It's a little difficult to tell where the line between hyperbole and seriousness is, but in this piece on The Orange County Register, Marla Jo Fisher begins her story declaring, "I truly believe that video games were created by Satan to turn otherwise normal children into his drooling, glassy-eyed stooges."
Describing herself as the "Frumpy Middleaged Mom" Mademoiselle Fisher proudly declares that her home is the only one on the block that has no video games. And no piece of anti-video game fear propaganda is complete without mention of everyone's favourite piece of hyperbole, Grand Theft Auto:
My kids do play games, outdoors in the fresh air, where they're building their muscles and hopefully a lifetime habit of fitness.
What are the kids who play "Grand Theft Auto" learning? How to be carjackers? How to be pursued by police?
Those are skills I really want my children to acquire.
As a young gay adult with little to no predisposition towards having children of my own, I really wish more parents would do their jobs rather than legislate morality on the rest of the world. Grand Theft Auto is rated M, for mature, meaning that no child under the age of 17 should be playing it in the first place. The ESRB was instituted to do the business of rating games so that parents could responsibly check what content is inside titles their children want to buy and purchase or avoid them responsibly. Children should not be playing video games rated for adults. This is, to me, a pretty simple concept, but somehow instead of parents actually… you know, parenting… they would rather pitch fits and try and stamp out the existence of something all together instead of monitoring what their children do. There's no sense of personal responsibility anymore and I, for one, am increasingly aggravated being made to parent the children of strangers because they won't do it themselves.
My own proselytizing aside, Frumpy Middleaged Mom wrote a followup article in response to Internet Criticism reaffirming her position. Games aren't created by Satan, they're the work of Voldemort. Oh brother.
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