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[PA Comic] Monday, May 6, 2013 - The Young
Posts
Part of growing up is seeing and hearing tons of fucked up shit I think. And personally I don't think age is a good deciding factor for media, a classroom full of 12 year olds can have an incredibly diverse range of mental development. It's up to the parents to decide if the kid is ready for that sort of thing, and usually they are! I think children these days know and experience a lot more than they're letting on as well, especially with the prevalence of internet and personal devices like iPods and tablets where the kids can go out and experience these things without the aid of parents or even friends.
Anyway. Good comic!
Slenderman feels more...inevitable, unavoidable, inescapable, to my mind. He's the ultimate paranoia inducer. And awareness and paranoia in some ways make him worse, instead of acting as a bit of a defense. Also, the presentation methods make him feel a bit more plausible and real, even if you know he's not.
edit: After marathoning Marble Hornets, I couldn't even look into a treeline in broad daylight with friends for a while. Jason did nothing, Freddy I was over in a day, never seen Hellraiser, nut Slenderman ruined me for weeks and now I'm thinking of him again and feeling a bit creeped out.
It says MR GABE on the whiteboard
gave me a good chuckle
Michael Myers. Michael Myers was fucking scary. Unfeeling unreasoning unstoppable.
Michael Myers beats Slenderman because let's face it he is Slenderman before Slenderman.
It's not like kids don't enjoy horror/gory stuff inappropriate for their age. Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil was successful because they were some of the first M-Rated games, which is an idea that appeals to children.
Shit, there's something out of the observable universe so massive that it's pulling a substantial portion of our universe towards it and we have no clue what it could be. Slenderman is like that, right here on earth and actively malevolent.
Kids don't even have the concrete vision of the world necessary to be truly afraid of that.
Yeah, The Love Guru was pretty bad.
3DS FC: 5129-0946-8305
Well, his name is John Gabriel.
The father: What? A computer game? We don't own a computer.
I seriously doubt my own daughter would be freaked out by Slenderman, though I haven't exposed her to it. On the other hand, I won't be attempting Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit again anytime soon because Gollum just freaks her out. To most kids, that's an innocuous character, but to her it isn't. I try to be responsive to what spooks her by watching for similarities in other shows/movies, but I didn't say....woah, okay, clearly not ready for this "level" of content. There are no levels. You just have to pay attention and introduce things gradually. At least that's how I do things! Anyone who thinks that's stupid is free to do things their own way, but as soon as they start sticking their nose in my choices they can fuck right off.
I'm probably overreacting...I registered JUST to comment on this comic! And I really did find it funny. But I also found it more than a little wrongheaded. Looking forward to the news post.
This could be tacked on to just about any debate, lawsuit, or political issue in the US and be at least partially applicable.
Before I was always afraid of some vague idea of a freakish humanoid, but now Slenderman has assumed the role as the embodiment of my paranoia.
He's just a guy in evening wear roaming around the forest cuz he got lost at a dinner party. He's trying to ask you directions, but you, being the ignorant ass that you are, are too busy filming someone's notebook scribbles.
The only thing scary about him is the magnet in his pocket that wipes your camera's data storage when he gets too close.
I get Gabe's angle here that he just wants to educate parents. But let's say that a parent is educated, knows everything involved in online gaming and decides their 10 year old kid can be trusted to play CoD online as long as he keeps up with his chores/homework, has dinner with the family, etc. Does that make them a bad parent? I would say no.
The overall guideline should be to know what your kids are doing and have discussions with them about consequences of actions. Even if I never let my son play a violent video game, you can be damn sure he'll find a way. That doesn't mean I should give up, but that I should be realistic about what kids have access to in the modern world and how parents can help shape their view of these things.
I mean, It's Boogey Man level scares, c'mon, give me a break.
Educating parents on ESRB ratings is a nice thing and all, but it sounds to me like the original incident that inspired Gabe is really overblown
*I like creepy games. I just... need story to go with them. so the Slendy game just seems kinda dull. I'd rather watch other people scare themselves.
EDIT- And I should point out, that I'm actually a HUGE wimp when it comes to gory stuff. I can't watch scary movies or the like or I'll get insomnia for half a year or so.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that a) Gabe probably didn't even know the whole story behind it, and even if he did, maybe it was part of a bigger teaching moment that he didn't realize and/or b) as some people have said previously, some kids, especially at that age, love being scared and watching scary movies, and reading scary books. Hell, at 7 I was reading scary story books that were faaaaar scarier than slender-man (and not that goosebump crap, try Lovecraft) simply cause I liked getting scared.
Now, I didn't let my son play the slender-man game. I thought it was too scary FOR HIM. I would watch it at his age. But I let him keep watching the Toby video (I actually never let him see Marble Hornets, since I thought that was too realistic), it makes him realize it's just a game.
There is a game based on the meme called slender and it scared the bejesus out of a lot of peeps.
I hope the PA crew takes this one step further - they could take his notes from this and put together a downloadable "kit" for other gamer parents who would like to do this in their district. Maybe some topic notes, maybe a powerpoint, tips on dealing with specific complaints/objections that are likely to be brought up.
There's a few free indie games for it, the most well known called "Slenderman: The Seven Pages" (or something like that.) First person game where you wander around a spooky dark forest looking for notes while being chased by "something." That thing being Slenderman. Each page you get collect makes Slenderman more agressive in his chase (he shows up more.) If he catches you his blank face shows up on the screen, there's a bunch of loud static, and the game ends.
Totally the same thing as chainsawing a mutated zombie in half.
What you have to remember is that while Slenderman the indie games and Slenderman the images are relatively harmless, anyone who tries to, say, google slenderman- something any child who plays videogames should be able to do without even thinking about it, will run into Marble Hornets.
Marble Hornets being the internet videoseries that gives grown men nightmares and makes people unable to go out in the dark or near forests without feeling incredibly uneasy. I do not want to know what that shit would do to a kid.
I don't know, if that were the point I'm not sure he'd start off by saying "what the fuck is wrong with you". I mean, it is Gabe and all but it definitely seems to be saying the parents are bad.
I came in here to say the same thing. At the worst it's a simple video that can be spammed out to parents to give them the simplest guide as to what's what.
I was never really into horror movies as a kid, but I remember readin those books thinking "haha innocent fun from the third grade book fair" and then getting ALL MESSED UP about it. then when I was maybe twelve my cousin told me her favorite movie was children of the corn. She was five. So it's different for everyone. Hell, when I saw Blade for the first time ever(at the same cousin's house) it messed me up because I had never been around that type of film. I still don't like horror and my cousin still does. It doesn't make her parents bad parents. To my cousin it was still just a movie, and to her parents it was just as irritating as having to rewind any other movie thousands of times for their kid. All in all I'd say she and I are both well adjusted young adults, or at least equally maladjusted.
"He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!"
My early years were heavily influenced by Mr King. The good stuff, not the sober writing, God bless him.
"They all float down here."