Slashdot Mirror
Dirty Dozen- The Most Dangerous Toys of 2001
An anonymous reader pointed us to The Dirty Dozen
which lists the most dangerous toys for children. #1 on the list is Metal Gear Solid 2 (which I finished this weekend and highly recommend)
Also making the cut are Gundam and Dragonball Zaction figures (nothing scarier then Bulma on a bad hair day I guess), Super Street Fighter II and Doom. Of course the specific version of doom they classify as one of the most dangerous toys of 2001 is the Game Boy Advanced port, and I gotta agree with them on the GBA thing, those things are dangerous. Play for more then 30 minutes, and you go blind.
I spent a lot of my time playing FPS style games, but I was 17 years old + (today I'm 29) and I was mature enough to realize that it's a game, and that there's nothing fun about violence except when it's in a movie or in a video game.
I would NOT let a 10 year-old play Quake 3 or Half-Life. Just like I wouldn't let the same kid watch a porno movie or a gory horror film.
I feel it desensitizes a child too much. So I have to say I agree.
Seriously, this is just another Frontpage 4.0 built site from a mother who saw too much violence in her kid's toys and decided to put together a small site with her opinions on what toys are bad influences on young minds.
Wasn't that the beauty of the Internet? To give each and every person a place to express their opinions and ideas, regardless of just how silly it is?
If we're worried about toys that promote violence, I wonder why there's no mention of those Topps trading cards featuring all the big names in Operation Enduring Freedom and all the different weaponry at work, etc.
I guess Doom's mistake was that it promotes the killing of aliens instead of Afghans.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Heh.. People are amusing these days.. My son loves DBZ, I love it, my mom loves it. It's not as realistically violent as Looney Tunes. I mean, so Goku shoots out some sort of flaming orb. Tom and Jerry chase each other with knives (something children have seen with their own eyes) yet Tom and Jerry is acceptable because it's a "classic" ? It's bullshit. Years ago people played with GI Joes. DBZ action figures are harmless. If my son wants to pretend to shoot some spirit bomb on me, that's fine. It's better than him chasing me down with a steak knife.
It's the same bullshit we're more accustomed to reading from Jamie and Michael -- whenever a government or organization takes action, they piously declare that aprents should take responsibility for their children. And then it's a fundamental assault on freedom when parents decide to parent instead of following the prescribed "Your Rights Online" way of life.
I've managed to learn not to flame most of the hypocrisy here ("A new patch for a Windows bug -- the closed source development model is so buggy! A new Linux kernel patch -- look how quickly the open-source model finds and fixes bugs!") but I find this one so offensive it pushes my buttons every time.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
But, as a parent, I think I can tell which toys are too explicitly (or even suggestively) violent for my child. And even if I didn't know anything about software and video games, they now have a ratings system that tells me which age group for which they are most appropriate.
I think the thing that disturbs me most about this is not that some people would compile a list like this - people are free to state their opinions about toys and games all they want - it's that parents would rely so heavily on these types of lists to make their decisions for them. To me, it's just further evidence of a parent's wish to simply not be bothered or involved.
If you really want to have some influence on what your kids are getting into, then for the love of all things good, GET INVOLVED. Use some common sense! Do you want your kids considering guns as toys? No? Then don't buy them gun-wielding toys. It's a pretty simple concept. Don't want your kids to get the idea in their head that head-to-head combat is Good Thing[tm]? Then don't buy them fighting games. It's all very, very common-sensical. There are lots of toys from which to choose. Pick the ones with which you feel most comfortable.
My sigs always suck.
Dumb Slashdot editors:
./--they post stuff that they have no CLUE about.
./ pile on began, completely tearing this guy apart. Turns out the guy is in charge of basically the physical plant security there--he has nothing to do with software. I email Chris Dibona about this, he even replied that he knew that, but decided to leave it out of the article.
1 - The MGS2 thing is about the action figures, not the game.
2 - They don't rank the toys, so saying "#1 on the list..." doesn't mean what it's the worst.
3 - Nowhere on the page does it say "Most Dangerous Toys"
In fact, if you go to the front page of the web site, it states:
The mission of The Lion & Lamb Project is to stop the marketing of violence to children. We do this by helping parents, industry and government officials recognize that violence is not child?s play ? and by galvanizing concerned adults to take action
I don't think that is too bad of a thing. They are complaining that the MGS2 toy is marketed to children 5 and up, while the game is definitely a more mature title. Just another example of the complete morons who run
As another example, there was an article a week back or so about a security guy from MS being hired by the White House. Of course, the
Okay, I'm done ranting.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
The site says these are "Toys to Avoid" and says nothing about "Dangerous Toys". The PRIVATE ORGANIZTION'S agenda is to stop promoting violence to children, and this list is in line with that aim.
I didn't see "Most Dangerous Toys" anywhere.
This story sucks.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
While I agree on isolating children from reality being a bad thing, testing cosmetics on animals is not something that should be taken lightly. On farms, animals are given a fairly good life and then killed almost instantly by having their head decapitated in a single, strong blow before their corpses are slaughtered. Farmers intentionally make sure that the animal feels no pain and does not suffer. Cosmetic testing burns, maims, and tortures an animal before it kills it. Not only are animals' flesh burned by ridiculous amounts of acidic chemicals, but the people in the testing facilities will also slash an animal repeatedly and pour similar chemicals in the wound, as well as drowning other animals in the chemicals and reusing animals that survive tests over and over until they die. In fact, these people pretty much torture the animals in every way you can think of. Pouring acidic chemicals in their eyes, in their wounds, on furred skin, on exposed skin, on skin that's been worn with razors... it's just ridiculous, especially when many other facilities just do the same tastes on cell cultures that have no ability to process pain.
PETA sucks... but they have a point here.
for things that "may" or "may not" be bad for a child's psychi, maybe these parents should spend that time WITH their children...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Jeez --- a private site, simply listing toys that concerned parents might want to avoid this Christmas. That's all, folks!
Even worse is the crap quality of the negative responses. "If your children are jerks it's your fault, not the toys", "You should spend more time parenting and less time on this website." Unbelievable. Has it occurred to any of you that taking the time to choose toys for your children --- instead of buying whatever crap is marketed to them --- is actually evidence of being a good parent?
But, of course, /. hypocrites know no reason. It's techno-libertarian free internet for me, but get your site off my internet for thou. I'm sure if the story had been "Open Source Community Develops User-Driven Database of Toy Ratings" you'd all be creaming yourselves about the power of Open Source.
Now before you start complaining "But they didn't mean that kind of dangerous," I know what they meant. They meant "violent and potentially psychologically damaging to innocent young children." Now, if this is what parents are most concerned about these days, then either the world is a whole lot safer now than it was a few years ago, or those parents are unfit to raise a child. I'm sure there are many other toys out there that could physically hurt a child (if there aren't, I propose creating a small metal baseball bat and calling it the "Big Brother Basher"), and those are the toys I would consider "dangerous." If you don't want your kids exposed to violence and need someone to tell you that stuff with guns is violent, perhaps it isn't the toys that present the most danger to your kids.
Moving on to the humor side:
A series of plastic action figures based on the violent anime cartoon program Dragon Ball Z.
There's violence in that show? I admit that I don't follow the show, but I've flipped through it several times (some in an attempt to understand the appeal), and the characters are always either standing around talking, flying, staring at each other, or all blurred in scenes that resemble bizarre mating rituals. If anything, I'd be worried about kids being exposed to too much stupidity from that show, not to mention the promotional material for the toys: "front kicking action!" "side kicking action!" "double punch action!" Was this stuff written by people who make lesbian porn action figures or something?
It's not the games. It's not the action figures. It's not the toys with "super-duper killer-missle launching action". It's parents who don't know how to teach a kid what's right, what's wrong, and how to tell the difference. Reminds me of a recent Penny Arcade strip
I think the hair-trigger threshold that most people around here have for unleashing verbal abuse at innocuous sites whose opinion differs from theirs constitutes its own dataset about the desensitizing effects of violence on children.
Jeez --- a private site, simply listing toys that concerned parents might want to avoid this Christmas. That's all, folks!
Well that's not all though. This same organization is lobbying the US gov't to actually STOP production of these toys. No one on slashdot is advocating shutting this site down. NOW who's afraid of a different opinion?
Has it occurred to any of you that taking the time to choose toys for your children --- instead of buying whatever crap is marketed to them --- is actually evidence of being a good parent?
Yes. And to be honest, I'd much prefer a parent actually LOOK at a toy and think FOR THEMSELVES about the good/bad qualities of it. Much better than simply reading a list of someone else's opinions and taking action on that, when you don't even know if this someone else shares any of the same values that you do.
Maybe you miss the point of why so many people find this scary. It's not a differing opinion that bothers me - it's a differing opinion forced down my throat that does. And of course using a website as an excuse to be a bad parent.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The article is misleading; these are not dangerous toys, only toys that someone considers politically incorrect. Nothing is mentioned about any specific dangers that the toys present, only that the toys have links to violent videogames and television shows.
;)
Some of them shoot foam missiles; big deal! I think that a foot high robot that fires at room intruders is rather endearing.
Dangerous toys are things with parts that small children can choke on, stuff up their nose, or otherwise injure themselves with: sharp corners, fast-moving, massive projectiles, etc. Also, things containing dangerous substances, such as lead-based jewelry for children.
There is little connection between these properties and violence. Even in the category of fast moving things that can injure: this area is probably dominated by sporting equipment. Better not be getting your kid that hockey stick!
I can't imagine too many people initially going to the site, or taking the content of the site too seriously; "oh, look honey, there's that toy that that web site said was bad, so we better not buy it for little Johnny"... yeah right.
:)
Then enter Slashdot.
Now the webmaster is looking at the site stats of hundreds of thousands of hits and is thinking "man! what a difference I'm making!". Little does he/she know that the general reaction is "geesh... what next!". Spurred on by this "success", they're already planning the next project.
For that matter, they could probably take their web logs showing the hits they are getting to some politician *spit* and show what a "great job" they're doing protecting the children of society (after all, lots of hits means it's working, right?), and get some federal funding to carry on the torch.
Oh joy.
$0.02 (CDN)
It's CmdrTaco's summary. The article only claims these are "Toys to Avoid", by whatever standards the site uses. Which begs the further question of whether CmndTaco presenting this as "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" is misleading as well.