Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Will You Start Your Kids On Classic Games Or Newer Games?
An anonymous reader writes "An article at The Verge got me thinking. Parents and those of you who plan to become parents: will you introduce your kids to the games you played when you were younger? Those of us who grew up playing Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man have had a chance to see gaming software evolve into the enormously complex and graphically realistic beast it is today. I've begun to understand why my grandparents tried to get me to watch old movies. I'm also curious how you folks plan to teach your kids about computers and software in general. When teaching them Linux, do you just download the latest stable Mint or Ubuntu release and let them take it from there? Do you track down a 20-year-old version of Slackware and show them how things used to be? I can see how there would be value in that... the UIs we use every day have been abstracted so far away from their roots that we can't always expect new users to intuitively grasp the chain of logic. How do you think this should be handled?"
We need to take a serious look at just how dangerous it can be for parents to force their interests onto their children.
Japan is an excellent case study, mainly the children born between 1980 and 2000. This generation's parents were the children of the WWII generation. They grew up during the substantial shifts in culture and society that occurred in post-war Japan. During the 1960s and 1970s we saw televisions and home video become common, driven by Japanese industry. We also saw the rise of anime during this time period.
As these children grew up, they started having their own children, starting around 1980 and continuing for the next two decades. They raised their children on anime. Anime became central to the lives and identities of the 1980-2000 generation. Every single aspect of their lives revolved around anime in one way or another.
By 2010, many of these children had reached or passed the ages at which adulthood typically begins. While they may be adults in terms of age, they were psychologically stunted by the role of anime during their youth.
Just look at Japanese society today. There are many grown men in their 30s who have no desire to start their careers, to get married, to raise families, and to otherwise act like adult men have for centuries. All they do is sit around in their undergarments, watching anime. They attempt to engage in "relationships" with cardboard cutouts of anime characters. Their only sexual interests are concerned with octopuses molesting anime women. By all measures, these people are failures in life.
Those are just the worst off of the generation, however. Those who are slightly more in tune with reality aren't as bad, but they surely aren't much better at all. Many of these men and women are extremely confused about their genders. The men have become feminized, while the women have become androgynous. The stagnation of the culture hangs around them constantly, driven by anime.
It's only safe to assume that their society would be a robust, growing one today had it not been for the very negative effects that anime has had on Japanese culture over the past 30 to 40 years. While there is no hope for redemption for these poor souls, the rest of the world can at least learn from them.
The most important lesson is that parents should not force their interests onto their children. The result will be a disaster, like we have seen in Japanese today. Doing this, especially with a medium as toxic and destructive as anime, will only lead to pain and suffering.
Let children be themselves. Let them explore their own interests. Let them become their own people. Let them be free from the shackles imposed by parents who force their own interests onto their children.
but still he'll play as much LOL or DOTA as we'll let him
See where you went wrong there?