And you probably believe that makes you a good, caring friend.

Here’s some news: by doing that, you are only harming that person in the long run. And believe me, I’ve committed that error myself. But I try not to, any more.

I could give you some real life examples, for instance, about a woman in my family who used to go on “shopping binges” where she spent about 10 times the money she had, creating huge debts… and then her father (retired, and far from rich) would do everything, including use his lifetime savings and sell things he needed, to cover her debts so nothing would happen to her. Of course, she would then do it again and again. Or a more current example: sometimes, friends ask me for help with their computers, because they’re full of viruses and spyware. I help, but I also tell them that they should, in the future use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, since IE is insecure and the cause of most spyware; some learn, but some are stubborn and insist on using IE, because they’re used to it and hate learning anything new, or maybe because they don’t trust my knowledge, even though they asked for my help. Fine, I reply, but you’ll have to suffer the consequences for your stubbornness and stupidity, because next time I won’t help.

You see, the problem in all situations like this is that when you do help, what you did was helping those people evade reality. In other words: you tell someone not to do X, or Y (a bad thing) will happen. He does X anyway. Suppose you do everything you can to prevent him from being a victim of Y – possibly having Y happen to you instead.

What will that person think? “I was right, I could do X and Y didn’t happen!”

All you did was “protect” that person from the law of causality, so he was able to keep thinking reality is fluid, that it can be changed on a whim. That he can do everything he wants and never suffer the consequences, because there is, to him, no relationship between causes and consequences. You can do anything, and everything will work out as you want it (so what if it’s someone else who is preventing your falls, or paying the price for your actions?).

If you care for someone, don’t protect him or her from the consequences of their actions. Warn them, try to convince them, but if they insist on doing something stupid, don’t protect them afterwards. Let them learn, let them see that there is something called “cause and effect”. Whatever consequences they suffer, they are a very small price for learning how reality works – and for learning to trust your advice in the future, as well.

But a certain ambulance-chasing parasite still plans to steal money from the entertainment industry while perpetuating a world in which no teenager or parent is responsible for their actions. Oh, and a world where rendered violence is worse than real thing, and a pixelated nipple is worse than the Apocalypse.

It amazes me that gaming companies feel so threatened by the current state of affairs that they don’t do the right thing: sue that bastard into oblivion for libel and extortion. Aren’t they aware that, unless they do something about it (and no, putting an end to mature games and thus restricting the media to young children isn’t the right idea), the extortion attempts will not only continue but increase?

For the last couple of decades, the media, sleazy lawyers (redundant, I know) and opportunistic politicians (there I go again…) have been, from time to time, creating media circuses because computer and video games are corrupting our children with gratuitous violence, blood, gore, disrespect for authority and, worst of all, nudity! That no scientific study (and there have been several) has ever linked real life violence with computer games is of no interest to these parasites – it is an opportunity to get richer (to a lawyer like the vermin above) and an opportunity to be seen as “protecting children” and “fighting for family values” (just check out Hillary Clinton, whom I had nothing against until now).

Why do these tactics work? Because parents want them. Parenting is hard work, and it’s much easier to let the government do it through legislation, instead of taking an active interest in educating your children, spending time with them (“time? impossible, I have to work!”), getting to know them, and having an idea of what their entertainment is about. So people claim for stricter laws, they call for the end of “mature” games, they demand strong censorship against violence and, worse, sex. Anything so that they don’t have to be parents, don’t have to take responsibility for anything their kids do, and don’t have to teach responsibility to the kids themselves.

And, so, if a child or teenager is violent or crazy, gets a gun and goes on a shooting spree at school, it was those damned video games that caused it. Let’s sue Rockstar or Electronic Arts or Sony, let’s lobby Congress to ban all videogames except those fit for 8-year olds – never mind that the mature games are clearly labeled as such, yet parents keep buying them for their children (“just to shut them up”, I guess).

“Personal responsibility” seems to be a forgotten concept, these days. We are all “victims of society”, and can’t be blamed for anything we do. It’s those dirty heavy metal bands and role-playing games… Ooops, sorry, wrong decade, that was in the 70s and 80s. It’s “video games” now. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’ll just write a letter to my congressman demanding to ban video games (and violent movies, and violent books, and anything that could corrupt my kid (how old is he, anyway? I rarely see him at all…)), so I can be at the office for 10 hours a day and then go home to watch TV for hours, feeling safe with the knowledge that, whatever my kid is doing, he won’t see a drop of blood, a swear word or, horror of horrors, a nipple.