Rage restricting Videos, my thoughts on it.

 

First off I have to say these are of course just my thoughts on the subject.

I see the age restriction as both a good and a bad thing, because as you perhaps know (or else now you do) I have children, albeit they are adult now - and I can only say when they were younger, you had to monitor their online presence as a fucking HAWK. This was also why they shared a computer for many years, or used mine, this way it was easier for me to either go through the browsing history, or whatever.

Now my kids were good with not visiting weird sites, and I never did cuddle them in that sense, neither did I restrict their access to tv shows. And me as a person believe that most of the age restrictions on games and shows are some weird construct that doesn't hold up in real life. 

Now that is not the same as I think that a toddler should watch Alien, but should they happen to do so one of two scenarios is most likely to happen. 1) they walk away because it's boring, and they'd rather watch powerpuff girls (yeah my kids are from that era) 2) they happen to watch it in a moment that is scary, and you have to show them that the angry cool lady actually shoots the bad monster. (at least that is what I did.) See I always played horror games, read and wrote horror, and watched horror movies. This my children grew up with.

But again, that is not the same as to say I'd expose them to anything. I did actually - super reluctantly, take down my Geiger posters, but dude dead babies and huge genitals, that is not for kids. Even if I don't even know if they could see what it actually was, there is no need to take that chance. But here is the thing - My oldest, she used to love watching me play the old Blair Witch games, the original Alone in the Dark, and those Clive Barker games (Jericho and undying). But the Lion King? that disney movie you know - that shit traumatised her to no end. 

So my point is, it's just way more complicated that 'violence', 'blood' and 'guns'. 

And again, I agree some stuff should be age restricted, I have an old VHS copy of  Faces of  Death, and the Cannibal Massacre for instance, which is not something I'd ever allow my kids to watch. And with that said, kids are not an homogenous mass, some want to see it, other don't.

And honestly, they can watch people die for real on freaking YT, like beheaddings and stonings - which makes ME queasy, but they can't play Left 4 Dead? that is stupid. I sorta thought we moved past the whole 'video games and heavy metal made me violent' shit.

Now this video I noticed today, that YouTube flagged for +18. And I both have a problem with it, and I don't - so I will just leave it as is. 

I think it's fine because it really IS a violent game in every aspect. It doesn't really have gorey imagery, and it's made in a very obviously 'artsy' way, which makes it look like a comic. 

But it bugs me that youtube just flags it. I mean 18?! come on... what 18 year old on this planet has not seen anything this game has. And also I have a hard time with it just being done, I wasn't even notified. 

I realise that it's an American company and so have to follow the rules in America, I just think it's overkill, and a weird form for censorship that is way off target. There IS a youtube kids option am I right? so we are not talking about small children here, but older kids who would stumble across true crime videos depicting much, much worse things than this silly cartoony thing. 

I am not going to dispute their decision, but I just wanted to say that I think it's a weird decision, and also I am not fond of the micro management thing.