wants the power to ban offensive T-shirts from sale and manufacture in the same manner that TV and radio stations are policed...
To that I will say this, A TV station broadcasts content en-masse to a wide audience that has free access to it and the content it provides. it covers a wide cross-section of the community, one much larger than the audience reached by a single T-shirt. Channel nine is accessible to the entire country, T-shirts saying: "fuck the world" are a lot harder to come by.

As far as it comes to censorship and control it comes back to this (for me at least; and I pray like all buggery that I'm not the only one): Ultimately it's not society's job to keep you sheltered and isolated from everything you don't like... If censorship organisations are worried about children having acess to adult materials, then maybe they should be less-worried about what age people can purchase things and more concerned with why they're getting them in the first place.

They're all symptoms of the same disease. It's who you are on the inside the counts, in a bigger fashion than some positive thinking statement. I don't care what you say, a person who is right in the head is not going to take to the family pet with an axe to check the bloodspletter of their latest videogame against reality. What we're afraid of though is that it might not be true... that perfectly sane and reasonable people could be led into commiting acts of violence by cinema and PC. That we might not be the full quid and only find out about it when we come to underneath the rosebushes burying the pieces of our spouse and the pizza guy.

In our society, people who are mentally unstable and unable to function normally as there are common or unknown stimulii which provoke actions which make them a danger to themselves and/or others are institutionalised. If you are seriously worried that you might be unable to contain your violent impulses after playing the latest First-Person Shooter, then go and check yourself into a mental hospital. And if you're worried about the behaviour it might encourage in your kids, then prevent them from playing it. Do what I did as a child of 10 in the cinema seeing Jurassic park... Walk out and be done with it.

That said... do Real-time Strategies encourage Megalomania?          

[Guido Finucci]

That said... do Real-time Strategies encourage Megalomania?

No, for the simple fact that they tend to be tactical rather than strategic.

[sakredchao]

i finished the first zelda without dieing in under 3 hours..  i'll use my triforce on those heathen bureaucrats.

kim