refkins said: The best thing is not only is it good for Tokyo Ghoul cosplay, but you can also use it to be one of the gimps in the sex castle during the Free! credits.
yyEEESSS HAHAHA YES those dancing pool gimps YASSSS
One of my students had a bad day and was getting in a lot of trouble.
We had lunch together and he told me he was interested in Comicon. I told him he should go to PAX and we got my friend on the phone to tell him about PAX.
His mood is literally so good right now that he is actively participating in the new math material and the teacher commented on how good he is.
refkins replied to your post:So we bought some honeycomb at the store the other...
I really want to like honeycomb ‘cause in my head it should be this delicious crunchy honey goodness, but then it’s vaguely mushy and super waxy and after two mins of honey suckling, i spend the rest of the day getting wax out of my face.
I don't even like honey very much, so I don't know why I thought I would enjoy it.
refkins replied to your post:Yo, Attack on Titan/SNK fandom. I just finished...
REMIND ME. Because I’m over in scanlations of Ch. 53 so I have totally lost track of what happens in which bit. Is it the ape titan? I bet it’s the ape titan.
[Please note that this is my personal opinion. None of this is supported by data (unless I mention data). This opinion does not reflect my employer, City Year's, opinion, nor is it the opinion of Americorps or the BPS.]
I like video games. I'm a huge advocate for any type of technology and I believe that as long as young children learn healthy habits early on (Internet safety, right and wrong in games), they can do more good than harm. But it's important that parents pay attention to the video game world. Video games won't teach a child morals...and parents should definitely be noticing that the rated M games aren't something a ten year old should be playing.
I work in the fifth grade. All my students play rated M games. They all either own or have played GTA 5. They play violent zombie games. Most of my students realize that these games are violent, but that they're just pretend. They know the difference between right and wrong. They know that there are some sexual parts to these games, but they really don't care about that. They think they're fun and oftentimes they play with an older sibling, so it's a bonding thing.
However, I have noticed the negative effects of playing these games. One student, in particular, is an English Language Learner whose mom speaks no English. The student plays these shooting games all the time. He is constantly exposed to the violence of the games. He pretends to have a gun while in school. He makes machine gun noises. He reads like a kindergartner but he can recite all the guns off the top of his head. To top it off, he loses focus easily and he often struggles with following directions. He gets excited about violence and talking about how guns kill people. His mom, who we've seen cares a lot about his education, speaks no English. Nothing. So she has no idea that in her own home, he's being exposed to constant violence. She only knows that he likes the games, and that other kids play them. (To note, a teammate of mine who speaks Spanish did mention the details of those games to her. I do not know if that has helped at all.)
These games make them aggressive. They are prone to fighting each other, calling out threats, swearing, making gun hands. They are constantly exposed to this violence and you can't say there's nothing related when they bring the behavior to school. Studies have said that constant screen exposure can make kids lose focus. I'm not supporting this data because I see them in class, frustrated with trying to learn a second language and learn math, and I don't blame them for being unfocused. But a screen as their only outlet probably doesn't help their attention span.
I've seen the effect of these games on students and they have varying results. Some kids just think it's fun or that they like playing with older siblings. One of my students plays GTA and likes the cars; he told me he'd like to be a mechanic. These are all positive benefits.
It should be the parents' responsibility to decide what the child can play and then talk to the child about what they're seeing. That's what I firmly believed, before I worked at an urban school with bilingual students. And it's really shocking how many parents care about their children, but just don't know what their child is seeing. Lots of them don't speak English, and buy them for their child because the child wants it (mostly from hearing about it on TV or from peers). A child might play with an older sibling, or a relative, and the parent misses knowing about it. A lot of times, these kids come home to empty houses, and play them without the parents seeing the actual content. Or they go to each others' houses. There's a variety of things that make it easy for these games to slip through the parents' sight.
In this case, there's still a lot of issues with society's view on games and the advertising of them. Games are still perceived as for children. That means an unsuspecting parent can walk into a Game Stop and think that everything is for their kid. Game stores should make it clear that these are not for children. Make a goddamn sign. Arrange the store by rating. You don't put children and adult sweaters together in a store just because they're both sweaters. That's confusing, and it's harder for someone who knows nothing about video games.
And advertising. To the video game companies: Stop fucking advertising on kids' TV channels. I've definitely seen that before. Stop showing the children the games they can't have. Also, how about some real, truthful advertising? Instead of GTA just showing a nice car and an under-dressed woman, why not show a character getting shot in the head? Don't worry. Your target audience will still buy it. Unless you're scared it will lower the sales to kids.
Oh. And Spanish. For the love of God, if I can buy a bookcase and get the directions in four languages, why can't I get rating warnings in Spanish? I don't think that'd be too hard to do, and it would really help these parents who only want the best thing for their kids, but are hindered by a language barrier. I wouldn't be surprised if you had never thought of that as an issue, but here it is. Help the parents. They're working really hard as it is.
That's it. To be clear: I think the benefits of video games can outweigh the bad, even ones rated for mature audiences. My kids learn from them. They like them. However, I've also seen the effects of them on parents who cannot control their child's viewing, and the effects are negative, to say the least. There needs to be a shift in the video game world, to help parents learn what video games really contain. And I think that's something the video game world could have some control over.
