“Kids spend as much time gaming as learning.”

Saw the Early Show segment about video game addiction in tutorial today. I had never seen anything quite like it. I decided I might focus on it for my final blog post, picking out everything that makes it the visual-audio equivalent to getting a nail shoved in your head infected with pure ignorance and dumbfuckery.

Okay so like

1. The American Academy of Paediatrics says 92 percent of 5-18 year play video games oh my god what could it mean. No literally what does this mean. What does playing video games encompass. Like. They played a game? My question is how did they manage to get this survey to the underground sewage people who’ve never touched a game in their lives. The same problem exists with 10 percent being addicted. This means nothing without an idea of what addicted means. Oh wait we at least have the symptoms!

2. We hear that gaming addiction (whatever this is) can lead to depression, social phobia, poor grades, childhood obesity and (“get this you guys”) even dementia! Because no evidence exists for video games being directly responsible for such issues, we can’t give you any facts proving how this is the case, but be sure that no matter how good your children’s health is in any or all areas, if he or she plays too much Mario they will become subject to all of these problems! Your ten year old getting dementia will only be the start of their troubles. I am saying all of these sarcastic things but this is legitimately synonymous for what these people are basically saying.

3. “21 hours is the sweet spot, like, stick to 20 hours and your children will basically become doctors but 22 hours and you got it, dementia.”

4. Apparently, early warning signs that your child may be addicted to video games include declining school performance, a lack of self-care and even a loss of interest in hobbies, you know, real hobbies like reading, shopping and going to the mall! Things like loitering which were disdained by people years back, and things like reading novels which even more years was also looked upon similarly. You know, normal kid things. Okay next up social withdrawal because you know we don’t live in an age of communal gaming or anything, and children lying about/hiding their playing because games are methamphetamine. Bet you didn’t know that!

5. As Mr. Conservative Blue Suit Dick Whistle points out, when he was young he would go out and do things, like, actual real things with his time like baseball, basketball, anti-gay marriage protests and all the things that make a real, normal young man. These kids nowadays however are consumed – nay – “brainwashed” by these games to the point where they’re playing an excess of two hours a day! Presenting radical claims about things you don’t understand and have no evidence for to television viewers is definitely not brainwashing, but the kids are in trouble with these games. Somebody think of the children?

6. Why does the montage about taking kid’s consoles out of their bedrooms feature a clip of a full grown man with a beard playing games in the store?

7. “Come on Janey we’re gonna go play some Grand Theft Auto together.” Fuck you.

There is more that makes this as vomit-inducing as it is. But the thing that bugs me most about this video is not that it attacks me or what I do (I generally don’t play games!); it’s that it embodies and reinforces a kind of ignorance towards video games that died out for most – even conservative white parents – quite a long time ago. It is the most uninformed, gross thing ever. It is the witch hunt. There is something that poses an imagined threat, but as imagined as this is it is imposed by one of the more recent, popular technologies, and as history has taught us people don’t need evidence to make illogical claims about how harmful that kind of thing is. The same conservative parents who will not allow their kids to play video games for more than two hours a day and believe in stuff like this for reasons (???) like these are the same people who watch five hours of television a day, but that’s an old enough technology for this to be okay. We know this is a recurring trend with technology and conservatism, but whereas some of us begin to learn from it (basically the simple act of not being offended by the mere existence of new things and trends, and not believing all the baseless claims that they are harmful), some of us just… don’t. In conclusion, let’s not be those guys. Good luck with the exams everyone!