First off, sorry for the late update. I have no good reason for it, just have been procrastinating all day.
Today, i would like to rant about the commercialisation of modern society. We can find it everywhere: in music, in movies, even in sports games.
First off, music. There are multiple points about modern day music, that i just can’t approve of. For instance, the amount of nudity in clips. If you compare today’s music videos with those of 30 years ago, it has just changed to softcore porn. Those videos used to be taboo, and for a good reason. Not only did they have a negative effect on a possible message a song would try to provide, but it has also proven to have had a negative effect on the way children grew up. Besides the possibility that this was done to make people more aware of the beauty of a human body, it lowered the bar for a lot of people. Also, what i’m more concerned about, it didn’t raise a single eyebrow. People would just write it off as “that’s modern day society”. But i, for one, don’t want to live in a society like that. But, back to the point.
Since music videos like that came out (and no, i’m not blaming them only), the children of this time have a new standard, which includes sexual actions at ages below 13, a huge sexualisation of our everyday language and actual pregnancies of girls aged 16 years or younger.
What i find disturbing about this change of attitude is that media are actually adjusting to it! In the early ages, young girls were stoned to death if they became pregnant under a certain age. At this day and age, people can get famous for it. Television shows like ’16 and pregnant’, ‘my super sweet 16’ and ‘teen mom’ feature girls under the legal age being spoilt brats. I sometimes long for the day parents are allowed to hit their children again, mostly because i want to do everything i possibly can to make sure my kids will not become like that (sidenote: no, i do not have kids of my own, but since my fiancée really wants them, i’m kinda tied up on that one).
Of course, i would never hurt my children, but i think there’s nothing wrong with a firm tap on the head to make sure they know they’re doing something wrong.
I don’t know why that has changed, maybe fear for prosecution, maybe parents just don’t care anymore, but people do get hurt by their ignorance. My parents tried to raise me the best they could. Be it flawed, they did a wonderful job raising me to become a decent, fairly well-mannered young bloke. However, the kids i used to go to school with did not have a blessed pair of parents like i did. I have been bullied (varying between near meaningless insults to actual physical harm to attempted rape) from age 6 to age 17. I could have helped it in the second half of that period, but i decided at that time that it would be more energy-efficient to just shut off my emotions and let it all come over me (maybe i guessed they would stop being interested in bullying me if i didn’t respond, but i was proven wrong quite quickly).
Besides the shows mentioned above, there has been more proof of declining care for human decency in media. If a man tells a female co-worker she looks beautiful, or even that she’s dressed inappropriate, he faces a lawsuit for sexual harrassment, though the standard nowadays (i speak from experience) is that female secretaries wear their tops low enough to see the bra sticking out from underneath it, if they even wear a bra! Art with nude models can’t be produced anymore without being called out as pornographic, though pornos are getting more violent and more extreme.
The only way the word ‘anal’ was used (approximately 10 years ago!) was for medication that had to be taken that way. In this day and age, if a girl refuses to have sexual intercourse with a boy, he will ask “can we do anal then? Then you will still be a virgin”. That statement, btw, is wrong on so many levels. First of all, a virgin hasn’t had sexual intercourse. Not even a sexual act. The moment you let someone touch your body in any sexual way, you lose your virginity (although medicly, i have to agree, you lose your virginity by breaking the hymen).
Then at last, video games…
Now i’m not a hardcore gamer, i just enjoy playing games. And there too have been changes. Not only would i like to mention the billboards in Duke Nukem, featuring scarcely dressed stripper sprites, but also in games like GTA. I loved GTA 1 and 2. They were viewed from the top, mild violence (graphics quality was worse back then, so not much could be done) and missions that gave you a minor view on how respect works. The newer parts (GTA:SA and above, i believe) are way worse. Not only can you beat people up with 20 different weapons (GTA2 had 7), but also you can pick up hookers, have sex with them (censored, thank the godess) and then run them over and drive away as if nothing happened. If you plan it right, you can take out a complete gang without even getting noticed by the police.
In most RPG games, you can undress the heroine to near-nudity, even though the male characters nearly never have this option. Some RPGs are made purely to make two digital characters have uncensored sex. And even in hardly-mentioned sex games, there has been a change. When i was young, i used to look for these games, and usually found my thrill in either trivia games that gave a pretty reward after 5 questions answered correctly, or virtual strip poker games. Nowadays, i feel lucky if there isn’t a single lolicon game in the page i’m sent to (that subject will be discussed in another post). The worst i have encountered so far had the following goal: Wait for mother at subway station and rape her, pick up older daughter from cheerleading practice and rape her, pick up youngest daughter from horse-riding practice and make one of the horses ride her (the game stated the daughters were 15 and 6 years old).
The worst part? Some young people actually think this is a good thing! Not too long ago, a video popped up on youtube, featuring a 12-year-old girl, with the following message: “that my body hasn’t developed, doesn’t mean i can’t decide for my own. Lower the legal age to 12, since 12-year-olds do have good judgement”. Well, i can tell you all, they do not. Not only has it been scientificly proven that the human brain hasn’t fully developed until the age of (approximately) 24, but also, there are some situational facts, of which this is an example:
I play this online game with chat function on my tablet. I’m having fun (less than i used to, but that’s my own concern), but there are two people on that game who i try to avoid like they were infected with the bubonic plague. Not because they are bad people, but because all they do is whine about their relationship. On itself this isn’t all too bad, but their ages and recent problems have started to change my opinions about them.
About 2 months ago, she (16) came to me to get advise dealing with not knowing if she might be pregnant from him (13). I explained to her at that time, that the possibility exists, since they both have working reproductive organs. Some time went by, she got her period, huge relief, but then she came back. After about a month of inactivity, she suddenly came back to chat, telling everyone who wanted to hear that she might be pregnant.. Again. (This was the moment i nearly dropped my tablet in what i like to call a ‘nevermind-moment’. I just didn’t care anymore. I explained to her what the consequences might be (btw, i believe this it her parents’ job), and yet it happened 2 months in a row (maybe one month in between, my sense of time is quite bad).
Maybe i shouldn’t have posted this article, or maybe i did the right thing by doing it. No matter, i’m sure about one thing: we could do so much better. If we only take a little more energy to make sure our kids know what decency is, and start early with that (the sooner the better), they will grow up with a much better view of the world. They will think with their heads again, instead of with their reproductive organs. They might even be inspired to create a better world for their children.
Society IntoP13c3s 