Your Tax Dollars at Work
 

The people we elect and those that we employ.

Good to know we're keeping up our vigilance on the terrorismists.

Video games may be violent, I hear.

We pay these people 160,000 dollars a year to waste their time.

I'm hoping that in the next 20-30 years, most of the members of congress will have grown up playing Mario Bros and Mortal Kombat. Then all this crap about games being used as propaganda, or that violent games result in crime and terrorism will be a non-issue.

Until then, all we can really do is send pictures of us rolling our eyes to our congressmen and women.

As usual, popular culture/media is being scapegoated for the failures of proper parenting. The John Stewart clip sort of points that out, in a funny way no less.

Let's see, wasn't it music a few years ago? And then wasn't it comic books, and television, and radio even further back?

It's kind of sad seeing these "experts" giving some pretty silly explanations (probably stuff they pulled out of their booty). I liked how some of those congressmen said they were "gamers", and then mentions Pong, or "knowing enough about the game" for Civilization 4 (no doubt he just saw it was a contemporary game, and decided to just throw that out there).

I also loved the Congressman saying "suburban kids can play games okay, but kids in the ghetto might be influenced by that stuff", but conveniently leaves out the Columbine incident, which, if I recall, consisted of 2 suburban kids?

I wonder what "dead hooker" they'll use next to place blame on, probably virtual reality or robots next lol.

I'm sure millions of people have grown up with games, and have turned out pretty decent overall in society/life. Yes, there's those whacko nut cases like Columbine unfortunately, but then again, drinking kills more people than video games, last I checked. And the vast majority of people I know that drink are still pretty decent people overall (although yes, there are the "bad" cases there as well). And then there's that "neglecting your child" thing too that some of these people seem to overlook (the abusive/neglective parents aren't to blame, it must be video games' fault why the kid became a criminal!)

So video games can kill all the Arabs and other nationalities they want, but if a game shows the so called enemy point of view, its evil and should be banned. I don't think there are a whole lots of dirt poor arab terrorist wannabes sitting around playing PS2 and thinking that this is just what they needed to prompt them into joining the Jihad.

I think the only game I have ever played that allowed you fight America was Command & Conquer though I could just be mistaken.

Though my favorite line will always be "And as I stand there watching them play these violent games helpless to do anything about it, I can't but wonder where the system has failed."

I would think that at the most playing violent videogames would cause an indifference to violence. If all that's stopping them from going on a rampage is the idea of suffering pain then they were pretty dangerous to begin with.

That just goes to show how overreaching they think the system should be. The "system" was never designed to legislate morality or decide which games are suitable for kids. The founding fathers figured that parents would take care of things like inspiring good character and keeping their kids from capping each other in drive-bys.

The "system" hasn't failed at all... parents have.

Everybody knows that our videogames train *us* to be killing machines. Why else do you think US Military kicks so much ass? =D THE SECRET CANNOT BE LET LOOSE ;_; Damn 'Ey-Rabs

"Player Haters". <3 for Daily Show headline.

Beating a dead hooker... xD

Ahahahaha. What a crock of shit.

Any of these guys remember a little game called America's Army?
You know, that piece of blatant propaganda that "invoked an emotion," and then "evoked a response" and "directed people towards the response that they wanted?"

Our cover was blown by Robin Williams and LL Cool J.

http://img.clubic.com/photo/00041897.jpg

Yeah, yeah, usual schtick. Freedom of speech, yada yada.

Governments just don't like the concept of freedom of speech. Even ours.



No more than most forums like it, for about the same reasons (cough).

The real issue here isn't freedom of speech. These are hearings. Nothing's actually being accomplished. Congress is just putting on a show to calm their constituencies and waste our tax money.

What really gets me about all of this, is that these are the same people that voted down raising the minimum wage while later raising their own salaries by 3,000 dollars for what they call "Living Expenses." And people still tell me that I throw my vote away when I vote Libertarian.

Sorry, I just jumped from a discussion about ISPs controlling bandwidth to/from sites/people. Seems to me like they just don't like the internet anymore, freedom of speech or not. That they're targetting a game to illustrate the fact that terrorists are using the web seem to indicate why.

'Tis a shame.

All governments are corrupt, including America's. It's just that the people of the country are either too stupid to see it, or they don't want to see it. Either way, as stated above, governments don't like freedom of speech, and they will do anything they can to supress people's opinions if it goes against what they want.

That said, these video game discussions pop up right before congressional elections, and just about any state elections every time. Its all the same thing every time. They vote themselves raises to sit around and take apart the internet when they don't even know how it was put together, or how it works. We're controlled by monkeys.

Hay guys we're talking about the media and politicians being clueless regarding video games http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/general-video-gaming/6375-terrorists-use-video-games-propaganda-reuters.html

And we're discussing the Daily Show's video http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/place-laughs-games/8568-daily-show-violent-video-games.html

What I'm pretty sure Bradylama wants to talk about is that politicians are useless maggots who don't know anything more about anything than regular people do, yet they act like experts. He was just using video games as an example.

What I've always found mysterious is cabinent reshuffles in governemtn. SUDDENLY the Education Minister has become the Defence Minister. Once a fountain of knowledge and direction for all facets of education has suddenly become the nation's top military tactition, fmily with the armed forces and the expenditure required.

It's a farce.

So what the hell do we do about it.

Most people sit on their asses until something goes wrong and then they complain. As long as the majority stays on their ass, it's basically going to be gamers/gaming companies versus senators in a useless shouting match.

Well, we could stop voting for the same idiots come every election for one. Either vote for their opponent or a third party, it's honestly that simple.

Also, RAB, this specific instance doesn't involve Congressmen acting like experts but that Congress is being fed misinformation by people that call themselves experts. That we're paying them tax money to essentially feed our representatives bullshit is the problem here, and that Congress doesn't really intend to do anything about it in the first place is the other. Even if these "experts" actually had some information of value it wouldn't mean anything since no legislation will come out of this farce.