So, my only concern with this idea is the inconsistency of the stories we tell ourselves vs the way the world is, and how the two seem to be confused here.
High school, for me at least, was a fairly dark time in my life. If i knew myself, the only thing i would be able to tell myself is, it's going to suck until you're halfway through college.
Bullies, at least the best ones, don't leave you alone. They don't leave you alone if your confident, they don't leave you alone if you're hurt. They just don't care. They have either yet to learn empathy, or are simply sociopaths and you're simply a fixture in their lives, entertainment.
Now, assuming this is the case, which it was for me. You have a choice. Make a game that is a bit dark, existential, cathartic, or simply make a game that tells us to believe the nonsense that we are told to tell ourselves: be confident, give your bully the "i'm not a chicken, you're a turkey" speech, excel and you'll get respect.
I think if you want to make a truly interesting game, ignore the uplifting nonsense and go for the catharsis. It gets better when you're able to choose your friends, your you're able to make friends on your own terms, not just pick from those around you.
If i were going to make a game like this i would have aspects like:
* Having a good cry shouldn't be in game death, it should be a power up.
* Being vulnerable and hurt and carrying on regardless should be strength.
When i started making friends in upper level classes in college, i was able to be friends with people that saw the world in interesting ways, and cared about things that made sense. We had mutual respect, and that was that. The nasty politics of social groups has rarely ever crept into my life since.
> If i knew myself, the only thing i would be able to tell myself is, it's going to suck until you're halfway through college.
If I may just highlight this. Children should be told that being a schoolkid is a weird kind of environment, the like of which they probably won't experience as an adult. Most workplaces don't involve customary physical violence, or even frequent overt verbal abuse. Glibly telling them that their life is horrible because they're not doing it right is a fucking awful thing to do to them.
You can't tell people things like that because they might ask "what are you going to do about this awful situation?" or "why do I have to go to school if it's so bad?". To which we have no answer.
Telling one truth just has to lead to telling other truths until the worldview is consistent. We do have the answer. Most kids have to go to school because the actual and opportunity cost of homeschooling is usually too expensive or often neither parent is qualified to provide a better or even acceptable education. When homeschooling is workable, going to school is often still a better aspect exactly because having a huge amount of experience with both the good and the bad of social settings is incredibly valuable as an adult (and that most adults have such experience is one of the main reasons adult society does tend to be less nasty IMO - people get fed up with it).
If you can be honest and tell kids "the real world isn't like school", why can't you be honest and tell them the real reasons they are nonetheless made to put up with it?
Just curious, but what are the "real reasons they are nonetheless made to put up with it"? If your child says "I'm being bullied at school and no one is doing anything about it. My teacher ridicules me because I don't understand Algebra. I'm not learning anything in literature class except how to fill out worksheets. Can't we figure out something better?" what do you say?
The truth is kids get bullied because adults don't care and look the other way. If an adults hit another adult the police will get involved. When an adult hits a kid or a kid hits a another kid they've got practically no recourse. It's just grossly unfair, and there is no solution. So you tell them that. And you repeat that if they don't go to school they won't be able to get into higher education, which in turn won't allow them to get a good job. So their current situation sucks but the alternatives they have are even worse. It's a truthful description of a shitty situation.
Adults don't have to have a solution to everything. But kids should expect us to talk to them in a forthright manner. Spare them one-liners like "you'll understand when you get older" and other condescending nonsense.
Isn't it wrong to say there's no solution? Wouldn't it be better to tell them about the game, to learn about it (because that's what school is for) and try to better their situation for themselves?
When kids are stuck in school until their twenties or so with basically no money or independence then most of them are going to be pretty unhappy. As a kid you're trapped in a way most adults are not (except those trapped by poor health or poverty). Changes can be made to improve the situation of an individual kid, but the nature of the situation doesn't change: children have fewer rights and freedoms than adults, in daily life and by law.
The irony in your post is that the vast majority of adults are also trapped with basically no money or independence. You're given just enough as a wage slave. Perhaps the problem isn't in schools, but how we structure society today.
"Look kids, you will want that high school diploma. I know it's an awful experience at times, but you gotta survive it. There's nothing wrong with you; high-school just messes with people's mind. Some way more than others, but these experiences will make you stronger. Your old & out-of-touch dad doesn't know much about today's teens, but I do know that skipping highschool will cause problems for you later on and you'll regret it. Sure some people are hugely successful without HS-diplomas, but that's not the norm. Don't drop out. Talk me or your mom about the issues. We might not be able to fix it but talking about things help and perhaps we have a similar story to share about our school experiences."
Sidenote: I don't know if this was a Nigerian-culture thing or just me and/or my parents, but when I was growing up the concept that I could drop out of highschool or even not go to college never entered my mind. It was mandatory from the get-go. In fact, it wasn't until my 2nd year in college when I noticed some people missing & asked around that it fully dawned on me - less than 100% of the people in my highschool graduated and went to college.
Could be that my dad's dad was a teacher, so education was a huge thing.
There is some very good thinking in this thread, and maybe there are some really good answers to your questions. For a fast answer:
For algebra, that's easy: I'll show you how that works right away. Basically you are doing the same arithmetic you've already done for years but are doing it with letters instead of specific numbers, that is, with 'variables'. Here's how a 'variable' works: There is a number. Call it x. Now, let's see what we can say about x. Suppose we are told that
2x + 3 = 9
Now the equality will remain if we subtract 3 from both sides, so let's do that and get
2x = 6
Now the equality will remain if we divide both sides by 2. So, let's do that and get
x = 3
Or we could have been told that
ax + b = c
Then, similarly
x = (c - b)/a
That's the main idea in first year high school algebra.
For literature, you already know a lot about it and like it a lot. Why? Mostly 'literature', say, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Dickens to the present is 'storytelling'; nearly all of movies and most of TV is storytelling; and you have no trouble understanding and liking a lot of movies and TV shows, right? For Shakespeare, if you can't read the original (tough to do if only because it's in Old English that would get a grade of F today due to bad grammar), just read the appropriate Cliff Notes or some such that just clearly explains, no doubt from experts, just what the heck is supposed to be going on in Shakespeare. Maybe the guy who wrote Cliff Notes was the last guy who actually read the original Shakespeare? Maybe not, but Cliff Notes are a much easier start than the original. Cliff Notes are easy, and it would be tough to get that much out of the original on your own. Using Cliff Notes is not cheating and, instead, is just making good use of a library or bookstore -- standard smart work.
'Literature' is mostly a case of 'art', and that is mostly
'the communication or interpretation of human experience or emotion'. So, it's about humans and especially their 'experiences' and their emotions, heavily from their 'experiences'. Does literature actually tell you a lot about people? Well, sometimes there are still no better substitutes, but now commonly can get much more solid information from, broadly, 'clinical psychology'.
'Storytelling' can be regarded as an 'ancient Greek mind trick' because it was the ancient Greeks who, apparently first, discovered that the main techniques of 'storytelling', which maybe now we can call 'formula fiction', are a sure fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience. So, sure, TV dramas use those techniques to keep people watching long enough to see the ads.
Why Shakespeare? Because, while maybe you will like it, lots of other people do like it, and for the rest of your life you will be expected to know some of the main points and quotes from Shakespeare or be regarded as 'uneducated'.
Anything actually useful in Shakespeare? Mostly we have better sources now, but sort of: There's a lot in Shakespeare about how humans feel about various parts of life; so can learn something about humans. Can see a lot of bad or dumb behavior from humans, disloyalty, deception, manipulation, self-deception, etc.; again, generally we have better sources now, but, say, Lady Macbeth was one nasty woman. For a good, short introduction to Lady Macbeth, sure, just use the Internet and, sure again, Wikipedia, say,
If you like movies, then with some help from Cliff Notes and the Internet, you can like some Shakespeare. Really, Shakespeare is some of what they had instead of movies long before movies. You enjoy movies; enjoy some Shakespeare.
Literature, mostly just storytelling, is simpler than one might guess. So, usually there is a 'protagonist'; that is the main character in the story. Commonly the story starts out introducing this character in a way that makes him seem real and likable. Then, BOOM, somehow suddenly the protagonist gets a problem of some kind. Now as a reader we get concerned about this character and what happens next, that is, we 'identify' with the character (ancient Greek mind trick). We don't want to walk out after the first one third of the movie, right? So, the story has 'captured our interest'. Or the story has a 'hook' to capture the reader's interest.
Then we get to see how the protagonist handles the problem. At the end the protagonist is usually successful solving the problem. In cowboy movies, the protagonist, say, the Lone Ranger, gets the bad guys. In a lot of movies, e.g., 'Back to School', he gets the girl. So, usually at the end the protagonist is successful solving his problem and the reader or audience is left happy because the audience 'identified' with the protagonist.
For a lot on how to write such stories, see, from an expert, say,
>When homeschooling is workable, going to school is often still a better aspect exactly because having a huge amount of experience with both the good and the bad of social settings is incredibly valuable as an adult (and that most adults have such experience is one of the main reasons adult society does tend to be less nasty IMO - people get fed up with it).
No, the most capable students should be homeschooled if you have the opportunity. They'll end up better-adjusted and will be able to learn more material more thoroughly.
>No, the most capable students should be homeschooled if you have the opportunity
I disagree. Your mileage may vary, but i was homeschooled and the end of elementary and beginning of jr high. It was absolutely devastating to me socially. Socialization is honestly the most valuable thing i learned in high school.
I honestly don't think that you can learn that many adults are horrible people without high school, and at least in high school there is limited damage that can be done, say, economically (of course there is always, on rare occurrences, and god forbid, potentially fatal emotional harm).
I sadly think that it may be that the younger these kids learn about society, the better. Humans are evolutionary beings, we have innate desires and drives, many of which are extremely anti-social. The sooner we learn that the better in my opinion.
A compromise solution is to combine homeschooling with deep involvement in other social activities like sports, bands, choirs, church youth groups, boy/girl scouts (or other similar things), etc. Homeschooling really does have advantages, and I hope its possible to overcome its disadvantages.
Well, as you allude to, I don't think there's a general solution; even a bunch of school teachers who are all different people are likely to have come from a group with fairly homogenous views. I suspect some parents who homeschool do it because they can teach to their own biases, while some do it without awareness of the problem, and others actively attempt to find ways to expose their children to things outside their biases. Those in the first and third groups probably think their way is better than the imperfect delivery of government-mandated biases (for better or worse).
What's wrong with the American society? You can be the country of awesomeness and freedom and entrepreneurship, and at times you also have those weird customs like bullying at school.
So beware game creators: This topic will be "understood" by other European cultures but it will not match what they live at school. For example we keep watching movies like Back to the Future where Marty gets bullied, or others with baby showers and popular girls dressed in pink, but it doesn't match any experience we live here.
About bullying in France: I didn't have any. No physical violence, except once on the beach, so pretty much out of school. I'm pretty sure most French people have never seen a wedgie or a swirlie. I don't even know how to translate those into French. We probably don't have a word for "bully".
Ok, we do have the word "racket". But this is only about stealing. And even in this instance... we use the English word.
So I'd say: Don't lose hope. Society doesn't have to be tough on children. You can change it somehow.
In my opinion, this is key to all of this.
I don't have those bad experiences and can't understand where all these problems come from.
In my experience, from a country which is not usa, kids and teenagers are perfectly capable of making new friends constantly, sometimes they slowly stop hanging around with some of them, occasionally they get into a fight about some specific situation but they forget the day after, maybe they don't get along with somebody or whatever, some friendships last for less than a year and some last forever. But all of this without the drama and the suffering everybody is mentioning here.
So I can't understand when some say "that's life", because that's not life and saying so stops everybody from looking for an alternative.
When I was a kid and later a teenager everybody used to tell me "enjoy your time in school (and later in college), cause once you are out of college your happiest days are behind". That was, in essence, wrong. But it was true in many senses. And that's how it should be everywhere. We should put every effort needed to make it so.
Well, that was certainly from 'I was never bullied' to 'bullying doesn't exist in Europe' in less than 2.8 seconds.
If you'll pardon me for being rather blunt, it's exactly this sort of snooty French uninformed bullshit that gives your country its reputation of arrogant holier than thou know-it-alls.
Bullying is a major problem across Europe, as recognized by the European Commission (and most everybody else in 2014), and a lot of effort has been spend the last 20 years to combat it. Estimates range from 10 to 30 percent of children being bullied at some point in their initial education (that's roughly 'anything before university'). But don't take my word for it, obviously - just 2 minutes of googling could have told you so. And while you're at it, just 20 more minutes will give you not only a much deeper consideration for the problem, but also some chilling examples of lives across the world being ruined by a, for all intents and purposes, emerging behaviour.
What is true though, is France's reputation for its denial of the existence of it (because well, you guys buried all social inequalities after you chopped off the heads of your last kings, right?) and the resulting cognitive dissonance regarding all things bullying. To be fair though, your governments have started recognizing and acting on it a number of years ago (even if it was years after most other member states, but hey, there are plenty of other things that other members states were later than France to adopt, so I'm not harping on that). But apparently not everybody has gotten 'le memo' yet - because well, you were never bullied, so it doesn't exist in Europe, right?
Oh, and because apparently I need to teach you your own language, the word is 'harcelement'.
(for context, I'm not an American, and also this comment is probably more vitriolic than it should be, but hey - I've reached the breaking point for nationalistic nonsense and 'my experience is x, therefore x is universal' idiocy on HN, and this post happened to combine them in the most obnoxious way possible).
My personal experience with US high school as an exchange student is that there was a much higher pressure on being "cool" and "popular", than back home, to a great detrimental effect on the social environment. Students were being unfriendly and mean to each other for no other apparent reason than to climb the social ladder. It also seemed like it was a goal to be disgusting - with indoor spitting, food-fights and generally gross behavior. Not only kids, but also weak teachers were bullied. Reciprocally, some teachers bullied weak students to an extent I consider clearly unprofessional. And god forbid if you were gay or something (this was in the mid-nineties, so a while back now).
How refreshening it was to return to my native high school after that year! Although it had is problem too, at least the norm among student was to be nice to each other. Being "cool" was certainly a thing, but students generally weren't obsessed about it. I am generally nostalgic about my high school days, except the year in the US.
This is just my personal anecdote, and is of course ludicrous to say that "bullying doesn't exist in Europe", but I cannot help but wondering whether my experience fit into a pattern. Watching American teenage dramas, it's just too uncannily like what I observed myself.
Hi roel_v, you're assuming I'm arrogant because I'm French, and it is not nice because I was careful to also praise the upsides of both US and France.
You're also too keen on assuming I like social inequalities. In fact, the place I grew up safe from violence was a Catholic high school: They amount to 20% of French schools and cost €800 per year, compared to the $24000 it costs in Australia. Catholic school are even careful to have hallal meals and the vice manager of mine was muslim. I'm telling there is no discrimintation on race, religion or money here. I'd capture more truth with "People from public schools just hate to be krelboynes" in lieu of all discriminations I hear.
I like Klapaucius' comment because it emphasizes more on a "user story", and it tells us much more than statistics: Inuit people have 27 different words for snow, and we don't have a translation for "this guy is a bully", "wedgie" or "swirlie". "Harceleur" isn't colloquial for schools.
So when one makes a video game about it, he has to take care of culture and markets.
Well that my post wasn't nice is I think indisputable, but I wasn't saying that you're arrogant because you're French, just that the arrogance exhumed by your post reminds me of more often observed behaviour of your fellow countrymen. But let's not dwell on that - it would be silly of me to claim that something in the ink of your passports influences your behaviour.
I'm also not sure how I suggested you like social inequalities - if anything, I'm more inclined to think that you dislike them so much, that you deny their existence in cases where there obviously are. Apart from Catholic schools not costing 25k in Australia (I'm not even sure what the relevance of that is, but I know for a fact that the Catholic secondary school I went to a fundraiser for last year in Adelaide costs around 1000 AUD a year, and other Catholic schools in the greater Adelaide area cost the same; figures that are corroborated by the data I can find online for the rest of Australia). You seem to basically be denying that there is racism, or discrimination of muslims, in France? Are you serious? Because if that is what you're arguing, based on 'a vice principal was a muslim, so there is no discrimination', then I don't even know where to start in refuting you.
Your further argument is even more laughable and not only that, but plain wrong. You seem to be saying that the existence of words in a language indicates something intricate about the culture or society in which that language is used. That Inuit have 27 (or 30, or 50, or 100's) of words for the same thing is plain wrong, and the linguistic debate about what a 'word' means and how that relates to the Inuit language is not very relevant here (but you might want to start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow and http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/there-... ). What is certain though is that the premise you derive from it, doesn't have merit.
So pray tell, what then makes your assertion of 'we don't have bullies because we don't have a word for it' more valid than e.g. my assertion 'the French are in denial about bullying because they don't even have a word for it'? (Apart from that I still don't agree with you on that point - there are plenty of ways French newspapers manage to express the concept every time another suicide because of bullying is in the news).
What enrages me most (well, not enrage, just annoys enough to spend 10 minutes to type this), is that instead of saying 'yeah maybe I kinda mis-expressed reality by making generalizations from what is probably a myopic point of observation', you basically make it even worse by saying 'not only do we not have bullying, we don't have racism or any other form of discrimination either'! In a country where millions are living in banlieues, and which has been officially sanctioned for the forced expulsion of Roma, just to name a few issues!
Not saying we don't have any. I'm saying this form is different in the US. We have racaille, but it's a very different form.
You're reading my comments with the worst mind, max out with pseudo-quotes like "we don't have bullying, we don't have racism", then you say you're "enraged" by what I said.
We do have the answer, it's just unfashionable: "Who said life was fair?". There are plenty of things we experience as humans that aren't good, but the tradeoff is generally worth it. Having a job is one example.
I agree with your last sentence. Unfortunately, I don't think it's that much better to tell them "It's okay, it will be better when you grow up." While it's true that they won't experience customary physical violence or frequent overt verbal abuse in an adult workplace, they most likely will run into bullies. Those bullies will have the same motivations as school bullies and the solution should be much the same: find a way to either fight them or avoid them.
I couldn't agree more. If a child is bullied for a specific reason (not conforming to society's perceptions or expectations) then there is no guarantee that that reason will go away unless society changes (which tends to happen slowly, if at all). Unfortunately, you may find situations were it is hard to either fight or avoid, and you need a more subtle solution. This has happened to me in college and in my internship.
The main difference, I think, is that it's way easier to avoid bullies as an adult.
If there's a bully among your friends, find new friends. If there's a workplace bully, find a new job, or better yet take it up with HR and make him find a new job. If there's a bully who works at a store, don't go to that store. Even in a really bad case, like the bully is on the local police force, you can move to a new city.
There's no adult situation comparable to being forced to spend every weekday in the same building as hundreds of people whose company you don't choose. Except joining the military, I suppose, but that just reinforces how different it is from regular adult life.
That's true, and adults can get trapped. But it's not the norm, and even then, there's always the option of quitting your job and going out to live in the woods or something. It's not necessarily a good option, but even having a potential out that's a bad option can make a big difference, mentally.
>Children should be told that being a schoolkid is a weird kind of environment, the like of which they probably won't experience as an adult. Most workplaces don't involve customary physical violence, or even frequent overt verbal abuse.
on the other side, if school wasn't that hard than college/workplace wouldn't feel that easy by comparison. It it like taking very tight shoes off ...
We can indeed draw strength and well-being from a having a good cry. Sometimes you have to break down in order to come back stronger. But this comes at a price: breaking down is usually still a setback in other ways, and so its value has to be weighed against the situation. There are times when we truly cannot afford to do it.
I think that this game's death-concept is actually a decent model for this. You suffer a setback, but you ultimately come back in a better state than you were in just before it happened, and although you have to face once again some of the problems you'd solved before, you've got the tools to do that. You can still only suffer so many of these before the problem starts to get much more serious, and there are times when suffering even one can be catastrophic. But if you persevere and handle your emotions with care, you can make it through.
From what I've gathered before from some reading on adolescent bullying:
Bullies (not bully-victims):
* A transient, difficult-to-predict population, and perhaps more elegantly thought of as a social position than an individual propensity.
* Bullies generally don't stay bullies, and it's difficult to know who will become a bully.
* Bullying is also an audience-related activity, and is often performed in front of others -- the "bystander" population is in on it, and may provide substantial social rewards to bullies. Even victims may admire bullies.
* Bullies experience improvement in social popularity.
* Bullying events tend to involve a group of bullies against singular or fewer victims.
* The stereotypes that bullies are sociopaths / psychopaths, come from abusive home situations, are anxious or insecure, do not persuasively conform to observations.
* Bullies experience protective effects against loneliness, social anxiety, stress, and some other things. They do better than the normal population on these aspects.
Victims:
* Are a stable population, and may perhaps be more elegantly thought of as an individual propensity, rather than a social position where people move in and out of.
* One study estimates that the victim population constitutes about 10% of the school population.
* A small handful of studies with admitted methodological difficulties finds that those who are bullied at school are also significantly more likely to be bullied on online social networks.
"The nasty politics of social groups has rarely ever crept into my life sense."
Except for the rest of the world that doesn't live up to your, let's be honest, pretty high, political standers required to enter your social group.
"i was able to be friends with people that saw the world in interesting ways, and cared about things that made sense."
If someone wants to be friends with you, knew this is what you valued, and yet didn't 'qualify'; their ability to enter your social group becomes seriously vague and very hard to navigate.
"It gets better when you're able to choose your friends, your you're able to make friends on your own terms, not just pick from those around you."
Ever ponder the possibility that there were, or are, some people out there that just can't figure out your social politics and are maybe confused and lonely wondering what it is about them that you don't like?
I really don't understand your point. I don't like everybody, and not everybody has to like me. That doesn't mean i'm out to actively ruin someone else's day.
If we look at the issue rationally, it's an issue of coordination and sorting. People that have mutual kinship can improve their position with people with similar interests. If you have some sort of "objective coolness" in your theory of friendship, then you may run into issues with constantly shooting yourself in the foot by only pursuing friends that happen to in the upper tiers of your coolness bell curve, and their will always be the paradox of choice, but i'm not really sure why i'm not supposed to have preferences when it comes to the people i associate with.
The game aside ...as a father of two girls, 8 and 6 this scares this shit out of me. My 8 year old is just moving out of the fantasy/play world and hearing what is ahead for her is not comforting. I am still happy I read this, as it gives me a primer on what to expect, and some ideas on how to handle it.
The most striking take-away from this is how the game provided a platform for a Dad to learn more about his daughter. Simply knowing what is causing stress/sadness in your child's life is important, and many times we as parents are too involved with our lives and the practical running of the household to stop and ask how are kids are "feeling" and what scares them or gives them worry.
Didn't expect to get parenting advice from HN today (or ever considering how many 20 something hackers hang here), but happy I did.
Looking at the game pictures of people pointing and laughing when the main character falls sent a chill down my spine. Everyone has at least a few horrid memories of school years, so this definitely seems scarier than zombies or aliens trying to kill your character.
Hopefully it doesn't push the concept too far and become depressing to play. Either way it looks interesting, so I'm in for one.
I love it, although one thing bothers me a bit: this whole concept of "my biggest enemies are other teenagers" doesn't just apply to girls, yet the article kind of makes it sound like it does. This man must either have forgotten large parts of his own childhood, or have had an unusually carefree one. I mean, yes, the "flavour" of nasty, backstabbing social politics is different accross gender roles and cultures, but it's everywhere.
Having said that, it's a worthy subject to build a game around and hope it will tackle the subject in a proper way.
Thanks for saying that. These days I have kind of a thin skin for the implication, which seems to be increasingly prevalent, that the interests and struggles of boys/men are not only perfectly understood, but are too simplistic and trivial to be concerned with; just give the fuckers enough Red Bulls and handguns and watch them party their way to social media startups! Just don't forget to throw a rasher of half-cooked bacon onto the cage floor from time to time. And so on.
Apparently most of the males I've met in my life are incredibly, incredibly dysfunctional.
Yeah, we're really, incredibly dysfunctional. We separate stimulants from depressants, don't like guns too much, and have emotions. Oh, and we only bench-press 2/3 of our body weight (so far... working on it).
May macho-God have mercy on our limp-wristed souls.
A stereotype of a father with only (or many) daughters is that he will grow "soft" towards them and in turn emphasize with their problems, and in turn perhaps also the problems more specific to women in general.
A stereotype of a father and a son is that they will both suffer through their own problems, individually, in silence.
> A stereotype of a father and a son is that they will both suffer through their own problems, individually, in silence.
The trick for me has been to find things to do with my son. My daughter's will randomly unleash a torrent of emotion to me, but my son only talks when I do things like take him fishing or flying kites.
Guys are less subtle -- we're wired to be more attracted to the binary good/bad aspect of things. The male power dynamic is powerful/weak. Girls sweat the details.
I think any teacher or person who deals with kids around middle school age would tell you that girls have more sophisticated social constructs and very different ways of undermining each other than boys.
I'm offering an observation & opinion on a topic of controversy. I'm not a social scientist, and didn't offer this perspective under the guise of scientific authority. I also didn't label or judge anyone -- disagreement with your perspective isn't sexist.
> I also didn't label or judge anyone -- disagreement with your perspective isn't sexist.
> "Guys are less subtle -- we're wired to be more attracted to the binary good/bad aspect of things."
> "Girls sweat the details."
Upon re-reading, you might notice that you did, in fact, both label and judge.
> I don't know why, but girls and boys tend to gravitate towards different types of play. And they do so very young. That's just a fact.
That fact is a very controversial _opinion_ that is on the way out of mainstream thought. Certainly, it isn't a fact in the "tested and proven" sense of the word.
I am amazed by the degree of vitriol that comes out when people observe that there are differing tendencies between boys and girls. I am amazed by the tendency of social scientists to ascribe everything about that to social construction. Observations like these do not mean that a particular human being will be a certain way. They do not mean that one group is better or worse than another.
I think the vitriol arises from the stranglehold progressives have on the use of "science" in public discourse. The only allow "science" to be used is used to demonstrate that women are in some sense more oppressed or less fortunate than men, or that women are more capable or good than men.
There is a double standard when it comes to evidence and argumentation. In one direction, it is ok to use "science" and even "biology". In the other, it is only ok to use sociology or feminist theory.
With all due respect, I suggest you take a minute and read what I said instead of what you're filtering.
I assume that you're deeming "Girls sweat the details" as a dismissive statement. It is not. Middle school girls demand perfection among peers. I remember vividly the hell my sister went through when she did something with her eyebrows that didn't pass muster. One circle of people she was essentially forced to spend time with basically ostracized her.
> Guys are less subtle -- we're wired to be more attracted to the binary good/bad aspect of things. The male power dynamic is powerful/weak. Girls sweat the details.
You clarify latter you are "offering an observation & opinion on a topic of controversy." but there was no way to tell that from the original comment.
A reasonable number of people would read your first comment as a strong held believe perhaps even nearing towards stated as fact. In some the perceived strength of this statement would help them reaffirm their similar believes through the a bandwagon like effect.
Conscience or otherwise, to counter act this effect many seem to respond with counteracting strong statement.
> I assume that you're deeming "Girls sweat the details" as a dismissive statement.
I would think it is more likely the "wired" part of your statement which many would interrupt as meaning genetically or inherently and elimianting/diminishing the involvement of social/cultural momentum.
Jane Katch, author of Under Deadman's Skin: Discovering the Meaning of Children's Violent Play. "And that's a problem for a lot of boys. Some boys in my class need to move a lot. I call them 'high energy boys.' These boys simply can't sit still as long as most of the girls. They don't have the fine motor skills girls do, so many will make big constructions like block towers, while girls will work on smaller, more delicate pictures."
> I would again say that you can think whatever you want, but don't accuse and label me as something that I am not because I disagree with you.
I was not contesting anything along these lines.
In addition nilved was relatively careful by labeling you comment, "Your comment is sexist and pseudoscientific.", not you.
> boys are in fact wired differently
I did not see anyone disagreeing with that.
What I saw people trigger off of was stating what that difference was "we're wired to be more attracted to the binary good/bad aspect of things." without presenting reasonable evidence.
As someone who works with kids (ages 7-18), I'll comment from my own experience. There isn't a lot of difference. I can't deny there some mild tendency of boys and girls acting differently in the ways described above. BUT, in a "free" environment (which is where I work) that difference is so small that I really can't say whether it's caused by latent external expectations of society and the parts thereof that still haven't caught on to the huge importance of emancipation and compassion, instead of by some intrinsic factor of the biology of the kids themselves.
That said, I can't really scientifically/rationally 100% dismiss it either.
HOWEVER, there is one really important takeaway from this, which is separate from whether it's biological or not. There may be a tendency, but it is vastly overshadowed by differences in character between individuals, which do exist, and it's important to be mindful and aware of those. If left to their own devices without too much external pressure, I see "girly" boys and "boyish" girls (ranging from minor personality traits and interests to wearing different clothes, make-up, hairstyles, jewelry). Everyone is all over the spectrum, really. And that's beautiful.
In my line of work (teaching kids computer and technology stuff), there is a group of (mostly older) women working actively to focus on girls' interest for technology. Which is a noble cause, of course. And they're doing great work ... if it was last century, when this seemed like a good idea in emancipation/feminism. They don't get it if I comment on this, think I am on the wrong side of this battle. But by focusing purely on girls, trying to show them there is also "cool stuff for girls" to do in technology, they are so doin' it wrong .. What about the "girly boys" that would love to take part in activities like this? They got left behind. What about the "boyish girls" that think this stuff is boring and would rather build a action-packed videogame or learn about XSS and SQL-injections ..
So yeah, my point is, biological tendencies or not, they are (in my anecdotal experience) vastly overshadowed by individual personality characteristics.
> That fact is a very controversial _opinion_ that is on the way out of mainstream thought. Certainly, it isn't a fact in the "tested and proven" sense of the word.
Did you read the article he linked? These differences have been demonstrated in independent studies. And contrary to what you might read on Tumblr, the knowledge that there are observable differences between boys and girls is still very much in the mainstream.
It's neither sexist nor pseudoscientific, but rather well supported by evidence. Just because you wish a fact weren't so doesn't make it any less true.
There has been a lot of study into sexual dimorphisms. Check wikipedia for a primer[0]. Or grab yourself a basic neuroscience textbook[1].
That being said, the poster above stated, "Guys are less subtle -- we're wired to be more attracted to the binary good/bad aspect of things. The male power dynamic is powerful/weak. Girls sweat the details." These are very vague statements which do not relate to specific cognitive tasks, so no research can tell you about whether or not "Girls sweat the details." Unless a statement like this is restated, it is not testable, and therefore is not supported by current evidence. If something like "Males performed differently on average at a spatial task A, or a cognitive task B," then maybe you could find some scientific literature.
At the very least, unqualified and vague statements like that posted only serve to confuse, and may be considered potentially sexist.
Thanks for posting links to research. I agree that the poster you refer to could have been more clear in his/her thought, but my general point was that merely discussing sex differences shouldn't be grounds to accuse people of sexism. Regardless of whether you're happy about it or not sex differences exist and on average different genders are better at different tasks. This is pretty solid psychology and no reputable psychologist would disagree with this. What it doesn't mean is that every woman is better than every man in certain areas or vice-versa, but it does mean there are patterns of behavior more common in women than in men, etc.
> sex differences shouldn't be grounds to accuse people of sexism.
I have often seen people hold the assumption that you have a strong opinion on exactly what the mental difference are between male, female, etc with out good research to back it up then it is likely due to sexism.
What percentage of people are jumping to conclusions arbitrarily rather then allowing their conclusions to biased for their own ends. Most seem to assume the latter is more likely.
Sex and gender are two different things, and no reputable psychologist would agree with a statement that blithely conflates them.
The arguments you're making perpetuate structural oppression of women. One might as well talk about how race differences exist and on average different ethnicities are better at different tasks. (That is to say, I find the language you're using morally repugnant.)
I have no problem with research, my problem is with vague innuendo. More than that, most people aren't qualified to interpret such research, and people who talk about differences between the sexes are usually speaking about their personal beliefs while trying to wrap them in a veneer of science. I find it difficult to believe that a scientist who has done a thorough survey of the research would make a flippant remark like the one I replied to.
Citation needed. It does not mesh with my experience of life. Though it does seem that boys are socially pressured to act as if it were true, which can make it look from the outside as if it is.
What are you saying? That there are differences between the sexes, psychologically? That's not what was taken issue with, here. That was the specific proposed difference of men being simpler/more straightforward in some psychological sense.
If you meant to refer to the latter, then linking a whole Wikipedia article on psychological sexual differences seems a bit unspecific.
I'm saying that claiming different sexes interact with the world differently and have different strengths and weaknesses does not make you a sexist. I also claim that there is strong evidence to support this assertion and that the vast majority of psychologists and biologists (and virtually every respected one) believe there are innate psychological differences between the sexes not explained through environment alone. The entire field of evolutionary psychology is based on this idea.
You seem to be arguing against something that nobody debated. What we are debating is the specific claim that "guys are less subtle" and "wired to be more attracted to the binary good/bad aspect of things" and that "the male power dynamic is powerful/weak", while "girls sweat the details". My experience is not that the sexes interact with world identically, but that those specific sorts of claims are hackneyed stereotypes and that in reality both men and women are individuals with the full range of complexity that implies. Furthermore, I think it sucks that largely because of the commonality of those sorts of stereotypes that it can be difficult for both boys and girls to behave differently than they are "supposed to".
I'll confirm his opinion anecdotally. I don't think that there's any science on the subject; despite its importance in adult development, it seems that few people actively study the interactions of teenagers.
When I was going through school, people grouped themselves according to activity. The football players all hung out together; so did the baseball players, D&D players, drama kids, band kids, etc. Kids were affiliated with multiple groups according to interest; a kid could be, for example, a football player, a baseball player, a member of the chess club, and an academic decathlete, and his network of friends reflected that. This was independent of being male or female; girls did the exact same thing with their sports, clubs, and activities.
The difference was how hierarchy was determined. With boys, it was either not really thought about, (who is the leader of an electronics hobby group?) or leadership was determined by a default position (football quarterback, team captains, etc). There was relatively little struggle going on.
In contrast, with girls, there was always infighting because there was no default leader and there was a perceived need for one. With no default leader, girls were constantly jostling each other to get a leg up on the competition. It led to the insane results of, "I'm friends with Sharon, but I fucking hate her" and "Oh, we're best friends now, but if I get the chance to ditch you for another group of better-connected friends, you're gone."
Both mindsets were pretty retarded - the guys' mindset often had bad results because of the fact that a great quarterback might be an idiot,[1] and the hierarchy reflects that because all of the high-ranking people are now his dumbshit friends. But it just seems to me like the girls' mindset could never get good results, whereas the boys' mindset could succeed by accident if the stars aligned and made a nice, smart kid really good at throwing a prolate spheroid.
In both cases, the proper thing to tell kids seems to be Paul Graham's advice of "Look around. The world you guys have created is dumb as hell and fake as a Twinkie. You won't be dealing with this idiocy once you have something real to work on. And if you do, you can do better and find a place where people aren't playing high-school games."
Identifying different behavior in genders doesn't exactly make him sexist. Not in the bad sense anyway. Personally i think the notion that both genders behave identically (on average) is flawed.
No kidding. The implication seems to be that boys play video games with zombies is because the biggest thing boys are afraid of is zombies. Or wild pokemon. Or what have you.
Nothing of the sort. As already said by Liesmith, you shoot them down in the thousands. In the vast majority of personal combat games, a huge amount of enemies come at you, in an endless procession. Zombies are an easy plot point to explain why so many, and there's no moral question about killing lots of them - no-one is seriously going to write an article complaining about zombie feelings in light of such a game. They're implacable foes that just keep coming, and people don't care as much if the AI is very simple. Why would a human foe just come at me without considering cover? Oh, hang on, it's a zombie, no need to ask the question.
They aren't, though. Zombies are vastly inferior in all ways (including destructive potential) to their videogame-playing foes. You shoot them down in their thousands.
If you compare one zombie to one bully. But if you think that one bully = all the zombies in the game, then it is not so easy to overcome all the zombies.
I'm male and I never was part of any political machinations in high school or college. It's definitely not everywhere. Every behaviour obviously exists in every gender, but playing nasty political machinations at an early age is definitely girls' forte and almost never observed with boys.
Your personal anecdote is not conclusive evidence for the statement in the second sentence, and to inappropiately attempt to counter it with my own: I've been a misfit for the the first two decades of my life, and been on the receiving end of "let's pick on the weirdo to establish dominance and decide our own internal pecking order" far too often to accept that nasty political machinations are "almost never observed with boys" - if anything that just shows you haven't really looked.
That was a fascinating and well-written article, and for a parent of young daughters, a depressing one that makes me doubt my strength to be a sufficiently good father.
That aside, the game has a problem, in my view: it's too real. It sounds like a game that provides you with more of the crushing disappointments that fill real life, and it reinforces the idea that you ought to be so awesome that bullies leave you alone — which will never happen.
In regard to being a father of daughters, I can share one thought, as a parent of one (now grown) daughter. Create a time or place where each daughter feels totally safe in sharing with you whatever is on their mind. This requires a serious dedication to honing the skills of listening. I find that total listening is no small feat.
> That aside, the game has a problem, in my view: it's too real.
Exactly. I don't play zombie-based video games because zombies scare me. I play them because zombies are fun to kill. This game seems a little too realistic.
Then again, it might be a good thing to confront some real-world fears in a video game. I could see a game like this working really well if it's designed right.
I don't disagree with your point, but Heavy Rain is a pretty out-there example. The game revolves around rescuing a child from a murderer. Though there were realistic aspects to Heavy Rain, the game itself is centered around a very unrealistic core story.
> it reinforces the idea that you ought to be so awesome that bullies leave you alone — which will never happen.
Anecdata: bullies don't leave you alone because you're awesome, they leave you alone because their bullying doesn't work on you (because you're resilient to personal attacks, or you pretend to not care until they exhaust the possibilities and leave you alone etc.) or backfires on them somehow.
> bullies don't leave you alone because you're awesome, they leave you alone because their bullying doesn't work on you (because you're resilient to personal attacks, or you pretend to not care until they exhaust the possibilities and leave you alone etc.) or backfires on them somehow.
I can tell from experience that this is not how it works. Real bullies never leave you alone until you stand up and fight back. It's the amount of energy it takes for them to bully, not the amount of damage they do.
They don't care how resilient you are or whether you care about the bullying or not, when their bullying doesn't have any bad consequences or the potential for bad consequences. Only if you make it hard for bullies to bully it stops.
I'm rather disappointed that whenever the topic of bullying comes up, everyone seems to just extrapolate from their own experiences and assume that all bullying everywhere is identical. Or worse, claim that anything that doesn't match their experiences "isn't real bullying". I think the broad lack of agreement among people's accounts should make it pretty obvious that not all bullies are the same.
Personally, I found ignoring the few bullies I encountered in school to be pretty effective, but I'm also aware that what I experienced was pretty tame compared to some stories I've heard.
How big an N do you have to get to go from anecdotes to data? Basically my entire family, for two generations, where bullied. I am pretty sure my grandparents would have been bullied too, except it was long enough ago that nobody cared when boys smacked each other around.
Our bullying stopped when we fought back, or moved out of school. And yes the bullying continues to hunt us to this day.
>Only if you make it hard for bullies to bully it stops.
One way of doing that, that many people have found successful, is to not let them bother you. If you're no longer interesting to bully, they'll ignore you for someone who is.
I wish it was easy like that. I don't know anyone who has successfully "not-bothered-away" bullies. They will stop as soon as it's socially no longer a gainful action for them. Not bothering may be part of it but it's certainly not sufficient.
It's hard to simplify something like bullying, but there can be a pecking order involved, where people who are bullied in turn bully other people whom they feel they can influence in some way.
So, in some cases you may only need to push back to the point where you're not the easiest target in the room. ie, you don't always have to be the fastest runner to get away from animal who is looking for easy prey. You just have to be faster than the slowest runner.
It's like stepping in the same puddle every day on the walk to school. It's not out-and-out fun, but it's a habit, a pattern, and if it might provide 3 seconds of entertainment, that's worth it. "Not being fun" won't make it stop.
That's a bit like telling people who live in dangerous areas that the best response to a mugger is not to let them impoverish you. Bullies select people who seem physically or emotionally fragile to start with.
It's more like telling people who live in dangerous areas not to walk around looking scared and confused. Which we do...
I have to agree with the sentiment expressed elsewhere in the thread, that bullies bully for different reasons. The only time I have been bullied, avoidance and not showing a response worked, because the bully had low self-esteem and was looking for acceptance from his peers by picking on smaller kids. When he saw that he wasn't getting anywhere with that, he stopped.
Which is what makes this game weird. Just some quick initial thoughts:
> The game tracks Gemma’s emotional state. When she’s running fast and jumping high, she feels good and the world is filled with light and color. When she gets laughed at, her mood darkens and the world darkens with her.
That just reinforces that bullying inevitably and inexorably leads to depression. And then it also reinforces that acting happy ("running fast and jumping high") is the way to counteract it.
In other words, it's the old standby advice of "just ignore them" in video game form.
Nope, you need to keep the game's context in mind. The task is to get the pizza from point A to point B as fast as possible. Thus Gemma isn't simply fleeing, she's ignoring the bullies and focusing on doing what she wants to do. Depression comes from letting the bullies control her and happiness comes from refusing to do so. This very concept is in fact expressly embodied in the game with a little sequence where letting them get to her makes her fall to the ground, and she has to force herself to get back up and keep going.
"You don’t kill the enemies in Ninja Pizza Girl. You can’t even knock them out. Sure, you can bowl them over for a second or two but if you hang around they’ll get right back up again. Running away is just as viable as attacking and sometimes more so. Running fast makes Gemma feel good about herself and feeling good is the most fragile resource in the game."
I'd say running fast isn't just about delivering pizza fast, it seems to be about avoiding bullies too.
This is the attitude of a bullying victim. Bullies leave you alone if you fit in, they don't leave you alone if you don't. It's not about being awesome or resilient, it's about conformity.
It is not about conformity, it is about power. At my high school people didn't bother the goth kids because they stood up for each other.
In the same way the openly gay (this was back 15 years ago) guy in the drama team was never bullied because he was friends with the cheerleaders who had the power to stop it.
The problem is nerds rarely stick up for each other. Whenever I saw a nerd get bullied in high school all his friends would be acting as small as possible in order to avoid getting involved. The conflict avoidance enables bullying.
It's not about conformity; it's about visibility. If you're conforming, you're a lot more invisible (and, it must be said, protected). There are other ways to become invisible, but I'm not sure the cost is worth the independence.
What you see as a problem is exactly what I like about the game. To me, parenting often feels like walking a tightrope: you have to preserve a delicate balance between presenting the world as it should be and presenting it as it is. The former is meant to instill values, the latter is meant to prepare and protect. Too much of the former sets the kid up for a huge disappointment. Too much of the latter would be crushing.
That's why I would love to see a game like this, a game that addresses the problem, but ultimately remains a game you can have fun with. The best works I've ever read/seen/played are subtle: they don't shove their ideas down your throat, but make you think about their nuances later.
I'm not a parent, but have had to "babysit" teens and young adults with slowed development (autism etc) for a while now. That's really the extent of what I teach them: Be awesome. Love can only be freely given and respect can only be hard-earned.
Sometimes we turn to art (such as games) to forget about the problems we face in our reality. Sometimes we turn to art because we're desperate to see our reality reflected somewhere else, to be reassured that we're not alone.
Agreed -- reading it, it felt like it needed to be more allegorical. As for the lesson, I think it should be "learn how to love yourself, so people's negativity can't penetrate you," but I didn't see anything in the article that indicated that was the takeaway. Then again, maybe games shouldn't be purveyors of morality lessons.
>Then again, maybe games shouldn't be purveyors of morality lessons.
I don't see why not. Video games are no different from any other form of information delivery method, except that they're more interactive. Actually, I think this would make them even better tools for helping to teach morality. While you can pick up some morality from books or movies, those are other people's stories in which you're simply an observer. In a game, (especially more modern ones) you typically have more control over the character's actions.
Take, for example, a game which gives you a choice to steal from somebody and, if you do, it shows you the repercussions of your choice. Maybe you come back to that town later and the person is a beggar who pleads with you to give him some coin so he can feed his kids. Or maybe you come back and the entire town is like that because you stole everything that wasn't nailed down. Written well, I don't see why dialog and visual cues like these can't be powerful morality lessons- more powerful than any other teaching method we have except perhaps for real-life experiences.
Of course, the idea is to teach our kids those lessons before they learn them in real life, with real life repercussions.
I remember reading something by the designer of the Putt-Putt adventure games where he ran up against this issue.
The Putt-Putt games were adventure games designed for kids, say 6-10 years old or so. And obviously since they're adventure games, you have to pick up everything that isn't nailed down because it might be useful in a puzzle later.
But the publishers of the game didn't want to encourage kids to just pick everything up in real life! So the developers had to, every time Putt-Putt picked something up, make him say "This looks like somebody lost it; maybe I can find the owner!".
Jason I am father of 12r old daughter, hang in there. It does not have to be like described in the article, try to show her that being liked is not important and know the families of her friends, those are the keys. It's tough, not 100%, but worth it, good luck.
Its a storey brought to life. As such it can explore what your children will inevitably encounter, and lets them experiment with responses without being really hurt. Its wonderful.
Historically, males compete and establish superiority by fighting and physical strength. Females do it with mind games. That's why females are more emotionally manipulative than males are, in general.
Wow, how incredibly simplistic and wrong-headed. You're discounting politics, which has been an all-male or male-dominated arena for millennia and which thrives on emotional manipulation.
The idea that women are mostly feelers and men are mostly doers writes off both men and women as useless stereotypes.
Context: We're talking about teenagers. Yes, teenage boys have politics, and emotional cruelty. Still, on average, teenage boys are more physically aggressive and less emotionally manipulative than teenage girls.
Fun fact: the physical aggression comes after the emotional manipulation. The difference isn't that boys are more physical; it's that they don't hide the results.
I don't think it is correct to speak in such absolutes. Sometimes a fight is just a fight.
I got into my fair share of trouble when I was a kid; both starting fights without any real provocation and being the recipient of aggression without any real provocation. Much of the time it was caused by an unnecessary escalation of previously fun 'play' violence (towel fights in the locker room was a biggie).
I can only think of two fights that were prompted by some form of emotional argument or dispute: In middle school I fought a bully at my bus-stop, and a year or two later a kid I had been bullying in boy scouts nearly broke my nose.
I am disputing that "the physical aggression comes after the emotional manipulation" is always the case. Sometimes it is provoked by little more than a snapped towel (good fun) accidentally hitting somebody's balls (not good fun, and likely to start a fight). Fights that break out during or after contact sports are another obvious example, unless you are defining "emotional manipulation" in such a way that you can say that hockey players tend to do it non-verbally while on the ice... Consider also a snowball fight that involves increasingly hard chunks of snow or ice which eventually escalates to grappling in a snowbank.
"Real provocation" in my above comment would be the sort of "emotional manipulation" that you are talking about.
Again, your field is too narrow. Widen the context. You're trying to pitch fights as spontaneous events between people whose relationships are completely unspecified.
Conveniently, this makes it impossible to map out any potential emotional manipulation. It's like saying that World War I happened with no real provocation; it was just these random nations snapping towels at each other and somebody got hit in the balls, boo hoo.
Tell me who these hypothetical people are, who flip a switch and kick their neighbor's ass for no reason. Tell me how many months older they are. What competitions did they win recently? What's their relationship to the teachers? How long have they known each other? Why are some of them friends, and others merely classmates? What do they look like, to each other? What are their parents' relationships? What clubs did they join? And so on and so on.
Do you mean a minority of alpha males and females? The environment and economics have changed, which might mean metrosexuals, beta males, and other groups have become desirable by some segments of society.
In order for someone to be a "beta male", it implies they are being competitive, too. They are just less successful than the "alpha males".
"Metrosexual" is just a more PC way of calling men who care a lot (relatively) about their appearance/grooming gay. The term has supposedly nothing to do with sexual orientation, yet the term is ostensibly about it since it has "sexual" as a suffix. (And I don't really see how so-called metrosexuals can't be competitive.)
In short a lot of this comes down to the distinctions between sex, gender, and sexual orientation. Over the past two decades attitudes have shifted to where most people can clearly distinguish sexual orientation from sex and gender, but society still has a way to go in figuring out how gender differs from biological sex. The distinction between these two does not affect the majority of individuals, however, which is probably why most people do not care to distinguish the two.
I don't think that being a so-called metrosexual has anything to do with gender identity. There are probably a lot of metrosexual men that don't self-identify with femininity any more than the average man.
As far as divorcing biological sex and gender - well a lot of guys insult each other by calling each other women for whatever reason. There is no allusions to being gay, and apparently a man can be a "woman" even though his sex is a man. But somehow this doesn't seem very constructive or inclusive.
I didn't mean to imply that the term metrosexual is strictly related to gender. I know that terms like this, as well as behavior about calling someone by the opposite sex or gender as an insult are things that differ a lot by culture and circumstance. I personally don't like it; in high school I was once (or more? I can't remember) labeled a "bitch" as an insult (incidentally I am male sex but prefer to identify as neutrois or genderqueer as my gender identity).
My point is that precisely because society tends to use these terms as insults, and because there is no approach common to society, we have a lot of work to go in revising our approach to views of gender identity, sexuality, masculinity, and femininity in society.
Not that I agree or disagree with your statement, it's almost impossible for someone of the opposite gender to fully understand the extreme differences between genders in high school.
I've heard stories from girls that went way beyond what I experienced as a guy in school. But I wouldn't extrapolate those stories too far. Just keep in mind that some people (boys or girls) might have gone through way more than you did.
It's interesting that the author's first idea was a combat-based game. For some reason, the world of game development has to a large degree becomes fixated on the idea of combat and violence. So games that don't necessarily need it have it anyway, even when it doesn't make sense (see Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock). Always picking violence as the go-to gameplay mechanic is so limiting, and it's exciting to see games that avoid it and go for something more appropriate to the concept.
It's fun. I like to shoot things and blow shit up and hit people with swords.
Very rarely do I find the story in a game good enough to care about some neologism like "ludonarrative dissonance".
I find these "important" games like Bioshock to be pretty embarrassing and childish in the story department. Ken Levine is not the first person to take on Ayn Rand. That's like shooting fish in a barrel. The pretentiousness of that game is just over the top. But it's a lot of fun, because they nailed the blowing shit up part.
I'm not suggesting that combat-based games aren't fun. I've spent countless hours playing first-person shooters and the like, and they can be absolutely wonderful. However, I am also interested in video games as an artistic (not -commercial) medium, and I think that going to combat as the core mechanic just by reflex can limit games in that respect.
As far as Bioshock is concerned, I think it does a decent job with the story, but more importantly I think it represented just another step forward for video games as an artistic medium. It showed that games with a concept or philosophical point could have market appeal, and it paved the way for greater interest in such games down the road. There are stories and ideas that video games, through their interactivity, are uniquely suited to tell, and as a relatively new medium people are still figuring out what its strengths are, and how to make real art with it.
You may not care for video games as an art form. You may only be interested in them as a source of entertainment. That's fine! That's wonderful! We can have both! I am simply happy to see increased interest in video games as art, and I think that something as simple as moving beyond the idea of combat as the core mechanic is an important step toward realizing all that video games can be.
I am interested in games as an art form. But a lot of these "artistic" darlings strike me as pretentious drivel. To me, Portal was much more successful than Bioshock as an art piece. It wasn't dancing around trying to tell me how important it is.
I also happen to think the mechanics of a shooter can be art.
I also think that. The problem is that most people focus on the "meaning", "emotion", "philosofical" aspect when making these "art games". That mostly involves the game's story and narrative, and that is only a subset of game design/development.
I consider something artistic when it displays the creator's mastery of the craft. So yeah, Portal is art. Dear Esther? Pretentious drivel, without a doubt!
If you want a great art game, that was made to BE an art game and is not a deep philosofical piece try The Marriage [1]. This game actually disturbed me, as I considered Rod Humble to have achieved IT, to have created the first PURE videogame. Give it a try.
If you thought Bioshock or infinite were simply indictments on Ayn Rand or American Exceptionalism, then you must've also thought Grapes of Wrath was just about a family's migration from the dustbowl to California.
Bioshock frames its story with the ideas of Ayn Rand, but is actually a story about objective goodness, family and love.
Infinite is a story about stories and about the cyclical nature of everything.
I'm not sure Bioshock Infinite was really about one thing. Only about 5% of the game is a story about stories. Most of it is a story about a woman learning to be her own agent rather than a means to other people's ends, and after that it's about the question of self-determination versus fate (this is pretty much the Lutece Twins' entire role). It begins and ends on the note you're talking about here, but those themes don't really seem to be as pervasive as the themes of The Grapes of Wrath.
That's fair. Both games were a bit ephemeral regarding their themes (which were numerous), but it certainly isn't fair to say they're derivative because they "tackled Ayn Rand".
There are plenty of games out there that aren't fixated on combat and violence. Strategy games like the Civ series or EU IV have very abstracted combat, and are better described as conflict or competition (combat isn't core gameplay). Strategy games like Spacechem have nil violence. Then there are endless builder games like minecraft, where combat very much takes a back seat, and you can avoid it if you like. There are lots of platformers with no combat - 'running' games, where you avoid obstacles (a category the game in the article falls into). Three are more than a few horror games where you have no combat ability, like Slenderman. There's investigative or story games that have little or no combat in them, like say LA Noir, or most point-n-click adventures. There's also unusual games like Rocksmith where you plug your guitar into the PC. Just now, I've been playing Waking Mars, a game that is basically a gardening sim (oh, and there's gardening sims like Farmville). Then there are the sports and other sims - Steam just had a sale on a 'car mechanic simulator', and I'm not really sure it's reasonable to call things like NBA 2014 a 'combat-based' game. Driving and flying sims are also popular, and the queen of sims is the 'generic human sim' Sims 3, which is combatless. Then there's logic games like Tetris or 2048.
If you think that the idea of a game without violence is worth noting, then you're really not bothering to look at what games are out there.
Violence is accessible. Tom and Jerry could have a nice philosophical dialog in the park, but that would put Tom and Jerry beyond it's target audience. Instead, they smack each other around with frying pans.
Even shows that shoot for the more pacifist/philosophical angle tend to prominently feature violence (Doctor Who seems like an obvious example).
Because combat is inherently exciting in a way that most things are not. Combat naturally engages the mind, it changes the world in a visceral and immediate and often flashy way, and it ties in neatly with the narrative concepts of conflict and struggle. Video games are uniquely well-suited for combat. It isn't the only thing they can do, certainly, but I don't think it's fair to suggest that having combat in a video game is a failure of creativity. Combat just takes up a really large portion of the creative space there. Similarly, dramatic films have a strong tendency to focus on humans despite the fact that there are narratives that could be constructed around non-human entities.
This isn't a feature of teenage-hood by the way. The same patterns (power cliques, bullying, etc) are common in prisons.
This is a feature of a coercive, homogeneous environment. Modern schooling - especially public schooling - looks like it was designed by someone who took "Lord of the Flies" for an instruction manual.
"I just saw Dazed and Confused ... Even as an adult, the movie is great. It perfectly captures the intensities and subtleties of the social hierarchy at a large public school; it’s akin to prison.
"And for anyone who has gone to a large public school then you know that it is likely the closest thing to prison you will ever experience (and because of that, you are my brother). I was at the mercy of the hierarchy but then of course ritually enforced it. Nothing ever mean or nasty but there were circles and power, mystique around certain cliques and I respected it. We chased that power, reacted against it, then exerted it.
"That power between social groups in school, it never breaks down neatly as it does in the other teen comedies. It’s not the nerds versus jocks. The jocks usually didn’t have enough charisma to be truly popular. It was always the dual edged, cross pollenating ones that carried the most glamour. The jock-stoner; the hot-nerd; the dangerous-attractive dude-who graduated but you would still blow; the shady mean girls who were the ultimate enforcers of social power — they come in many forms, sometimes even in overalls."
Even the ones trying to do well are hamstrung by the lack of role models. Even if there is a teacher in the room, she/he spends the whole time talking down to kids. That's nearly the only example kids have for interacting with other human beings, since they rarely get to see adults interacting with each other during the school day.
It's interesting that the fear, pain, scarring and all around serious threat (above and beyond physical violence even) of humiliation, insults and generally making people 'feel like crap' can be acknowledged the way it is here, but a physical response to such things is universally deemed unacceptable and unjustified.
If a kid punches his peer in the face for engaging in the sort of sadistic mind games and public ridicule which leaves wounds that heal far slower than a bloody nose he (the puncher) will end up with the blame.
In my experience, most people won't even entertain this topic, it's an immediate retreat to 'sticks and stones' and simplistic notions of bullying straight out of 60 year old Archie Comics.
Growing up decades ago, my dad had this to say--schoolyard bullies and fights happened, and worst case parents were brought in or kids sent home. Sometimes, the gym coach would just drag the kids over and give them gloves and let them go at it. This was at a public school.
Currently, zero-tolerance policies have removed a long-standing safety-valve for this kind of torment. As a result, we see things like this, like Columbine, like many other things--and feed the school to prison pipeline.
>'Currently, zero-tolerance policies have removed a long-standing safety-valve for this kind of torment.'
Absolutely.
It feels to me like forgotten wisdom that unfortunately can't be taught after the fact.
If a person has grown up in a way that they didn't just fail to realize the utility of that valve but learned to fear and despise it there's very little chance of changing that.
We've traded the annoying whistle and an occasional blast of scalding steam for some percentage of kettles that simply explode with no notice.
Actually, punching a kid in the face in the middle of class was a viable strategy for getting adults to deal with bullying when I was in school. They could ignore the bullying up until then, but once there was a physical altercation in front of them, they had to admit there was a problem.
I got suspended (1 day out of school, 2 days in-school) but the bullying got dealt with. YMMV
To talk about the kickstarter campaign for a second: It seems that they've seriously undervalued or underestimated the amount of interest in the game: the highest reward is $1000 and it's gone (there's only one) the next highest reward is $300 (5) and they're all gone too. meanwhile they still need to make over $25,000 in basically just game sales, which can erode future game sales (when the game is officially released)
They are also asking for an insanely small amount of money for a game that won't be out for another 9 months, while promising to develop for 4 of the 7 major platforms.
Best of luck, I hope it's good because this is the first AUS kickstarter I'm supporting.
It is amazing. Adults worry about their peers. When you look at what professionals want out of their careers, it's "respect of their peers."
Yet they seem to think that this doesn't matter to teenagers.
Now, as a teenager, it's true that 1) your peers are a bunch of idiots, and 2) none or few of these people will be in your life in 5 years, let alone 10.
Those lessons can be hard to sink in, and the adult can be too quick to forget that the teenager has no reason to have internalized them.
1 and 2 also applies to many adults and their peers. I think the main difference is as you stated that teenagers haven't internalized those lessons yet.
That's the thing about getting woken up every two hours for years on end when your kids are babies - it erases your memory of what it was like not to have kids. Which is probably a good thing, really, because if you could remember, it wouldn't be good for your sanity or your kids health. You only really start to understand your parents when you have kids of your own.
Two things came to mind reading this: Ender's Game and Snow Crash. The former because the identification of your peers as adversaries, bullies, the real threat, not the aliens threatening humanity. Snow Crash because there's something to be said about tough delivery girls.
The tone of the game, and in discussions of bullying in general, seem to be that the player just cannot deal with social disapproval and the choices are:
1) learn to smile while others toss bombs at you
2) withdraw
How about a 3)? If your daughter is displeased with being at the bottom of the social hierarchy, why not encourage her to be on top? Encourage strength and stop squashing ambition. Ninja Pizza Girl can photograph them back with scathing Instagram comments or whatever. She can get a makeover and work out, which will not only increase her social standing but improve her mental acuity and fight depression. The game should end with the other pizza girls fighting each other to be her best friend.
When I was in early grade school, I was unpopular and a target for being picked on. I was unhappy about that and launched an in retrospect quite cynical campaign to increase my status. Basically, I targeted the highest-status boy in my class and devotedly worked to become his friend. I invited him to events and talked with him and laughed at his jokes. I didn't particularly like him, but I was successful and took up a role of second-highest status boy. Then I ruthlessly defended my position.
Second grade was kind of weird.
Anyhow, I have to say that as weird as I see it in retrospect, it worked pretty well for me. I didn't super enjoy maintaining my relationship with the other boy, but I liked it a lot more than being a low status person others picked on.
My daughter is a preteen and has discovered Animal Jam (and turned her younger brothers on to it as well). No violence, just lots of exploring, collecting and trading. The social aspect seems to be the major hook.
I think this is a refreshing approach to a game. As others have mentioned, a lot of recent game development has a focus on smashing your enemies to bits with increasingly powerful moves or weapons while this game is attempting to depict the nuances of navigating a much more complex reality.
You can't just sneak up on your snarky condescending peers and squash them with a giant squeaky hammer. You have to figure out ways to coexist with them, and even sometimes cooperate, while avoiding their toxic natures.
Sometimes the solution involves finding the good peers among the bad, other times it may involve finding common ground, and perhaps sometimes it involves recognizing a lost cause and making your interactions with particularly toxic people minimal.
There are a number of reasons I'm happy to support this game. It may not get everything right, it may not become a top seller on release, but it does have a target audience and message that I personally would like to see more of in the game industry.
Wonderful crossover piece. I could email this to members of my family or my other nerd friends. It's intimate and shareable. Plus it works as a promo for the game. The structure is nice, and it flows. Most excellent.
This was a great article actually. Most game devs are men, so we don't understand this point of view so well. I may be inspired to write a "girl" game with such insights. Thank you for sharing it :)
> Most game devs are men, so we don't understand this point of view so well.
I don't know about that. The stuff described in the article don't seem to be things unique to the female gender. In fact, I'm sure many of us here struggled with the same issue Kari went through when we were young boys.
No, it doesn't. Teenage boys are bullied physically, not emotionally -- and you can't ignore physical damage the way you can trivially ignore some mean words.
I was never hurt or even just beat up. I don’t think I was ever in a fight or ever threw a punch (to this day). I can recall two incidents of physical bullying. One was two bullies blocking my path to the school with their bikes (I drove into them full speed which made them call me crazy and go away), and one was the same two bullies taking away my backpack and throwing it down a bridge.
Also, I find the way you discount non-physical bullying extremely troubling. No, you can’t just ignore mean words if that means isolating yourself from many vital social interactions. It’s not like you have much choice on who to interact with in school. You will be together with those people, you can’t flee it, you can’t close your ears. They can get to you if they want to.
This pervasive violence must be an American thing or something, or maybe it’s a class thing in Germany (where I grew up, middle class, school that directly qualifies you for university)? It just never happened to me at all.
I also don’t have a solution when you are being bullied. For me it just stopped at a certain point. Bullies turned into people who just left me alone. They didn’t want to have anything to do with my, but they also didn’t bully me at all. I think they grew out of it and it had nothing to do with me at all, only them.
(Hm, maybe I should add an example of emotional bullying to balance out the descriptions of physical bullying: We were on this trip to Berlin in the huge lobby of the foreign ministry and a kid was driving around the huge space, all alone, on his tiny tricycle. I was really into photography at the time and this made a great motive, so I snapped a few photos … which lead one bully to constantly call me a pedophile for the next two years or so. He even managed to sneakily and in an obscure way put a reference to that in our graduation newspaper. That’s emotional bullying and it was much worse for me than any physical bullying I ever received. Also, hard to ignore. We were lining up to get security checked before going into the ministry, so hardly a place where I could ignore him. Also, am I supposed to ignore our graduation newspaper?)
> I drove into them full speed which made them call me crazy and go away
haha ... yeah! good on ya. I'm curious, was this a case of straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back and you snapped; or were you ... you know ... kinda crazy back then? :P
I don’t know … I didn’t really know those kids, to this day (I don’t even know their names). I have no idea why they started. I think my frame of mind was mostly set on ignoring that and not even investigating where it came from. Or maybe I just wasn’t very perceptive.
I think I was just grumpy that morning and really didn’t want a vocal confrontation. I suck at those. I can’t deal with them. I wanted to do something else, anything else and driving into them was apparently the only thing I could think of. It kind of worked. (“Full speed” was slight hyperbole. I was fast enough to make us all fall over, but not fast enough to make it really dangerous.)
Yes it does. Maybe not as often but it does. And you can't always ignore mean words either. I can, and I assume you can, and it is a very useful ability to be sure, but not everyone has such an easy time discarding the opinions and words of others. My son, for example, cannot. I am still hoping to teach him the skill, but it will be something he learns through difficulty, not something he comes by naturally.
A minute percentage of abnormal cases will exist in any natural corpus. That doesn't mean it's generalizable to the entire category, or even worthy of any attention at all. For you to claim otherwise is simply intellectually dishonest. In short, no, it doesn't.
With that out of the way, yes, anyone can ignore mean words. Absolutely anyone. If they're very emotionally immature, they might require some coaching first, but that's about it.
That's just not how people work. You can maybe ignore that you're feeling bad, but I doubt that. You definitely cannot just decide that words will stop making you feel bad now.
I contend that the percentage of what you refer to as abnormal cases is non-trivial. I would argue that the ability to ignore harsh remarks is the non-normative example that should not be generalized to the entire category. For you to make your claim based on what I can only assume is a sample size of one male is intellectually lazy. In short, yes it does.
I agree that anyone can learn to ignore mean words. However, the overwhelming example from public discourse suggests this is not a common skill shared by most of what society considers the emotionally mature:
* Olympic Swimmer, Bronze Medalist, Rebecca Adlington. surely she's dealt with pressure and has attained a high level of mental fortitude:
"I did get upset about it. I couldn't get my head around why someone would go to the effort of looking someone up, and then sending them a nasty tweet. I still can't really," she said. "What's going on in those people's lives?"
Yes, she "learn[ed] not to take it personally" but it was just that, a learning process.
I became extraordinarily paranoid, wondering if any of the women I encountered in the street or on public transport were my online nemeses. I would show girlfriends my iPhone on nights out and we’d spend the evening deep in speculation, just like we used to dissect the daily goings-on in our respective school lunch halls during our youth.
This is an adult women, emotionally mature, still rattled by words of people she doesn't know. Again, she learned how to ignore and let the words slide, but again it was something she had to learn after going to the police over it.
The judge said the effect of the abuse on Criado-Perez had been "life-changing".
She described "panic and fear and horror", he said.
He added that the abuse had also had a substantial impact on Creasy, who had had a panic button installed in her home.
Professor Mary Beard describes herself as having a thick skin. But over the past 10 days, during which the 58-year-old classicist has been subjected to a stream of vitriolic online abuse after an appearance on Question Time, even she has struggled to keep on an even emotional keel.
She overcomes, but even this professor with a lifetime of experience ignoring mean words cannot always just ignore them.
"It was abusive and threatening, making threats to my children and saying I would have to choose which one would die. I felt powerless and scared that my children had been targeted."
Writing on her own account she told her 51,000 followers: “How is it that someone in the US is free to send me vile racist Tweets on a daily basis yet twitter does nothing to stop him?
“Can’t keep quiet any longer. *It hurts too much.* RTs of tweets coming up. He/she is US based. Pls RT to put pressure on Twitter.
“Ps. Have blocked and reported him/her/it but they keep opening different accounts each time. Have also contacted UK police.
* Megan Meier, teenager driven to suicide because of mean words. You might argue that she wasn't "emotionally mature" but I would counter that if words were so easily ignored (just some coaching first right?) then why didn't the coaching she received give her enough mental fortitude to avoid suicide?
And these are just the incidents that are so huge that they register in international publications. Mean words cannot just "be ignored" by a large percentage of the population. And the abuse is from random people. It can be much more difficult when the abuse is coming from someone who used to be your friend, from family, or from people who know you well enough to know your insecurities.
Psychiatrists stress the importance of positive self talk because of how much of an impact words have upon us. People spend years in therapy overcoming the abuse others have wrought with their words. "Some coaching first" doesn't cut it.
You are either incredibly naive or so self-centered that you are blind to the point of being offensive. Yes, you can ignore them. I can ignore them. I believe that anyone can learn to ignore them given time. But open your eyes and have enough empathy to realize that it is not easy for everyone.
Yes, females mostly lack emotional maturity. Thank you for demonstrating the obvious. But males mostly don't. You preposterously claim that they do, and it is outright wrong.
Weren't you just saying men are more prone to violence when bullying? What's a less mature way of dealing with your emotions than resorting to physical violence?
I'd argue that unprovoked violence is also an indicator of emotional immaturity (or other emotional problems), but bullies are a small minority of all males. Females who can't control their emotional reactions to external stimuli, on the other hand, are virtually all of them.
Hm. So females are an abnormal, minute percentage of the population not worthy of any attention at all? And when you said absolutely anyone could do it, I guess that doesn't include women, right? They're not really people I guess. Or at least, they're not adults. Just emotionally immature children we should shepherd and guide. Obviously they should not be allowed to affect important things like work or politics, since they don't have the emotional maturity. /sarcasm
Wow, I almost forgot people like you really existed... Who let you into the civilized portion of the internet? Can somebody check this guy's pass? I think he's in the wrong section. His misogyny is leaking out.
Physical wounds heal in a very short amount of time. Psychological/emotional damage can take years to correct, sometimes it never goes away. "Trivially ignoring some mean words" isn't always possible. People have insecurities and some people a good at finding and exploiting them; this isn't a gender exclusive trait.
Rather, on average, teenage boys are bullied more physically than emotionally. It's been a while, but I remember. I received both physical and emotional, but the physical was worse. I didn't take the long way home to avoid people who mocked me.
That wasn't my experience. I received issues with both. I wouldn't say that one was worse than the other, but types of bullying aren't specific to gender.
I've been thinking of the same. Trying to get my young daughter involved in the process seems the challenging part; weighed against the value of spending time with her on other projects unrelated to gaming.
I want to change the industry, and make a dent in the misogyny and cynicism, but I think the male bias shown here of creating a platformer with a girl hero (antihero?) is speculative. Boys play platformers. My daughter is fine with puzzle games. And dragons. Really cute dragons.
For what it's worth, the game design I worked on put the girl hero as the object of affection of boy enemies and monster boss characters, team up with other girls the thwart the advances of male characters. Misandristic, basically. Which doesn't seem like the best way to make a dent!
Growing up I loved the Myst games and 'Jewels of the Oracle'. I got to explore and solve puzzles. Even now I play RPGs, but I like games that encourage exploration (Guild Wars 2) and I'm always on the look out for a good puzzle game. I would love to see a RPG that had both combat and puzzles more.
I see lots of "my anecdotal experience as a XYZ proves your anecdotal experience fighting bullies as a ABC is totally wrong"
However, observationally over my long life, I've found it all boils down to get inside their OODA loop, and they want nothing to do with you. Doesn't matter if its a supervisor at age 35 or some jock in high school.
Observationally it doesn't seem to even matter if you're right, just if you're faster. Spin the loop fast as possible and don't skip any steps. Do the best you can without stopping but don't stop the loop. The faster you spin the faster you can try all kinds of crazy ideas some of which might actually work.
Being reactive has a negative connotation. I'm not saying be reactive. A dumb ball game analogy is make sure the ball is always in their court so they have to think longer, harder than you, they're the ones anxiously guessing whats about to happen next not you. They tend not to like that experience, not at all.
Running fast makes Gemma feel good about herself and feeling good is the most fragile resource in the game. We realize that we need to represent the player’s emotional state somehow but nothing seems to fit.
Turn it around - completing levels or collecting tips or beating a clock produces good vibes, but when she feels bad she can't run fast, which limits her freedom of movement. After all, when you feel depressed you're not a bundle of energy, requiring you to do more climbing/plodding to get through the tasks you have to do.
> I realize that Gemma’s not trying to defeat her enemies. She doesn’t even view them as enemies. They’re other kids like her and she never stops trying to win their approval.
That seems like that could be part of the issue? My friends and I in high school were not trying to win the approval of anyone. We hung out together, gamed together, coded together, played D&D together. We could have cared less what others thought and weren't trying to "win their approval".
If this is true, seems like you and your friends were pretty confident and secure in who you were as high schoolers. That's awesome. I had a similar group of nerdery/outcast friends, and we enjoyed hanging out together but I personally still desired the approval of the "cool kids".
A great read into parenting and I really applaud this man for getting his whole family working together on a project. This should be a worthwhile game for not just teenagers to play but also parents and community leaders. I am thoroughly looking forward to playing the game.
It is also interesting to note the perception of reality for these young girls. They are not fooled by "rose-colored" glasses and yet the first solution is to "join" the system and master it.
I'd go a bit further and say that the scariest thing as a teenager is yourself. It hasn't been that long since I was a teenager in high school, so I can still remember the insecurities that ran the whole gamut - physical, sexual, intellectual, social. I wasn't even bullied - I was mostly just ignored. I think that at a good, affluent school any kid should be able to avoid most physical or overt verbal abuse.
Does this sound like an insincere story to anyone else? At the risk of appearing combative: "Ninja Pizza Girl" — the thematic concept by itself seems like an exploit of the industry.
Also interesting: "Run Fatty Run"[1] is in clear contradiction of the creator's message in his latest game.
If only parents taught their children to behave in a civil way, bullying wouldn't exist in schools.
In the modern society, parents do not pay enough attention to their children, and so the children grow up without learning how to behave in a civil manner.
In fact, what children learn is to behave aggressively like their parents do when the parents confront other people external to the family.
Today: Hacker news shockingly discovers that social acceptance is the main fear of teenage girls.
Follow up: One guy wants to make a game as depressing as their reality, despite having many years as game Dev he forgot the very main reason why we play video games in the first place: To escape from reality. To live experiences we couldn't live otherwise .
That's all just because the father never read 'Girls 101 for Dummies -- Boys', and that's partly because I have not written it yet. Material such as in the OP would be some of the best in the book, along with much, much more about girls that boys just have no clue about. They should have much more than a clue, as boys, when meeting, dating girls, when picking a wife, and certainly when they have one or more daughters.
The old norm that boys/men get to ignore such things about girls easily leads to a lot of hurt and harm.
The lessons are not very complicated, but they are next to impossible for a boy to discover when following through the usual paths in life. E.g., I've been a student in five colleges and taught in two more, and I doubt that any of those schools had a course that covered what is in the OP or what would be in my book. Why? The norms are, just don't explain that stuff, especially to boys/men. So, get hurt and harm. Bummer. Instead, get the info out there.
E.g., an approximation to the lesson in the OP is the Erich Fromm remark in his 'The Art of Loving'. I paraphrase:
For humans, the fundamental problem in life is doing
something effective about feeling alone.
This statement is especially true for girls/women. A man who does not appreciate this statement has some modules between his ears powered down.
Fromm went on to say that only four solutions have been found, and one of those was "membership in a group". Presto: That's the solution the girls in the OP were working for.
Then the father needs to know about two of Fromm's other solutions: One of them is "love of spouse". So, such a girl can be very tempted to get a boyfriend, maybe sooner and more 'intimate' than her father might wish. Another is 'orgiastic' behavior, that is, get drunk on alcohol, high on drugs, have an orgy, and, thus, suppress the pains for a few hours at, of course, some costs in addiction, infection, social rejection, etc. Fathers need to know this, too. From some news stories, apparently some college girls with 'the hookup culture' and 'bar scene' have discovered this solution.
This stuff, and more should be taught. If I write the book, then one thing to do with it, maybe good, would be to have some good Hollywood people dramatize parts of the book, that is, illustrate with facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, scowls, tears, etc.
Sorry, nothing "hateful" intended. Saying "for Dummies" in a book title is now famous. It's supposed to be to have sympathy for someone struggling to understand and, thus, feeling like a "dummy"
For the subject of girls, quite broadly, boys just don't understand, e.g., on points such as in the OP. Then, commonly boyfriends, husbands, and fathers don't understand either.
Here is a little of why? There was some recent research that showed that in the crib, girls pay attention to people, faces, eye contact, and tone of voice, and boys pay attention to things, as a joke, maybe to hack the latch on the crib or get to the toy firetruck on the floor.
For more, can read how the differences continue in D. Tannen, 'You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation'. Tannen became a famous professor at Georgetown University. Tannen's book is not at all "hateful", and neither is what I would write.
And paying attention to Erich Fromm is not at all "hateful".
Instead, as I wrote in my post just above, girls are being harmed and hurt now, also in their relationships with boys, and I would hope to help the situation.
> Sorry, nothing "hateful" intended. Saying "for Dummies" in a book title is now famous. It's supposed to be to have sympathy for someone struggling to understand and, thus, feeling like a "dummy"
But emphasizing the audience - boys - is less common (but the audience would I guess be implied, anyway. But I don't imagine literal boys would pick up a for-dummies book on the opposite sex).
It's also become in vogue to regard boys as psychologically and emotionally stunted, compared to girls. The title just seemed to hint toward that trend.
> Sorry, nothing "hateful" intended. Saying "for Dummies" in a book title is now famous. It's supposed to be to have sympathy for someone struggling to understand and, thus, feeling like a "dummy"
And yet, women and men seem equally mystified by each other. Women and their higher social/emotional intelligence doesn't seem to fair better than their knuckle-dragging partners. There are plenty of men who cling to unhealthy relationship, plenty of women who do the same, and many of them seem equally irrational in their insistence of clinging to it.
No, I'm not someone who is of the opinion that men and women are on average equal, and that any perceived difference is all about "selection bias" or whatever. But some universally "accepted" differences, I find questionable. Like women being emotional and men being rational - though women may be more emotional, men are just as much slaves to their emotions as women. And women's higher social/emotional intelligence doesn't seem to help them in their relations towards men. I guess it's like the misunderstood geniuses - too smart for their contemporaries (partners)?
> But I don't imagine literal boys would pick up a for-dummies book on the opposite sex).
I would have jumped at such a book when I was 15 and trying to understand my girlfriend of 13.
First lessons: She has a LOT of deep concerns about her life and family; e.g., is she pretty enough; some of these concerns are strong enough to be anxieties. From these concerns, she has low self-esteem. She is just painfully lonely and desperate for friendship, approval, emotional security, not feeling alone, and maybe romance. She has raging emotions, likely including about sex and romantic relationships, and, thus, is terrified about her 'reputation', getting hurt emotionally, and maybe about getting pregnant. You need to understand her and respond to her, to give her what you can of what she needs.
So, need to think a lot about how she has been behaving, what she has been saying or not saying, etc., guess what is going on, get into some non-stressful conversations that can shed more light, understand her, and then help her.
In simple terms, yes, not much of a surprise, she is 'needy'; it's easy to suspect that Mother Nature finds that this has 'reproductive advantage' and likes it.
But after school you want to take her for an ice cream cone, hold her hand, if only by some subtle means let her know you think that she is really terrific, and see her smile. For making her smile, with the right feelings for her, you might like her smiles so much you suspect you could give up food and water and live just on her smiles.
After the ice cream cone, hidden behind a tree, you might kiss her six times on her forehead. That afternoon will be burned into your brain, and for the rest of your life you will no more be able to forget it or her than you could forget your own name.
Not many boys of 15 know these things, and they very much need to, these things and many more, before picking a wife or having children, especially daughters.
> It's also become in vogue to regard boys as psychologically and emotionally stunted, compared to girls. The title just seemed to hint toward that trend.
Sorry, but "in vogue" or not, once with an expert I told him that it seemed that women were so darned emotional. Then right away the expert explained, "Of COURSE women are MUCH more emotional than men. That is the cause of all the problems.". He was both very much an expert and not joking at all. Also read some of D. Tannen that I referenced. Or read some of E. Fromm where he says, "Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same.". Look up the recent study I mentioned that showed that in the crib girls are interested in people and boys, in things. Be around some children and just observe, even in a grocery store: The girls will make eye contact, and the boys will play with things. YMMV, and I don't have more careful scientific evidence for you, but it would be a radical claim that boys and girls are the same 'socially' and 'psychologically'.
The norms are common in movies: E.g., watch 'Back to School' and look at the girl: She is socially insightful, 'understanding' (in the sense of forgiving), sympathetic, empathetic, emotionally supportive, a peacemaker, etc.
> And women's higher social/emotional intelligence doesn't seem to help them in their relations towards men.
No, that 'EI' is just crucial for both girls and women; other than physical beauty (quickly fades?), physical love making, and motherhood, it's a lot of all the rest they have "in their relations towards men" and, really, one of the crucial ways they have to keep 'him' happy "'till death do we part".
But, yes, still women do have big problems. My proposed book, if not just a joke to illustrate the need for such a book, would be intended to help.
An old but common joke is that girls, girlfriends, and wives don't come with an instruction manual. I believe that boys and men need one.
The stuff that http://www.increpare.com/ has been putting out is well off the beaten path - sometimes hits on these more emotional notes, sometimes more puzzling.
I've noticed a sort of nascent movement amongst the tumblrati (and other groups) agitating for what I can only think of as "the right to not be offended."
Does this concept fit into that category? I have a hard time telling, perhaps because I was raised a few generations ago when coddling kids was considered to be leaving them ill-prepared for the real world - a sort of "behold, I send you out as sheep amongst the wolves" theory of human interaction.
I feel like there's an aim to produce a society of sensitive sheep. Maybe I'm misreading things, again, I'm a relic. I'm honestly curious what the goal is, though.
Children subject each other to behaviours that would see them sacked or even arrested if it happen when they were adults in a workplace.
This is not about "stop saying things that offend me"; this is about things that you would see as pyschogical torture if they happened to you.
Perhaps there's a niche in the market for "Torment as a service" - you sign up and confirm, and then you get a month of the kind of abuse suffered by people. There are varying levels of abuse on offer.
The game does fail to acknowledge one thing: most harm suffered by children happens in the home, usually from siblings. This is true even if we only include activity that could be considered as "abuse" (physical, sexual, or emotional) by child protection social workers.
The scariest thing to a child is likely to be a member of that child's family.
Bullying and/or emotional manipulation is different from being overly sensitive. Being overly sensitive is about being easily offended when the other party does not intend any offence, while emotional manipulation and bullying is more of a dysfunction on the part of the bully, than it is a dysfunction for the person being bullied for not having thick enough skin to simply take it in stride. Get the picture?
the happy colorful world and dark dreary world were well presented in the Robin Williams movie, What Dreams May Come.
The idea has been used elsewhere, old fifties horror films would go dark. Certain colors have been used in many movies to effect mood if not an unreal location; green in Matrix movies was a great use of color to distinguish one reality from another
Daughter: "once...a man answered the door almost naked.
I wanted to hurl his pizza away and tell him to put some
pants on."
Father: "LOOOOL you'd make a great video game character.
Ninja Pizza Girl."
Title is linkbait. The article is neither about "the scariest thing in the world" nor is it really about teenage daughter. It's a nice story but it simply needs a better title.
Linkbait? Is the title really going to lead someone to believe that your average teenage girl might be an authority on experiences that are really, really scary? I don't think the title is supposed to, or tries to, be taken literally like that.
When I lived in rural Canada I taught my 11 year old son to drive as a safety precaution in case I or another adult with him would become incapacitated for some reason. It's a very strange feeling to see your child in control of a ton and a half of steel, to trust him with both your lives and he's doing a great job of it. After my initial worries that he'd do something crazy faded I realized that I'm under-estimating my childs abilities consistently. He drove us around the area where we lived for a while until he asked me if I was satisfied with his driving skills. Amazed was more like it.
Letting kids drive in traffic is dangerous, no doubt about it and here in NL I would have probably not done this. It's much denser populated here (where we lived was extremely sparse) and help from other adults or ambulance service is a (cell-) phone call away. But in the sticks that's not the case and such skills can be life savers.
"After my initial worries that he'd do something crazy"
As I think back on my experiences of surviving crazy driving, it was never "just drivin' around and suddenly doing something dumb" it was always bad judgment usually under pressure. So there is freezing rain forecast but I really want to play video games with my friend. My dad is going to kill me if I get home late again. Its a completely empty and abandoned road in great weather conditions... what could possibly go wrong? I've never driven in over six inches of snow, but everyone else on the road does it all the time, so how hard can it possibly be? I'm sleepy but the sooner I get home the sooner I'll get to sleep, so go for it. I'm not really drunk I don't even feel a buzz and haven't had a drop in two hours.
I most certainly did not get into accidents in every story above, mostly thru dumb luck. They all do have a common thread of later on, looking back, even dumb teen me was asking myself WTF I was thinking when I made those decisions.
Its not entirely different than teen experience with romantic relationships and even to some extent friend relationships. Oh and drugs and alcohol too. And finances.
Lack of patience seems to be the root of all evil, with me when I was a teen and in other teens I saw. Can't teach wisdom or judgment, but you can teach patience.
So then how would I have been able to help my dad on the farm driving wheat truck to the elevator when i was licensed at 14? (Drove tractor from the age of 12.)
High school, for me at least, was a fairly dark time in my life. If i knew myself, the only thing i would be able to tell myself is, it's going to suck until you're halfway through college.
Bullies, at least the best ones, don't leave you alone. They don't leave you alone if your confident, they don't leave you alone if you're hurt. They just don't care. They have either yet to learn empathy, or are simply sociopaths and you're simply a fixture in their lives, entertainment.
Now, assuming this is the case, which it was for me. You have a choice. Make a game that is a bit dark, existential, cathartic, or simply make a game that tells us to believe the nonsense that we are told to tell ourselves: be confident, give your bully the "i'm not a chicken, you're a turkey" speech, excel and you'll get respect.
I think if you want to make a truly interesting game, ignore the uplifting nonsense and go for the catharsis. It gets better when you're able to choose your friends, your you're able to make friends on your own terms, not just pick from those around you.
If i were going to make a game like this i would have aspects like:
* Having a good cry shouldn't be in game death, it should be a power up.
* Being vulnerable and hurt and carrying on regardless should be strength.
When i started making friends in upper level classes in college, i was able to be friends with people that saw the world in interesting ways, and cared about things that made sense. We had mutual respect, and that was that. The nasty politics of social groups has rarely ever crept into my life since.