Watch Penn and Teller: Bullshit! video game episode on YouTube
by Justin McElroy 
{ Jul 13th 2009 at 11:00AM }
Right now, you can actually catch the episode on YouTube, though you'll likely want to act fast -- we can't imagine it'll be up for too long.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chris @ Jul 13th 2009 11:05AM
I just felt bad for the kid at the end...you know he's gonna get picked on at school.
Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 13th 2009 11:10AM
Well that's where the knowledge of how to use a real semi-automatic weapon comes in handy.
Oh, I'm terrible.
joeybeast @ Jul 13th 2009 11:26AM
Poor kid.
Should've let him fire a handgun first.
So a 9-year-old is not allowed to smoke, drink, or drive but is allowed to fire an assault rifle.
Mighty Ponygirl @ Jul 13th 2009 2:10PM
Since I can't mod you up anymore I just want to say absolutely.
I have a lukewarm relationship with Bullsh!t... generally I'm ok with it even when I disagree with it. Here I agreed with their overall premise, but I was outraged that they showed the clip of the kid crying at the end. That was completely uncalled for... especially to intro it with "we didn't feel comfortable showing you what happened after he shot the gun" and then in the same breath "but we're going to show it to you anyway."
That kid is going to be ridiculed. That was a private moment between him and his mom that they exploited to score a cheap point at the end of a show that made a very coherent (albeit pottymouthed) argument all the way through. You could tell he didn't want to shoot the gun after he saw how loud and powerful it was... he did it because there were cameras rolling and he felt pressure to do this thing that he wasn't comfortable doing, and when he thought it was over and the cameras were off and there was no further expectation that he perform, he was able to unbottle his feelings in what he probably thought was the relative privacy of off-camera. And those douchebags filmed it and broadcast it anyway. All it takes is for one kid in his class to see that shot of him being comforted by his mom and he's going to get teased about it through the rest of his schooling.
Penn & Teller ought to be ashamed of themselves.
vidGuy @ Jul 13th 2009 2:16PM
The kid's mother surely signed off on use of the footage, including that clip. The point of using the footage was completely within the scope of the purpose for which they shot it - to show that the kid wasn't an emotionally-blank killing machine. I think the use of the footage was entirely appropriate.
Mighty Ponygirl @ Jul 13th 2009 2:25PM
vidGuy -- I don't have any way of proving this was the case, but my understanding is that the filming release happens BEFORE the filming, not after the fact with stipulations regaring particular segments of footage. So the mom said "yes, you have permission to film my son playing a videogame and then take him to a rifle range" it's more or less out of her hands at that point. There may be explicit or implicit caveats to the release to prevent, for example, broadcasting footage of an accident at the range that costs her son an eye, or something similar.
I still say that if that kid knew he was being filmed and that he wasn't under the expectation of performance, he wouldn't have expressed his trauma.
Hydrophobicfish @ Jul 13th 2009 2:27PM
Ponygirl, just so you know, the mother HAD to have signed a release form at the very end of it all. The mother HAD to give them permission to air this stuff, otherwise they wouldn't have put it out.
Well, technically they could air it without the release form, but they'd be subject to a lawsuit, and stand to lose it.
Mighty Ponygirl @ Jul 13th 2009 2:42PM
Well, I'd like to think the mother had better sense than to sign off on that, esp since she came off as pretty well-balanced in the rest of the episode. But in the event that she signed off and didn't explicitly ask that they not show the clip of her son crying, just because she said OK doesn't make it OK.
I can see the point they were trying to make: That just because this kid plays videogames doesn't mean he's an emotionless killing machine, but god f'ing dammit people -- respect the privacy of the kid. You cannot watch that last segment and tell me in good faith that the boy would want that clip aired.
Jack Thompson and Triangle Poor Gun Safety Technique Guy are adults who are legally and morally responsible for their own appearance on the show. This kid isn't--he's at the mercy of his parents. JT and TPGSTG aren't legally compelled to remain in peer groups that will tease them for saying dumb crap on a popular skeptic's program. This kid is 9 years old which means he's got another 9 years in a public school system where if just ONE of the kids he goes to school with sees that clip (and considering it's being pushed out to the gaming blogs it's pretty likely one will) he will get to be ridiculed as "that kid who cried like a baby after shooting a gun" for the duration of it. Penn & Teller and the producers should have taken two seconds to think about it and decide if giving this kid a permanent public school social hurdle was worth one extra "zing" at the end to prove a point they'd already proven.
Manly Mcbeefington (Mr. ESC) @ Jul 13th 2009 3:08PM
At least his a friend of an army guy.
Judd @ Jul 13th 2009 6:07PM
Showing that final clip did much more than what the episode had already proved. Yes, we can tell without that shot that this kid didn't enjoy going to the shooting range. But that last shot said so much more.
The anti-gamers have a conception that video games desensitize kids. If it would have just showed the kid saying "Yea, I didn't really like it" it would've been like he ordered something new at a restaurant which he wouldn't try again. However, by showing him cry, the show was proving that not only do games not desensitize kids, but it might even make them more sensitive. For the child, after using fake guns all the time, firing a real rifle might have felt even more real than if he wasn't a gamer. That final shot was saying, "Ok we already proved that this person isn't a killer. But just look at the hypocrisy of blaming video games, when this gun-happy country embraces something that is really traumatic."
Also, Penn apologized like five times even for sending the kind out there to begin with. Considering how he grills people apart all the time, I thought he was incredibly gracious to the boy and his mother.
Finally, I don't believe many kids watch Showtime documentaries. Besides if kids ever make fun of him, he should just say "Ok, have any of you ever been on a TV show before?" "Have you ever been on a TV show where they took you to a shooting range?" "Why don't you get back to me when you do, bitch?"
chispito @ Jul 13th 2009 9:34PM
He's nine years old, he's allowed to cry about stuff like that if he wants. Not that an AR-15 bucks especially hard, but if that was the first time I had shot a gun, having never been around them, and I was his age, it might shake me up a little, too.
At least they didn't have him shoot a 30-06 or something.
Giroro @ Jul 14th 2009 12:17AM
That kid was holding the butt of the gun against his face. I'm surprised he didn't break his jaw
samfish (uses the Joystiq Comment-Kill filter!) @ Jul 13th 2009 11:05AM
I have to admit, this was kind of a weak episode. They've definitely had better, more entertaining episodes, if you ask me.
Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 13th 2009 11:13AM
I thought the same thing, Sam. It wasn't as hard-hitting or exploitive as the others. It definitely made the points it wanted to. But I talked to my best friend and we both seemed to agree that as gamers, a lot of the points they made in this episode, we are already fully aware of. We've all heard the arguments and both sides of the stories about the effects of violent video games. So, to people who are really interested in this episode, a lot of what you're going to hear is old news. It's still funny and entertaining, but none of the facts are new or eye-opening.
arisc2 @ Jul 13th 2009 11:20AM
keep in mind that they only had 24 minutes to talk on a huge topic like this one, also i think this episode was directed to people who doesn´t have any neutral information of video games, so they had to explain many things that we already know. In all i think it was a great introduction to the topic and it really showed in few words why video game violence is bullshit
joeybeast @ Jul 13th 2009 11:32AM
It's called preaching to the choir.
Then again, the episode is for everyone against violent games.
Martin Greenberg @ Jul 13th 2009 1:07PM
The purpose of this episode was less to entertain, and more to convince, than others, but it's sort of preaching to the choir. I did really like the football thing near the end.
BigD145 @ Jul 13th 2009 1:44PM
Video games are not such a huge topic. It's just talked to death using the same points over and over again.
Rhamsey @ Jul 13th 2009 11:05AM
i loved their walmart one. going to watch now, thanks for the heads up.
squeehunter @ Jul 13th 2009 11:50AM
To quote Penn himself, the show is very biased. I wouldn't go watching it to learn anything. Only to hear what I would already know. That kind of thing.
Old Professor Zertoss @ Jul 13th 2009 11:10AM
Just how easy is it to fall off a log into a vat of Sierra Mist? Sure it sounds simple on paper, but where do you get a log to fall off of? I don't think the vats have logs in them already, so you're going to have to provide your own. That's not a one man job, either, so you're going to have to find a bunch of people willing to get a log into a vat of Sierra Mist so you can fall off of it and into the vat. Good luck convincing anyone to help you.
And then you have the problem of how refreshing a vat of Sierra Mist would be. It's going to be all hot and sticky in an already hot and muggy factory. And the entire time you're in there, you'll have some poor underpaid worker screaming at you to get out before he loses his job and how he's going to have to clean that vat now because of you. No, I'm just kidding, he won't have to clean it. It was already filthy.
No, I'm not convinced of the dynamics of this analogy at all.
dark_inchworm (on Steam!) dark inchworm (on XBL!) @ Jul 13th 2009 11:20AM
This analysis brought to you by MTN DEW Game Fuel.
MystileArmor @ Jul 13th 2009 11:42AM
Whoever came up with changing Mountain in MTN needs to be drowned in a vat of Sierra Mist.
LaughingTarget @ Jul 13th 2009 1:49PM
I figure they should have just done a full vowel purge and used the common abbreviation for mountain. Mt. DW.
MystileArmor @ Jul 13th 2009 2:04PM
or just abreviate it even further and just call it "M"
Vegnagun bwf @ Jul 13th 2009 2:10PM
Why even have the M? That's not edgy.
LaughingTarget @ Jul 13th 2009 2:13PM
Then they could get an agreement with Sony Pictures to put a picture of Judi Dench on each can as a James Bond crossover promotion.
Blank-Mage @ Jul 13th 2009 4:51PM
Besides, M sucked compared to L. Deathnote should have stopped at volume 7.
Cj @ Jul 13th 2009 11:12AM
Good episode. That fatty with the triangle needs to stfu.
Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 13th 2009 11:15AM
When they exposed the fat guy's "little secret", that was probably the best part of the whole episode. A definite WTF? moment.
Josh @ Jul 13th 2009 12:01PM
I think he's part of a group of people who are deflecting. My Father-in-law is a card-carrying member of the NRA, and his favorite shirt says "Guns don't kill people, violent video games kill people". After years of defending themselves, the gun nuts are happy to have a new scapegoat to point to.
MystileArmor @ Jul 13th 2009 12:22PM
That guy scared the living piss out of me... sitting in the grass with a fuckin' sniper rifle.
People like that shouldn't have guns. Cause that's where disturbed fuckin' kids get them from in the first place.
If anything video games help kids chill out, stay at home and stay of the streets.
Jrinswand @ Jul 13th 2009 1:42PM
Actually, Storm Eagle, it was a WTFF moment. It was such a WTFF moment that Penn had to say WTFF not once, but twice.
DiL @ Jul 13th 2009 10:04PM
as lame as that fattie was... he had a patriot. he can't hate on games that much if he has the boss's gun!
Dib Oglesby @ Jul 13th 2009 11:17AM
Even though they did make fun of Nutty Jack, I was impressed that they let him have his say, and not cut it short, or edit it up. He could have been made to look a lot worse, but that would undermine the value of the show.
And what was with the shooting range owner letting that kid fire the gun with the butt up next to his face?? Any of us would be crying too if you let that thing kick back into your cheek!
arisc2 @ Jul 13th 2009 11:22AM
i was thinking exactly the same!!!! i don´t think he was crying because he was affected, he was crying because he has smacked in the face by a big weapon that he could barely hold.
MLS @ Jul 13th 2009 11:32AM
To be fair, that was the point of the exercise - to test if playing Call of Duty gives a child everything he needs to become a killing machine. If Jack, fat guy, and the rest of the crowd that use the term "murder simulators" are right, that kid should have effortlessly and confidently fired away and want some more.
Dib Oglesby @ Jul 13th 2009 11:43AM
Point taken, but that was irresponsible of the owner to allow that to happen. If that kid shifts his face just a tad right before pulling the trigger, his cheek bone could have easily been shattered.
It might have counted for a bit more if they had given his a weapon more appropriate to his size as well. He was too short for the setup they had, and the gun was probably too heavy for him. No "murder trained" child could have performed well in those circumstances, nor would anyone headed out on a rampage choose to use a gun they couldn't handle, at least after the first shot.
acefondu @ Jul 13th 2009 11:58AM
Yeah I felt bad for the kid too. I understand the point they were making but for safety sake they should have padded the butt of the gun assuming the kid was unaware of kickback, which he clearly was.
But jeeze at 9 years old? That I think was a bad example to make. They really should have used a high school kid since that is a better measure of the age bracket of kids who actually do shoot up schools. Or even used both and had a comparison. But really, they should have used an older kid who is also unfamiliar with real guns and plays CoD4 all day.
j.howlett @ Jul 13th 2009 12:08PM
there are kids firing AKs they can barely hold
Mayne @ Jul 13th 2009 12:20PM
Yeah, as soon as I saw the butt of the gun swaying next to his face, I was like, "Fail." Fail on behalf of the responsible, gun-educated adults in attendance, but also Fail on behalf of the simulator-to-real-word murderer theory. Of course the kids not going to know the actual practicality of handling a firearm—all he sees of it in a video game is the barrel of it sticking up in the middle of the screen.
Now, that said, there's still the notion of raised aggression, which I still think gets trumped here. Sure, the kid could have been crying because he took a recoil to the face, but I really don't think that was it (or at least, that wasn't the big catalyst). That kid was just scared witless of the actual gun. Because he realized it's meaner, louder and scarier than a few polygons and some cliched, muffled sound effects.
Point is, and they justified it at least with this instance, that the kid has not been "brainwashed" into being an aggressive killing machine, calculated or rampaging. It's not in his personality, and video games aren't going to change that.
I did like the point they made at the end though, about football and video games. It's all about societal acceptance and familiarity.
superberg @ Jul 13th 2009 1:25PM
I think that the kid holding the gun improperly was intentional. It showed that games don't even show you how to hold the gun, let alone operate it.
If the responsible adults had stepped in, the experiment would have been voided, because they would have taught him something from outside the murder-simulator education device.
BananaBoat @ Jul 13th 2009 1:26PM
It most likely wasn't too heavy (they are made mostly of plastic aren't they?) but it was certainly too bulky for the poor kid. A shotgun or something with a little more kick would probably have seriously injured him. He probably had no business firing a gun that large, and it seems like a pretty serious lapse on his mothers part.
I feel bad for the kid, and hope that his classmates don't get Showtime, and don't know what Youtube is yet (though it seems unlikely).
LaughingTarget @ Jul 13th 2009 1:57PM
There aren't many plastic parts on a rifle. The parts that are plastic are usually grips, buttstocks and barrel shrouds. That style rifle is about 5 lbs, made mostly of stamped steel and some aluminum.
In any case, games are terrible firearms teachers because most developers don't have a clue how they operate. It's apparent from how character models hold weapons, fire them and the disconnect between the round the weapon fires and the sound effect that accompanies it.
Pzychotix @ Jul 13th 2009 2:52PM
Honestly, I think you'd learn more from movies on how to operate a gun. Not necessarily use it completely properly, but enough to not be completely clueless.
I'm not sure a 9 year old's ready for the concept of recoil though. I think it would've been better to see a teenager behind the gun.
Mayne @ Jul 13th 2009 3:49PM
acefondu makes a good point. I think the "experiment" worked with a 9-year-old, but it would have been a lot more telling with a teenager.
But the thought that the kid wouldn't be "ready for the concept of recoil" just because he's 9 seems to be a bit dismissive. I've pretty much been aware that a gun kicks back when it's fired at least as far back as starting school. It just... makes sense. And you see it all the time in movies and TV anyway (8-bit and 16-bit games that I grew up on understandably aren't really going to portray the reactionary physics of a fired gun). My small point here is that if he hadn't picked up that guns kick back by his age, and that he needed to brace himself properly, video games really aren't "teaching" him (or anyone) how to operate a gun.
Still, the bigger issue P&T are getting at is the aggression, and I think they made an excellent case in favor of games (however many times most of us have already heard/said it).
R (XBL: Esoteric Lord) @ Jul 13th 2009 4:01PM
Its pretty apparent that he wasnt crying from the kickback. When I saw "pretty apparent" I mean, "incrediably obvious."
1. Long delay between the firing and the tears. The kid shot the rifle, put it down, and managed to answer a question without even touching his cheek. Did you ever once get hurt as a child and not immediatly touch wear it hurts?
2. No cry of pain when he fired, or any sign of redness where the rifle was touching his cheek at. 9 year old kids cry out even at slight pain.
3. The way he was crying and being comforted by his mother, you can tell it was mental/emotional damage, not physical.
4. A rifle of that size, resting on the sandbags, firing only 1 round, would have absorbed the vast majority of the recoil before it transfered into the kids body.
Firing a gun of any size is scary as hell. Just the knowledge that you were holding something that could very, very easily kill anything on the other end of it with a bit of pressure on the trigger is scary. If it doesnt scare you, you should not be using a firearm. Ive fired all manner of guns and I still get nervous holding pellet rifles.
99.9% of the time you are holding a loaded weapon in your hand, the thing you should be scared of the most is yourself. That what happened to this kid. For a few seconds he was scared shitless of himself.
Miguelitosd @ Jul 13th 2009 7:30PM
Unless we can see the unedited footage, we don't really know how much they might've edited it up to screw with anything he said. Though like you say, it's likely they could've made him look a hell of a lot worse.. hell, he usually comes across worse on his own.
BTW, anyone else notice in the scenes with him sitting down in a living room, there was a nice grandfather clock behind him... that wasn't even running? Thought that was kind of odd. Unless interviewers prefer to stop any visible clocks so that edits don't look obvious when the clock jumps around.
LaughingTarget @ Jul 13th 2009 7:37PM
I didn't fire a gun until I was 26. It was a 9mm Makarov pistol, not exactly the biggest, loudest or hardest hitting weapon on the planet. I fired off a full magazine (7+1 in chamber) and after a few minutes, I did realize what I held in my hands and it was disconcerting. It drive home how dangerous a firearm really is and stuck in my head for life that this thing kills and that the only time I would use it is if my self or another was in serious danger from a person or animal.
Sure, I've moved on to owning an AR-15, a Mossberg 590 and the mammoth Smith & Wesson model 500 (this thing would have put that boy in a catatonic state given how loud and how much kick it has), but at the end of the day, I know what I hold in my hands is not a toy. I know that if I use it, there isn't a reset button or a save point that I can just conveniently load up.
I seriously urge everyone to fire a gun at some point in their lives. It erases just about every misconception out there perpetrated upon us by the news media, Hollywood and video game developers that likely haven't ever seen a gun let alone fired or truly understand what it's capable of. There's a reason the least violent group in the entire world are the American concealed handgun license carriers (US CHL holders murder rate is almost 0 and there are millions of us). We know exactly what we hold in our hands and take it very seriously.
Storm Eagle::The Blood Edge @ Jul 13th 2009 11:15AM
And now for a post of my own.
All Right! Let's do this!
PENN!
JENKINNNNNSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!