I'm 28 years old. I have a PhD. Two masters degrees. [View All]

[Kraklen]

I play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

I paid Rockstar Games fifty of my hard earned dollars and in return I got hours and hours of high quality entertainment. What Rockstar does with my fifty dollars is up to them; but I'd like them to spend it on things like covering the costs of production, R&D for new and improved games, and paying their talented and highly skilled employees who can then go on and buy the things that they find entertaining.

What I didn't pay them fifty dollars for was so that they could spend it on millions of dollars of attorney's fees that they need to pay because they're being harassed by some seedy congressperson who cares more about his or her reelection than the Constitution of the United States. This is censorship, that's all it is, and I sure wish the fence sitters would recognize that.

I know, "it's about protecting the children, won't somebody please think of the children." Yeah, yeah. Bullshit. I don't believe it. Not for a second do I believe it. It's the same old line that the Harry Potter burners are claiming. It's not about kids, it's about the irrational fear that somebody somewhere may be having fun. Put a sock in it, Cotton Mather.

If it is about the kids, just for the sake of argument, put them up for adoption. You must be horrible parents. If you're raising your kid with the TV as a baby sitter, and you suddenly find one day that you're kid has been running over cops instead of counting with big bird, it's your own damn fault. Maybe your teenager is taking his allowance and going down to the mall and lying about his age and buying a copy of an M-rated video game behind your back. It's still your fault. First, you've raised you kid to be a sneaky lying bastard, I didn't do that. Second, it's your responsibility to be checking behind your kid's back. Not mine.

But I really don't think that's the problem.

And stop telling other parents how to raise their kid. "Oh, I here that Johnny Smith's parents let him play that Grand Auto game, they must be horrible parents." You know what? I don't go around telling people how to raise their kids. God knows I could. I could say, "can you believe their raising their little Suzy in a home where censorship and ignorance is considered morally acceptable, I'm worried that my kids are going to grow up in a world where their kids were raised that way." But I'm not going to say that.

Oh, and one last thing. Cut the phony elitism. You know what I mean, "video games are mindless, useless, blah, blah, blah." You're not even an elitist, stop trying to be one. I am the elite. I know elite when I see it, Helen Lovejoy, and you ain't it. If the last time you played a video game it was Asteroids and 1982, stop pretending you know anything about anything. You're just embarrassing yourself.

So can we please leave the book burning to the fascists?

And that's all I got to say about that.