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Ahahahaha. I remember (vaguely) pinging AOL's irc servers with hays cmdset commands and as a result my parents getting a letter to the effect that I was a comp

Ahahahaha. I remember (vaguely) pinging AOL's irc servers with hays cmdset commands and as a result my parents getting a letter to the effect that I was a computer criminal and we were on some 'blacklist' forever, fortunately this apparently blacklist didn't seem to be shared between ISPs so I was back causing chaos within days >_< And now here I am, mid thirties, children, and I wonder if I would let my kid play DOOM when he is 8 or 9.. I think I'll let him play the original ones, but the newer games seem to be much more intense (maybe that's just down to the graphics/music?).. Or I just let him play everything.. I dunno, grand theft auto (granted, the top down one) did me no harm when I was around puberty heh...

mjburgess 6y ago
Exposure builds resilience. All shielding does is turn people into hysterics who cannot see through the artifice, and assume everyone is duped by it into being murderous zombies.
- kaybe 6y ago
  I have to say, as a kid, all these games and movies were much more harmless than the news. The news had actual blood on the streets, from real people who had actually died there, real violence, real panic, real bombs and real war. If you shut off the TV, it does not go away, it's taking place somewhere out there, in the real world. A game is a joke in comparison.
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    I don't worry about games for those reasons, I worry about them because they're extremely seductive and attention-capturing while producing almost no real benefits or skills. I quit video games cold turkey around the age of 16 after I realized that soo often, I'd find myself sit down to play counterstrike after school, and in a blink of an eye it would be 1AM.
    - cyberpunk 6y ago
      That’s a pretty hardcore level of self awareness to have at 16, you must be crushing it :)
  - dragonsky67 6y ago
    This is a brilliant observation. As a 50+ "adult" I avoid the news media. My parents used to sit and watch the news with us, I would never do that today. It's not that the world is a worse place these days (It's actually safer), just that the media thrives by presenting all the bad in the worst possible way.
    - mavhc 6y ago
      Sit with your child and MST3K the media
    - distances 6y ago
      Do you have a public broadcaster? I find their news to be good, no hyperbole as they don't need eyeballs for ads. Just a somewhat balanced set of domestic, international and cultural affairs.
  - hyperman1 6y ago
    Imho the real damage from games is the addiction aspect. A secondary problem is the 'Good guy is allowed to do anything because he's good' attitude, but that's shared by a lot of tv and books. The actual violence isnt much of a problem.
- II2II 6y ago
  It depends upon the child. I've seen children who accept the world is nuanced and can be exposed to a bit more of it, and I have seen children who need to be shielded since they will either glorify or fear things that they do no understand. Know you child, then make a decision accordingly.
Hydraulix989 6y ago
I'm not a parent (yet), but I do wonder about how I would enforce some of the double standards -- I was playing DOOM at age 8 and looking at somewhat questionable content online (my parents had no idea), and I like to think that I still turned out somewhat fine. Would I really want to use my hacker-grade computer knowledge to enforce a parental control jail on my childrens' ability to consume this meaningful information about the real world at a young age? (Being the naive developmentally-delayed kid in the peer group who was overly-shielded by parents also is VERY bad.) One would even argue that DOOM jumpstarted my CS career.
- ldoughty 6y ago
  My own plan: shield them until they are old enough to understand the concepts of trust and respect.. then pull back the safety net, but maintain quiet vigilance (like montoring (read only) the dns queries or system logs, and maybe keep access time window restrictions). If that really want questionable content, it will be cat and mouse game. Build trust and respect... Give them enough rope to hang themselves... Occasionally do responses without admitting knowing... then punish if they cross your safety threshold, but then they will know you somehow know.. so a cat and mouse game will begin if they are not responding to the mutual(ish) trust plan.
  - cyberpunk 6y ago
    That’s one thing I decided already not to do is spy on them. I could easily view his entire online life and sure maybe it would protect him somehow if he was getting into some really dark porn or talking to some pedophile or something, but it’s such a massive invasion of privacy I think I could never forgive myself and the justification is bullshit. There are no shortcuts to good parenting, spying on your kids traffic is a massive intrusion into their life. I hope at least to get to the point where they can talk to me about weird shit going on instead of me having to detect it for them right?
    - treeman79 6y ago
      Tried that for a time with eldest daughter. Afterwards she went down hill fast. Tried looking into what she had been up to. Burned the dammed phone.
cable2600 6y ago
I let my son play Doom with The Simpsons mod so it wasn't that scary. He was Homer Simpson fighting clones of his neighbors. I also taught him how to build PCs and use Windows 98 at that time.
kfajdsl 6y ago
If it makes you feel any better, I'm young enough to have grown up playing Halo: Reach, Minecraft, and Battlefield 3, and I mostly turned out fine so far, I think.

mjburgess 6y ago

Exposure builds resilience. All shielding does is turn people into hysterics who cannot see through the artifice, and assume everyone is duped by it into being murderous zombies.

kaybe 6y ago
I have to say, as a kid, all these games and movies were much more harmless than the news. The news had actual blood on the streets, from real people who had actually died there, real violence, real panic, real bombs and real war. If you shut off the TV, it does not go away, it's taking place somewhere out there, in the real world. A game is a joke in comparison.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  I don't worry about games for those reasons, I worry about them because they're extremely seductive and attention-capturing while producing almost no real benefits or skills. I quit video games cold turkey around the age of 16 after I realized that soo often, I'd find myself sit down to play counterstrike after school, and in a blink of an eye it would be 1AM.
  - cyberpunk 6y ago
    That’s a pretty hardcore level of self awareness to have at 16, you must be crushing it :)
- dragonsky67 6y ago
  This is a brilliant observation. As a 50+ "adult" I avoid the news media. My parents used to sit and watch the news with us, I would never do that today. It's not that the world is a worse place these days (It's actually safer), just that the media thrives by presenting all the bad in the worst possible way.
  - mavhc 6y ago
    Sit with your child and MST3K the media
  - distances 6y ago
    Do you have a public broadcaster? I find their news to be good, no hyperbole as they don't need eyeballs for ads. Just a somewhat balanced set of domestic, international and cultural affairs.
- hyperman1 6y ago
  Imho the real damage from games is the addiction aspect. A secondary problem is the 'Good guy is allowed to do anything because he's good' attitude, but that's shared by a lot of tv and books. The actual violence isnt much of a problem.
II2II 6y ago
It depends upon the child. I've seen children who accept the world is nuanced and can be exposed to a bit more of it, and I have seen children who need to be shielded since they will either glorify or fear things that they do no understand. Know you child, then make a decision accordingly.

Hydraulix989 6y ago

I'm not a parent (yet), but I do wonder about how I would enforce some of the double standards -- I was playing DOOM at age 8 and looking at somewhat questionable content online (my parents had no idea), and I like to think that I still turned out somewhat fine. Would I really want to use my hacker-grade computer knowledge to enforce a parental control jail on my childrens' ability to consume this meaningful information about the real world at a young age? (Being the naive developmentally-delayed kid in the peer group who was overly-shielded by parents also is VERY bad.) One would even argue that DOOM jumpstarted my CS career.

ldoughty 6y ago
My own plan: shield them until they are old enough to understand the concepts of trust and respect.. then pull back the safety net, but maintain quiet vigilance (like montoring (read only) the dns queries or system logs, and maybe keep access time window restrictions). If that really want questionable content, it will be cat and mouse game. Build trust and respect... Give them enough rope to hang themselves... Occasionally do responses without admitting knowing... then punish if they cross your safety threshold, but then they will know you somehow know.. so a cat and mouse game will begin if they are not responding to the mutual(ish) trust plan.
- cyberpunk 6y ago
  That’s one thing I decided already not to do is spy on them. I could easily view his entire online life and sure maybe it would protect him somehow if he was getting into some really dark porn or talking to some pedophile or something, but it’s such a massive invasion of privacy I think I could never forgive myself and the justification is bullshit. There are no shortcuts to good parenting, spying on your kids traffic is a massive intrusion into their life. I hope at least to get to the point where they can talk to me about weird shit going on instead of me having to detect it for them right?
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Tried that for a time with eldest daughter. Afterwards she went down hill fast. Tried looking into what she had been up to. Burned the dammed phone.

cable2600 6y ago

I let my son play Doom with The Simpsons mod so it wasn't that scary. He was Homer Simpson fighting clones of his neighbors. I also taught him how to build PCs and use Windows 98 at that time.

kfajdsl 6y ago

If it makes you feel any better, I'm young enough to have grown up playing Halo: Reach, Minecraft, and Battlefield 3, and I mostly turned out fine so far, I think.