Ad Terras Per Aspera

Thanks to the wonder of YouTube, we get to relive an old Nickelodeon show from the early 1980s called Livewire. In this episode, they have a guest on the show named Ronnie Lamm, someone who spouts the most ignorant half-truths I’ve heard in awhile about video games. Infact, she reminds me of Jack Thompson.

(Update: I used to embed the video right here, but I’ve removed the embedded player because YouTube produces invalid xhtml. Just click here to watch it instead.)

For one, her statements about cataracts formed by CRTs is completely bunk, and was struck down by the science community in the mid-80s or so. It really dates the show, but it is minor compared to the other things she said…

How many people ever got credit from an arcade? None. Absolutely none. Where she ever got such a whacky idea I don’t know, but not only would such a contract be invalid (as you cannot make a legally enforcable contract with a minor), it sounds a lot like the debit-card-ish thing many large arcades had where parents paid up front (which did not exist yet, and wouldn’t have been implemented for another few years).

Also, notice how she totally sidesteps the kid in the audience’s question near the end? The kid asks, “I spend $1.50 a day on arcades where I’d be instead spending it on food.” She totally goes off the deep end and talks about those credit contracts in arcades. Now that America has what is basically a fat people epidemic, shes worried about some kid spending $1.50 on an arcade machine?

Also, she compares these arcades to “shylocks and credit people.” Yeah, lady, I’m sure Visa and Mastercard really love you now. Wow, next it’ll be wrong and/or illegal to make a decent living.

I’d love to know what the hell people like this are on. You can’t just be afraid of every little thing that shows up. And the guy opposite of her from the game industry is right: If your kid has a game addiction (if such a thing even exists, in 2006 we still don’t think it exists), then you deal with it; you don’t start trying to tear the arcade down because your kid has issues. Maybe if parents would take responsibility for their children and properly raise them we wouldn’t have half the shit going on we have now.

Teach your children to responsible with their money, time, and lives, and America’s overflowing prisons and dying economy will be a thing of the past, and so will the Jack Thompsons and the Ronnie Lamms of the world, the true shylocks.