Anti-gaming Times columnist gets 'Coopered' on Amazon

That is why you "tell" your kids to leave the DS in the car when you go into the museum. If a parent cannot stand up to there kids they are pathedic IMO.

Agreed, which is why I said it comes down to poor parenting.

Me 2. 99% of specialists agree that teen pregnancy and smack is bad for you. Therefore, video games are bad for you.

By that same logic, you could say that reading a book, watching a film, or playing Parcheesi are a colossal waste of time, just like heroin and teen pregnancy.

And seriously, I don't think "colossal waste of time" is the reaction he was going for when he brought up Heroin and Teen Pregnancy.

Holy God, will you take your "dumbass" blinders off, please.

Yes you can say all those things are a waste of time too. But the question hes addressing happens to be videogames, not movies or parcheesi. Games are at their heigh in popularity at the moment and the industry is growing so rapidly, that its understandable hes addressing that and not parcheesi you illiterate pussy.

You're an illiterate pussy because you can't freaking understand how wrong you are.

i read all the sentences and it doesn't help me understand what you're talking about. you seriously don't think he's lumping video games (even in terms of time wasting) with doing heroin? maybe you should read it again and this time, try understanding it.

it's his opinion and opinions can't be wrong, I get it but that doesn't mean his opinion isn't steeped in ignorance on the subject.

like I said, he can say whatever he wants, but broad sweeping generalizations are rarely right (read: sterotypes) - he's drawing unfounded conclusions about a subject he obviously knows nothing about and he defends that position by attacking the notion that he hasn't bothered to learn. there are so many level of ignornce on display here... pick one.

So if I said something like continually carrying out an argument about how people interpret other people's words is a collosal waste of time like molesting puppies and having sex with your siblings. This is not because of anything wrong or bad about arguing or molesting puppies or inbreeding.... It's because, compared with everything else on offer in a kid's life, arguing or molesting puppies or inbreeding are a colossal waste of time.

You would not see anything wrong with those suggestions???

@father b... How long does it take to molest a puppy? how long does it take do your sister? How long does it take to post? I'm sure those are time wasters, but I doubt they are as prominent or as time consuming as gaming (3hrs/day), pregnancy (24hrs/day) or drugs (probably many, many hours). If you find statistics comparing the time consumed/prevelance of gaming, pregnancy, drugs with puppy molesting, then feel free to call it a colossal time waster.

@Crono.... Suck it :o)

The point was typically pregnancy is not a waste of time and should never be considered one. There are plenty of examples this person could have chose out of an infinite possibility of choices. He chose these two that are not considered good examples of time wasting (as you can see being the only one here that can excuse him) because of sensationalism not relevancy. Just like my examples have no relevance but are rather sensational accusation of how good or bad things are. Disclaimers are for morons. Like when someone says a rascist joke then excuses themself by saying I am not rascist or anything afterwords. It is there to pull the wool over your eyes, not a truth.

Babies are great, but pregnancy sucks. I know quite a few young mothers who've told me how horrible it is and how lucky I am to be a guy and never have to endure that crap;; especially at a young age because it prevents them from living their life to its fullest.

With that said it doesnt matter if you agree or not with the specific examples he chose because its an editorial column and not meant to be taken as an objective, scientific definition of time wasting. Insert your own, less sensationalistic idea of a colossal time waster and his points remain perfectly valid.

Point 1) Certain activities take us away from the real world for very long periods of time. If you like the real world, as he does, then avoid those activities and try to dissuade your kids from getting into them.
Point 2) You dont need to be a connoisseur of something in order to dislike and comment on it.

Are those points valid to you?

>> pregnancy sucks

really? ok, now you've jumped the shark :)

what's this 3 hours a day crap? I play video games and I don't spend 3 hours a day. I can play SSBB for 20mins while my dinner is cooking... it's called multitasking but I guess you could call it a waste of time if you're an @sshole.

>> you dont need to be a connoisseur of something in order to dislike and comment on it.

you're right, but you do have to have basic knowledge of the subject and he clearly does not.

>> Certain activities take us away from the real world for very long periods of time.

teen pregnancy takes you away from the 'real world'? excuse me? the problem with teen pregnancy is that it forces teens into the 'real world' to soon and too quickly. also, if I am playing a game with someone and I do or say something nice to that person within the game, does that good deed mean nothing because I didn't do it in the 'real world'? your black-and-white view on this subject is in error. invalid! invalid!

I agree with born2kill, in spite of his slightly disturbing handle. I don't agree with Whittell but I don't think he's said anything to deserve all the energy being spent on him.

The way I read it was this:
Teenaged girls who get pregnant and become moms miss out on a lot of what life has to offer for other teenagers who don't get pregnant.
Teenaged heroin junkies are so focused on their next fix, or so out of it because they're using, that the miss out on a lot of what life has to offer the non-junkies.
Teenage videogame addicts who spend most of their time playing games miss out on a lot of what life has to offer non-gaming addicts.

That's how I read it. I don't *AGREE* with it, but that's how I read the analogy. And its an editorial. The point of an editorial is to get people riled up, which is why he used such controversial material.

But what he didn't do is print inaccurate facts, and that's why I don't see why people are getting all riled up over this. He isn't a Cooper or a Jack Thompson. He's just an old-fashioned parent who sees too many poorly-parented children walking around with their noses in a DS all day.

It's sad that he doesn't have more faith in his own kids to make good decisions, or faith in his abilities as a parent to keep the kids from playing too much. But that just makes him worthy of pathos, not the vitriol that everyone is spewing at him.

>> Teenage videogame addicts who spend most of their time playing games miss out on a lot of what life has to offer non-gaming addicts.

no. he doesn't draw a distinction between addicts and casual players. he doesn't even draw a distinction between types of video games. He's completely oblivious to the subject but he talks as if he's a know-it-all even though he admits that he won't look into it further (because of prejudice).

yes it's an editorial and he's completely ok to make his points just like the rest of us (who care about the subject he's commenting on) are ok to comment on his editorial. so your problem is that it's ok for him to have a passionate view but not ok for gamers to be passionate and call him on his ignorance?

>> But what he didn't do is print inaccurate facts,

no but he made uninformed judgments, conclusions and a misleading-ly bad comparison.

Verb

In case someone alters (deletes) it:
coopered
1 (obsolete) Simple past tense and past participle of cooper.
2 When an author makes a ridiculous and ignorant public statement and is ridiculed in their own book reviews for doing so.
Joystiq coopered Giles Whittell for compairing videogames to smack and teen pregnancy.