Current mood:	cold
Current music:	Enigma - Shadows in Silence
Entry tags:	gaming, left, politics

"We get four kids a day calling in contemplating suicide."
I expect alot of my readers aren't heavily into the politics side of gaming like I am but if you've been reading my blog lately you at least know about the Hot Coffee "controversy." Well for the past couple of weeks there's been another, smaller, controversy over another Rockstar game entitled "Bully." Naturally the name alone has anti-bully groups all in an uproar saying it promotes bullying and all of that reactionary bullshit, but here's the thing, the game's not even out yet! In fact all of the information anyone has on it so far are press releases from Rockstar which paint an image vastly different than what these anti-bully groups are espousing. In "Bully" you are not the bully, in fact, you're the opposite, you're the kid being picked on and your job is to get even. That sounds like every picked on kid's wet dream to me.

The most vocal group so far has been the charity Bullying Online which is like a support line for kids who need someone to talk to about being bullied which is fine and all but this group shouldn't exist. Their whole platform is based on the extermination of bullying, good luck guys, you might get it out of schools but those kids are going to be in for a real surprise when they get into the real world and find a boss who simply doesn't like them or an apartment manager or a neighbor or a whole slew of people who just want to make their lives difficult. Now I'm not saying this makes bullying alright, I'm saying it's simply a fact of life and it's never going to change. The percieved strong pick on the percieved weak to keep the weak under control, that's just how it is. The only way you can break the mold is by standing up to those harassing you, bullies do not mix it up with the strong, that's why they're bullies.

Out of all the reasons I've contemplated suicide, being picked on has never been one of them. One reason being that I'll put up with alot and blow alot of shit off, the second reason is that once you cross that line which gets me interested I'll make it known real quick that you don't want to fuck with me. To give an example, the first year I was part of the Academic Decathlon my team mates would give me abunch of shit about my smoking, at first it wasn't any different than any other bullshit I caught from other non-smokers but then they also started jabbing at my race (I was the only white kid in the class). For awhile it was just little jabs here, little jabs there, typical friends poking fun at each other type shit but then it became an every day thing and it just became old and offensive. The final straw was coming in late one day to find a big black ink spot on the floor near the trash can where the teacher had dropped the printer cartridge, that had nothing to do with me and wasn't offensive. Although not a minute after walking through the door and noticing the spot I also noticed that everyone, including the teacher, had these big shit eating grins on their faces when they looked at me, naturally I was like "What the fuck are you smiling about." Apparently one of my teammates had made the comment "Oh look, Toshiro sneezed there", that was it, and the girl sitting across from me who was laughing with the rest of the class, noticing my disgust for the comment, said "Oh cmon it's just a joke." My response? "Yeah, it's also the type of shit which causes things like Columbine to happen." Boom, the room went immediately silent with the exception of the girl across from me going pale white saying "That's not funny man."

My teacher whipped me from the room and started laying into me about how he could have me expelled for a comment like that. I shrugged and said "Hey, I put up with racism and cracks about my smoking every fucking day and never say a word, and now you're here telling me I could be expelled for stating a simple fact?" My teacher wasn't stupid though, he knew what I was doing with that "simple fact," I was making a threat without actually making a threat, but it worked, they cooled down on the racist jokes and the comments about my smoking. The point being, if you don't make it clear that there are consequences to the bully's actions, they'll continue to bully you. Running away, ignoring it, or snitching to the teacher only make it worse, the latter could find your ass severly beaten somewhere where the school has no jurisdiction. I don't know what it's like in other parts of the world but I'm sure it's not that different from the schools here.

Hell, our politicians are the same way. Do you really think Dubya and the other scumfucks could get away with even a quarter of the shit that they do if gun sales suddenly went up and the general populace rattled their sabres from time to time? Fuck no. There are a little over a million people serving in the military around the world, there are over 270 million Americans, if just one percent, 2.7 million, of Americans rattled their sabres, politicians would be scared shitless. The last thing they want is a mob of nearly three million people well armed and looking for blood. Watch how quickly we get things like national health care and a minimum living wage. All of that "We have to worry about the shareholders" bullshit will fly out the fucking window. Cozing up to lunatic fringe groups like the Religious Right, out the fucking window. Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the lying snakes who plague "political" TV, out the fucking window, infact they'll jump out. These people are cowards and the moment you illustrate that their harassment has gone too far their tune will change mighty quick.

People, you can not run from bullies, you can only face them and deal with them. The question is, when is enough enough?