14 DAY TRIAL // Australia, to the chagrin of many honest people living there, has once again caved in to terrorist threats, ignorance and greed: Target, a major retailer, announced that it was pulling copies of Grand Theft Auto V from its shelves.
The move comes following some complaints from customers of the retailer about the way Rockstar Games' action-adventure title portrays women and about the depictions of violence against them.
The online petition was initially started by various survivors of violence and sex industry workers, who called for the removal of the game from Target's menu.
Target removed the game from its shelves following "extensive community and customer concern about the game," and a lot of misguided people felt a lot safer in the world because something that does not really affect them or the circumstances which led to their abuse (or others' potential abuse) is no more.
Some people even applauded Target for choosing ethics over greed and for supporting women's rights movements. As if the move was not fueled by the fact that Target likes money more than standing up for human rights.
The curious thing is that Target General Manager of Corporate Affairs Jim Cooper, the same one who pulled the game from shelves, stated not one week prior that the mature themes found in the game were the same ones found in other media products such as books and movies, and that they shared the same creative freedom.
Moreover, he mentioned that if Target were to stop selling the game, it would not make a difference as far as the game's availability was concerned, and that the discussion had to be taken to a regulatory level.
Meanwhile in Australia
Since then, the quotes that made sense were removed, and the only ones left were the ones stating that Target listened to the strong feedback from customers claiming that GTA V was not a product they wanted the retailer to sell.
Australia has had some run-ins with common sense before, in the form of censorship, video games prohibited from being sold, and other such displays of senseless fascism.
Apart from the fact that the violence in video games dispute has been done to death, and that detractors of freedom have been put in their place time and time again, such movements still occur now and then, depending on the flavor of the day.
The latest flavor seems to be the woes of feminists in first world countries, trivializing the real issues that humans of the female gender face in many countries where doing what they did in Australia would be swiftly met with violence and even death.
Sure, it's easier to blame an entire group of people for your problems, but I don't see many Australian women decapitated by Grand Theft Auto V fanatics for prophesying their beliefs. Which, by the way, are based entirely on their world view, and not on actual science, not on facts and statistics.
One of the problems with the portrayal of women in video games is that video games don't use real people as characters, and are thus not a good instrument to ascertain human beings' worth.
Read more words than you speak
When you exercise violence toward a male or female character, you're not being violent toward a person. It's just a collection of pixels with no free will, no hopes and dreams to crush, etc.
I don't care if millions of virtual people suffer as a consequence of my actions. They don't actually exist. The bad news is that there are many people in the actual world who feel the same way about actual human beings.
No amount of pretending that they're not real or banning harmless video games will change the way they work. They don't want to change, and any external actions such as preventing decent people from buying GTA V at Target are not affecting them in any way.
If you want to do something worthwhile that won't be met with righteous opposition that you would then interpret as sexism, try doing something constructive instead of attempting to destroy what other people create.
Try to make more women learn mathematics and instill in them the notion that motherhood is not the holy grail of existence, go to countries where they are underprivileged and attempt to persuade people who hold influence that educating young girls is an important step to having a stronger society and a stronger economy, and that how you treat the poor, the bereft and the outcasts is a true measure of your worth.
Stop trying to point fingers and unjustly accuse others of things you make up. You will never manage to build anything if your actions are only focused on taking down what others have built.
Hate leads to the dark side
This is one of the reasons hate speeches are not an effective tool of persuasion. They don't make sense, are not grounded in reality, and can only sway the desperate, the hurting and the angry. The educated will remain skeptical of their merits, on account of having a broader world view.
They will see the fact that hate is just a crutch meant to comfort a troubled psyche, and that in the end nothing good comes out of it. Embracing who we are should be the first step in realizing that you don't make faults go away by hiding the evidence, and you don't solve real-world problems when you forbid their depiction in virtual worlds.
The most mature piece of content you can ever experience is real life. The fact that you don't know how much more evil reality is and you think that video game content can even compare to it is nothing short of a testimony of your own ignorance, which itself is a big part of your general problem.
I would think it a much better idea to ban all Kim Kardashian-related articles from the media, as they constitute a much bigger threat to our society's core values.
Actually, I am puzzled by the fact that the people behind the online petition asking for the removal of Grand Theft Auto V from Target didn't start with taking down Kim Kardashian, on account of her depiction of female objectification as a means to success and fame.
She poses the real threat to our society. I don't even want to think about the dystopian society where women would like trivial nonsense such as jewelry and conflicts between people they don't actually know more than mathematics, the language of the universe.
