What's the scariest thing in the world? Ask your teenage daughter
polygon.com
polygon.com
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
"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.
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,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Macbeth
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,
http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-king-on-how-to-write-2014-7
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.
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.
(It's less of a problem in schools because of the number of teachers, but it's still a problem there).
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.
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 ...
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Having said that, it's a worthy subject to build a game around and hope it will tackle the subject in a proper way.
Indeed, perhaps it is concealment and forgetting that we long for by playing video games where thousands of zombies are slain.
Apparently most of the males I've met in my life are incredibly, incredibly dysfunctional.
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.
May macho-God have mercy on our limp-wristed souls.
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.
This is not a controversial area of psychology. The burden of proof is on anyone making claims to the contrary (like the person I was replying to).
If you meant to refer to the latter, then linking a whole Wikipedia article on psychological sexual differences seems a bit unspecific.
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.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psycho... [1] http://www.openisbn.com/isbn/9780878936977/
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.)
"Simply noting a difference" is never simple when dealing in stereotypes driven by historical prejudice.
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.
This isn't an unusual observation. I'd offer to you: http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/toy-guns-do-th...
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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
Anecdotal? Yes. But that isn't an atypical story.
> 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.
Again to address that particular issue, there is expert opinion supporting that boys are in fact wired differently:
http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/aggression.html
From the article:
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 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.
> http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/aggression.html From the article: ...
You article is not a rigorous study or experiment, it is weak evidence, too weak to substantially sway reasonable opinion by itself.
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.
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."
[1]http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a5/6b/57/a56b57600606...
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.
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.
> 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.
I'd say running fast isn't just about delivering pizza fast, it seems to be about avoiding bullies too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our bullying stopped when we fought back, or moved out of school. And yes the bullying continues to hunt us to this day.
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.
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.
The idea that women are mostly feelers and men are mostly doers writes off both men and women as useless stereotypes.
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 think you're unnecessarily narrowing the definition of "emotional manipulation".
I also do not know what "real provocation" is and how it differs from "not-real provocation".
"Real provocation" in my above comment would be the sort of "emotional manipulation" that you are talking about.
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.
"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.)
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.
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.
Edit: And everyone down voting me is also a guy.
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.
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!".
Agreed, so much of the hell experienced through other people can be averted by focusing on building up one's confidence and self-esteem.
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.
Economic, emotional, verbal conflict, for example, are hard to represent. The outcome may not be immediate, and the result may not be obvious.
Now combat is immediate. I shoot. If it bleeds, that means I hit it. If it falls down, it is dead. If it's not dead, shoot it again.
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.
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.
Maybe it wasn't the pinnacle of storytelling, but games have to juggle a lot more than books.
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 also happen to think the mechanics of a shooter can be art.
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.
Even shows that shoot for the more pacifist/philosophical angle tend to prominently feature violence (Doctor Who seems like an obvious example).
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.
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."
Historically kids wouldn't have had an opportunity to be around that many other kids, and they kids they were around were probably extended family.
Works perfectly on Ubuntu (via Wine). Quite a fun little game :-)
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.
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.
But I do agree schools have gone way overboard on the politically-correct scale.
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.
I got suspended (1 day out of school, 2 days in-school) but the bullying got dealt with. YMMV
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.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1107526107/ninja-pizza-...
Here is what the article said - "Teens worry about their peers."
This is apparently eye opening to people who were once teens. What is it with parents that completely forget high school?
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) 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.
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.
I make no grand claims to universality.
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.
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.
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?"
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/06/twitter-trolls-...
* Natasha Devon, reporter with the Telegraph
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.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/10887389/Some-of-t...
* Caroline Criado-Perez
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
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.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/26/mary-beard-ques...
* Louise Mensch
"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."
* Lorraine Pascale
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?
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier
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.
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.
Source?
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?)
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 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.)
Oh I forgot, I was a boy though so it doesn't matter.
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!
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.
Without it, all we can claim is that a non-insignificant population has these issues.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
Don't confuse it with being flaky or random.
Its not of any use when you're getting beaten, its highly effective at avoiding a beating scenario.
http://news-beta.slashdot.org/story/99/04/25/1438249/voices-...
What is the message here, dont bully unless its fat people?
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".
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.
Also interesting: "Run Fatty Run"[1] is in clear contradiction of the creator's message in his latest game.
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.
The problem of bullying starts in the family.
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 .
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.
I think I'll do without your hateful book, thanks.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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.
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."
Man, you're crazy to let kids drive, might as well put loaded guns in their hands... oh, wait!
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.
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.