Justin, read the column again. It says the opposite of what you apparently think it says.
consider me corrected. Thank you. Just wasn’t all too clear that was the point he was trying to make.
You’re welcome. The Master’s love of sarcasm, indirection, and caricature can often lead the unwary astray.
No–I think he was (flippantly and offhandedly and gently) attacking Obama.
No, it doesn’t. Which is quite an accomplishment since you wrote it.
[QUOTE=Cecil]
The common view from President Obama on down is that video games rot your mind, sap your strength, and probably give you acne and bad breath.
[/QUOTE]
For the third time, that is not the common view of video games in the US in the year 2012. You can claim this is sarcasm all you want, that is not the way it’s written in the article.
All of these have way more to do with the mental state of the people involved than the video games they may have been playing at the time.
Or, to put it in a way a Boomer can understand… Can we claim that The Catcher In the Rye has some sort of voodoo powers because Mark David Chapman started reading it after shooting John Lennon? Most people would say that’s crazy talk and wouldn’t include it in an article about Mark David Chapman except as a footnote. So why is that laundry list of mental illness somehow proof that video games “[haven’t] been 100 percent beneficial”?
Yes, the rest of the article from that point on is pretty good. But the beginning is poorly written and has an opposite tone of what you’re going for.
Whatever you say, Justin.
The Federal Election Commission said that if we were going to take shots at Republicans (see answer graf #5), we had to do the same with the Democrats, or anyway one Democrat, in the interest of fairness and balance. So really we had no choice.
It would be crazy talk, since he was reading it obsessively before he shot Lennon, and had a copy on him at the scene.
That’s exactly what I mean. Do you blame the book for John Lennon’s death or do you recognize that Chapman was nuts? Most people take the latter, this article from “Cecil” acts like the former towards games and gamers for the first few paragraphs.
Ooh, thanks for bringing this up. In the collector’s edition of this column we are definitely going to cite Catcher in the Rye as proof that books are bad.
Don’t forget to mention that novels caused kids to super-masturbate back in the 1800s!
The point of the post was pedantic. You said “…started reading it after shooting…”. You meant “…read it obsessively before shooting…”. I don’t think you are reading or writing carefully.
What, Tipper Gore wasn’t available?
Tipper Gore is not running for President.
After shooting Lennon, Chapman sat down and began reading the book. I knew exactly what I was writing.
[the same is or was thought to be true of TV, pop music, cars, and yes, books.]
Books? Cecil, I believe you, but I gotta know - where’s the documentation/references regarding those opposed to books?
Not only Cecil but Google is your friend.
http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2010/07/22/6769/video-games-for-kids-with-diabetes/
Just call me “Cecil.”
What an excellent and salient point in response to my totally serious critique!
Video games may be good or bad mentally, but it sure is annoying when we visit my wife’s sister, and her teenage son (my wife’s nephew) spends the entire time we visit glued to the video screen playing games, and barely acknowledges our presence.
In terms of family sociability, it’s pretty depressing.