Video games in this day and age

[Linxe Termoil]

This is an incident that apparently occurred early this morning in Boston.

 

I'm curious to know how many people are effected in this way when they're playing video games, whether it be on a specialized console built for that purpose, i.e., Xbox, 360, PSP, PS1 2 or 3, etcetera, or on their computers. Do you stay up all night? Have you ever heard of another incident like this, or do you know someone effected by this sleepless phenomenon?

 

What do you see in our future regarding mankind and the lack of a social outlet in our children's future regarding their inability to put down the video game controller?

 

 

Also, for those teens amongst us (or anyone else going to school) How are your grades effected??

Edited December 22, 2009 by Linxe Termoil

[Aeroplane]

Parenting fail.

 

 

Confiscate some critical bit of hardware.. a power cable or a memory card or all the controllers.

 

 

Also I couldnt answer your poll the last question didnt make sense but youre required to answer all questions.

[JensenC]

I do liek video games but only ever get obsessed with the sims, if i sit to play on the sims then i can be stuck on it for hours which is why i will only go on when i haven't got to get up the next day.

 

That is crazy what happened but yeah i enjoy playing but i play responsibly now reading is another matter, i will often get into a story and stay up even when i know i need to get up the next day.

[Tarin]

Is this a trick question? When I worked until midnight I often stayed up until 2-2:30 playing video games. Is that really bad though since I slept till 11 and then had class at noon?

 

I love video games, but I am by no means an addict. I'm usually in bed by 11, tired wins over video games...now that I work regular office hours.

Edited December 22, 2009 by Tarin

[Guest kayden]

I agree with an above post that this is a failure on the part of the parents. Can't get her son to stop? She called the FUZZ?! As much as I'm worried about the effects excessive video game play are having on the youth of America, (and elsewhere), I'm much more concerned when people are beginning to use the police - a government agency - to control, punish, or help raise their children. I can't believe the police responded to the call. What a waste of emergency services! She's a bad mother, plain and simple.

 

That being said, I have found myself playing a video game for hours and hours on end, (especially online multiplayer games like Halo, but also my favorite game Rock Band!). I think it's just like anything else in life, you just have to use it in moderation. There's a band called Porcupine Tree that wrote an entire concept album based on the idea that the youth of the world are being dumbed down by excessive video games, consumerism, anti-depressants, pornography, etc. The album was entitled "Fear of a Blank Planet" because of the songwriter's theory that the planet is becoming "blank" mentally with all this garbage and lack of moderation. Here's the title song; it's amazing:

 

 

One of the lines from the song is particularly profound: "X-Box is a god to me". Whew!

 

 

Oh, and incidentally, the music video portrays a boy playing X-Box and completely ignoring his father who is yelling at him.

 

 

[Arpeggio]

I become very addicted to many things, including video games. Now, I love GTA more than anything, and I have had sleepless nights playing games. I had many sleepless nights period. BUT, knowing my mom, if I was refusing to go to sleep, she would simply: TAKE THE CONSOLE AWAY.

 

Calling the police seemed weird on her part. ;p

[Skyline]

Parenting fail.

 

This.

 

I used to be like mega addicted to halo. Played it competetively/Semi-professionally for a year or so. Uhh my grades didnt slip much, because my mom kept me in check lol.

[NightOwl88]

Am i the only one here who has a little trouble believing this story? I mean if you called the cops in my town over a kid playing too long on his video game you'd get your ass laughed at A LOT.

 

I agree with Arpegio the sollution is simple, take the game consol away. My mom would have come in, drug me away from the tv, unhooked the console and most likely tossed it into the trash can.

[JamesSavik]

Smash the gaming console or sell it on e-bay.

 

If the little shit can't follow the rules, he doesn't need to have it.

 

There was a shit-for-brains rich redneck kid at my high school whose parents sold his truck. He would leave and stay gone all night, get drunk and in trouble.

 

When he didn't pay his tickets and couldn't afford his insurance, his parents sold the truck.

 

 

Am i the only one here who has a little trouble believing this story? I mean if you called the cops in my town over a kid playing too long on his video game you'd get your ass laughed at A LOT.

 

Agreed. I laughed at her. A lot.

[Guest kayden]

Am i the only one here who has a little trouble believing this story? I mean if you called the cops in my town over a kid playing too long on his video game you'd get your ass laughed at A LOT.

 

The ONLY reason I believe that there is a mother somewhere who would do something this stupid, and cops somewhere where they would ACTUALLY respond to this call, is that my own stepmother has actually sicked the police on me before...AND they complied.

[TetRefine]

I used to play video games a a decent amount, but now it just bores the hell out of me. I bought Modern Warfare 2 when it came out and played it a grand total of 4 hours over the course of a week. I havent used my 360 since!

[Imaruol]

I have to agree on the eminent bad parenting skills of the parent. But most of you failed to notice the noob skills of the son. Every criminal gamer knows that when you encounter mom-agro you pause game, pretend to have turned it off, and look them straight in the eye and say: "Yes Mum!" Then like a good scout you waitout for the agro to fall asleep and unpause. A skillfull master would tuck-in mom-agro themselves before returning to the game, but these are Jedi skills that can only be earned when you are in your 30ish years, divorced and living at home, deafeated by the most evil villain of all, spouse-agro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest kayden]

I bought Modern Warfare 2 when it came out and played it a grand total of 4 hours over the course of a week. I havent used my 360 since!

 

Send that orphaned, under-used console and game to a family who will appreciate it more! Send it my way!

 

 

 

I have to agree on the eminent bad parenting skills of the parent. But most of you failed to notice the noob skills of the son. Every criminal gamer knows that when you encounter mom-agro you pause game, pretend to have turned it off, and look them straight in the eye and say: "Yes Mum!" Then like a good scout you waitout for the agro to fall asleep and unpause. A skillfull master would tuck-in mom-agro themselves before returning to the game, but these are Jedi skills that can only be earned when you are in your 30ish years, divorced and living at home, deafeated by the most evil villain of all, spouse-agro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, but see, this boy obviously didn't need to hide the fact. (Well, maybe from now on he will...) But obviously if it got to this point, the boy basically had total control and didn't need to do ANYthing his mom (mum) told him. Plus, if he was playing online, you CANNOT pause or leave until you're done no matter WHAT! (Believe me, I know...)

[W_L]

It's a true story, but let me explain, it was in Roxbury Mass, on the wrong side of the literal tracks (I'm not joking, we have a subway line dividing the rich half of Roxbury and the poor half of Roxbury, you can even smell the difference).

 

Stranger things have happened.

 

Boston beyond all the media praise of liberalism is quite divided into our own weird molds in cultural landscape. Some consider this a victory ground of the culture wars for the liberal agenda, but look closer and you will see the reality that Boston is a fragmented city like any other. We have regular people working 9-5 jobs, who get irritated and are unhappy like anywhere else.

 

The woman was a mother of four and a Veterans Affairs Centers' Cafetaria cashier, who was over worked and under appreciated. She snapped simple as that. She couldn't control herself and the police along with the 911 operator must have sensed distress.

 

The original article from the Boston Herald

 

By the way, there are two primary newspapers in Boston, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, the Globe is much more left leaning and the Herald is a little closer to center with democratic endorsement for state and federal offices along with Republican endorsements.

 

For those non-Bostonians understand everyone loses it after a while, whether you lose it in public or private is impossible to guess

[Guest kayden]

We have regular people working 9-5 jobs, who get irritated and are unhappy like anywhere else.

 

And if this had happened anywhere else, I would've said the same thing.

 

The woman was a mother of four and a Veterans Affairs Centers' Cafetaria cashier, who was over worked and under appreciated. She snapped simple as that. She couldn't control herself and the police along with the 911 operator must have sensed distress.

 

Nobody put a gun to her head and told her to have four children. I'm sorry [no I'm not] but this doesn't change the fact that she was a bad mother. You seem to be defending her, and your sympathy is touching, but I'm not going to kick back and say she is any less of a bad parent for all this. As a veteran, I appreciate what she does for my fellow veterans, and I sympathize with the fact that the VA never hires enough people to handle the immense workload they have on their hands, but she was either a bad mother for having four kids in the first place, (and I definitely think she was unless she adopted all of them), or she's a bad mother for not handling the situation better. Hello! Grow some balls and smash the damn X-Box to pieces! Don't call the FUZZ!!! Geez! "Over-worked and under-appreciated" are not excuses to call the po-po's when your kids aren't listening. Video games without moderation are a menace, but it's hardly an emergency situation. I'm aware there are always two sides to a story, and I'm not devoid of sympathy for her situation, but it's still no excuse. And it's like I said earlier, as terrifying a prospect it is that video games can be such a detriment to our youth and society, it's even more terrifying when parents are turning to government officials to control their children. They "sensed distress"? The police are LAW ENFORCEMENT, not counsellors, not peacekeepers. There may be an agency with the official capacity to handle situations like this, (although I think Child Services has far too much power), but the police are not it.

 

A quote from the mother, from the article you linked, "I called (police) because if you don’t respect your mother, what are you going to do in your life?"

 

And next door a woman was being raped but couldn't get through to 911 because this "frazzled" mother wasn't getting the respect she "deserved". (A melodramatic example, I know, but I mean, c'mon, this woman is clueless.)

[TetRefine]

Send that orphaned, under-used console and game to a family who will appreciate it more! Send it my way!

 

 

If your willing to fly to the East Coast, you can have it!

[W_L]

In a town where crime is rampant and kids as young as 12 are packing more firepower than the average cop; it's a judgment call to go out and check up domestic disturbances.

 

@Kayden, it's not the fault of either the police officer or the dispatcher; they most likely made a judgment call based on some garbled information from an emotionally distressed women.

 

Was the mother right to call the cops? No, but it was understandable why she did it. It doesn't exonerate her, but it at least shows she cared on some level.

 

I also stated what neighborhood they were in to make a point about Boston and other cities, area like Roxbury are prone to focal points of law enforcement, so it sometimes comes to judgment. If a mother were to say, I think my son is playing with an m16 and he has made a list of classmate that he hates, then we would be hearing a different story on the news, "School Shoorting avoided due to police intervention".

 

I know that might be dramatic, but stories like those are mentioned so infrequently that people forget what type about it. Police officers and their dispatchers only have words to base things on, so they must rely on their gut. Kayden, if you ever decide to be a cop, remember to have good intuitive assessments.

 

My bet was the police got a garbled call from the mother and they made a judgment call.

 

As for the 4 kids, I don't know her situation, neither do you. I was raised in a single parent family too with my sister after my mom left with her future second husband. It is not as neat as you may think. Our familial links are someimtes binded merely on paper and not in reality.

 

The American family is anything, but nuclear and functional. It has been this way for generations. Part of it can be centered on the indivualism that we all carry, which has made the United States such a powerful economic and military force on the globe, but has left our social structure impotent and our systems in tatters. When people think of themselves first, everything else comes into a different focus.

 

As for the video games,

 

I play GTA, Hitman, Assassin's Creed, and any game with killing and blood without end. I enjoy the nuance of the games and the intensity of making a clean kill. Maybe I am a Dexter-esque sociopath, who uses the game as an outle for my innate desires. Or I can just be one of those millions of gamers that seek to enjoy the challenge of a game and the spectacular effects of a granade.

[Guest kayden]

In a town where crime is rampant and kids as young as 12 are packing more firepower than the average cop; it's a judgment call to go out and check up domestic disturbances.

 

This is much less the cops' fault than the woman's; though if I had been the cops responding I would've fined her for misuse of emergency services, (I'm pretty sure there is a legitimate way to take legal action in the form of a fine of some sort for such a thing, not entirely sure, though.)

 

@Kayden, it's not the fault of either the police officer or the dispatcher; they most likely made a judgment call based on some garbled information from an emotionally distressed women.

 

Oh I just repeated what you said.

[W_L]

My thinking is the cops responded as they thought was best, it was an intuitive guess from the police..

 

The mother wasn't in the right, but it was probably her first offense. Contextually, this story is more sensationalism than average.

 

As for the single parent issue, anything could have happened to the husband from divorce to being killed on the battlefield (Veterans benefits for widows are not what they used to be, especially if the guy was a military contractor versus an enlisted man.)

 

Rough neighborhood + overworked mom + a little verbal conflict = sensational news story. In this country, we have stories like this all over, where is the anger from wealthy parents having people kidnap their kids to "boot camps" in violation of their constitutional rights? Where is the anger from parents, when they vote each time to reduce their child's educational prospect during PTA meetings?

 

The America we live in is irrational and built like an old lemon, not enough structure to support nor enough understanding on all fronts.

[Guest kayden]

 

As for the single parent issue, anything could have happened to the husband from divorce to being killed on the battlefield (Veterans benefits for widows are not what they used to be, especially if the guy was a military contractor versus an enlisted man.)

Do you mean a "civilian" contractor for the military?