Mostly Harmless

I honestly couldn’t help but laugh when I came across this. The basic gist of the article appears to be that rather than continue to play Video Games and buy “childish” material we should all be getting loans for suits we can’t afford and praying for promotion. Apparently not doing so also means you won’t be able to relate to your children…

Sigh.

In all honesty the survey quoted does seem to have come across the nerdiest people, I can’t think of too many I know who collect comic books or games figurines in a serious way and I run a games clan where you might expect such behaviour. I guess the fact it’s a US survey comes into it, if there is a country that’s into comic books, it is the US isn’t it?

I’m going to spend some time responding to the bits of the article that made me snort incredulity across the desk (if you didn’t think that was possible, well neither did I).

“The most popular vacation activities in this group was theme parks, water sports, and major sporting events”

Sounds to me like the generation X video game nerds in the US are actually doing pretty well? If they’ve got kids at least those kids are getting out of the hotel on vacations rather than just lying by the pool with a handheld console like some technically advanced whale with a rechargeable battery addiction. What that statement doesn’t say is whether they’re also taking their kids to museums or educational locations on holidays – but as someone whose childhood holidays consisted almost entirely of educational visits let me say that a good balance really is essential

In fact, if the recent parade of children across the British media who look like baby elephants is anything to go by, we need to take a leaf out of the American’s book and go to more theme parks. At least they’ll have to stand up in the two hour queues

“Whatever happened to growing up, getting a job, getting married, having a kid, and leaving your childhood behind? No, it seems that Generation X is reading comic books and collecting dolls and figurines, and spending quality time with their games consoles instead of their partners and kids.”

The inference seems to be that these things are mutually exclusive. They aren’t. Whatever your hobbies are you probably need them. Most of adult life is stressful; getting a qualification, getting a job, doing well at a job, maintaining a relationship without screaming – it’s really important to be able to relax. Else you become a different kind of statistic.

I fall into the article’s firing line because I was a teenager during the 90’s and shock horror now I’m 24 and I have a job and a long term relationship. BUT I also get excited about the next episode of the Half Life series and when my gaming clan has a match to play. Clearly when I’m doing that though my partner is just waiting to get up the courage to leave me because I’m not adult enough

And on that last point is where we see the real silliness of the article. Men and women have had hobbies for all time and depending on the couple these hobbies may well annoy the hell out of the other person. I’m reminded of some stereotype fitting relatives, one of whom collected China Cats and the other enjoyed the typical male pursuits of watching football down the pub with friends while drinking. There simply isn’t a lot of difference. In fact I’d say we’ve improved on the previous generation stereotype, I play my clan matches whilst my other half watches soaps and whisper it; we’ve actually played several games through together: Discworld Noir, Grim Fandango, In Memoriam, Fahrenheit, Sam and Max etc etc

But much more importantly, It’s my personal opinion that the biggest mistake an adult or parent can make is forgetting what it was like to be a kid. That is one of the major reasons why kids are generally doomed to repeat the same mistakes you made. Because you forget the day to day angst and enjoyment of being a child you can’t look at an issue through their eyes and unless you can then they aren’t going to listen to you. The idea that becoming a responsible adult means burying your childhood and all related paraphernalia is in my opinion complete unmitigated crap.

Perhaps nowadays playing with your kids means playing console games with them, and talking with your partner, means telling him or her how about how you almost got that damn frog accross the road in Frogger.

Given that virtually any child growing up these days is going to come into contact with technology at a very early age, even if just through their school and friends, isn’t it better that this technology has an appropriate place in the home? Better that the console is in the living room where you as a parent can monitor and participate just as you hope you can participate in other aspects of their life that your child enjoys.

Practically everyone who has been on the Internet a while has seen the results of kids and teenagers who are allowed a PC with Internet access in their rooms too young – much better for a child in my book that their parent is console savvy even if that means they might be considered silly by some of their own peers.

Even having an appreciation of comics is going to help, there are a vast number of adult web comics out there now that if you over-hear your kids laughing about you might actually want to go have a look at and do some parenting for once. Your disapproving isn’t going to stop your kids looking. Better that you know what you’re up against so you can provide the example that counters the negative stereotypes your kids are going to come across.

As far as talking to your partner goes, how different is talking about games really from discussing TV or Books when the mood takes the pair of you?

“Call me old fashioned, but somehow that doesn’t seem too adult to me”

And that is exactly the point that has been missed. What is and isn’t “Adult” behaviour changes from generation to generation because the world moves pretty fast. As an example, since I was in school / college the whole Myspace revolution has hit and completely changed the way children interact with one another – when those children grow up and keep their brutally honest, badly spelt, personally revealing Myspace pages someone please shoot me If I post on this blog about them needing to grow up I truly don’t understand the appeal of posting all of your business publicly – but because I don’t understand it, doesn’t mean it isn’t wholly valid for those who have grown up with it. No matter how much I might dislike it…