Unofficial Brownback Campaign Blog Calls Nintendo DS "Abomination" ...is it a hoax?

Trolling is serious business.

-P

I'm gonna go with plain wackiness.

Cuz Brownback is a retard.

He is out of the race anyway. so who cares

The last I checked, and I haven't played my DS in awhile let alone Pictochat, for someone to contact you on Pictochat, you've got to be using Pictochat at that moment, and they've got to be awfully close to you...

So yes, anyone can send you a message, but they're going to have to be in proximity during the off-chance that you're on it as well. You won't be getting messages like texts on your phone.

And if I was going to be a creep and prey on children, using a DS is not a very effective tool for that purpose. I'm sure there is "better" ways to go about being a creep than using a DS.

I wouldn't put this past Fox News.

Oh, my god... that report is so backward, I don't even know where to start in terms of pointing out it's obvious bias and lack of professionalism. This guy should be making journalists everywhere ashamed.

I would say it's a hoax such as MAVAV (Mothers Against Violence and Addicion in Videogames). It's true that when the Internet arrived, some people played the child molesters card, not only to warn about them, but to condemn internet as a whole. So the same kind people may blame DS as a whole. But the tone this site uses is way too excessive to be serious. And the fact they call Jack Thompson a "video game expert" is, to me, a clear sign of parody.

I just hope it's a fake and everyone understands it as a fake.

@shoehorn

thou shouldnst test the limits of human stupidity.

Work in tech support first.

OK, I've just read through the site. If I had any doubt that it was a fake, right now, I have none at all. It's a "brilliant" MAVAV-like hoax.

ok... Donkey Kong? seriously, you're going to use Donkey Kong as an example of the "Jap Evil" that is infecting us?

monkey donkey? where do you people get the drugs you use to make up your stories?

i'm sick of luddites running the world.

That report is terribly misinformed. So they 'proved' the DS has infinite range capabilities by opening up Pictochat and sending a message? Uh, no. You can 'send' a message anytime, but if there are no other units within range you'll just talk to an empty chatroom.

By the time a pedophile spots a child passing by in the other lane, gets out his/her DS, turns it on, opens up Pictochat, and sends a message, the other car will be long down the road. Oh, and if the kid didn't have Pictochat open in the first place, it wouldn't matter anyway. As the DS manual explains, PC is not an internet application. You can't use the Wi-Fi signal to seek out other people around the world.

Shame on you, Fox.

I love that News article. All they prove is one: Nintendo's devices are more powerful than they claim, two, parents obviously dont care enough to even look at what they are giving their kids - pictochat is on everybox, its on the main screen and in the booklet, and 3 - don't trust news men, especially when your mother invites them into your home and tells you hes doing a story on DSs, because he could be a pedophile.

@Axmand - The point of subliminal messaging is that you are not aware of it, thus you can't truly claim we are always exposed to it =)

The blog and site mentioned in the story could easily be a hoax or completely serious. Either way, it won't be taken with more than a grain of salt. I was reading through it and thought this to myself:

"This is a funny hoax. HahahLOLhahaha."

"Oh wait, this guy might be serious. HahahLOLhahaha."

In my opinion, US citizens have allowed themselves to be prodded, encouraged, and manipulated into lives consumed by fear. Fear, the most powerful human emotion (more so than lust or greed), dictates so much of our daily routine that we have forgotten what safety and confidence felt like.

When we were fairly content, outside forces and the news instilled fear via terrorist attacks and "super-bugs." When our fear of terrorism began to subside, our jobs and homes were then targeted with sensationalist reporting that we were going to enter the next Great Depression. When we kept our jobs, our every day safety and that of our children has been on the hot plate for years.

"Criminals are everywhere, but we have no suggestions to give you"
"Pedophiles are everywhere, and they are getting smarter all the time"
"Child molesters talk your children through the internet and gaming devices"

Do these things happen? Absolutely. Are we helpless? Hell no! I for one believe it is time for a change. Against all the things we are afraid of, or told to be afraid of, it's time people took back their families, communities, and confidence. Are you afraid your child could be stalked by a pedophile via a DS? Then monitor the DS activity and educate your child!

If this isn't a hoax, I would be incredibly surprised. For her daughter to even have a DS, she would have had to either have bought it (in which case she would have known about pictochat, because it's listed as on of the features on the box) or it was borrowed from a friend, in which case she has to explain to her daughters now ex-friend how she was protecting her daughter from those internet molesters. Word will spread, and this poor girl will now have no friends till college, living with the ever present knowlage her mom's a kamikaze psyco nut. Did she even know who she was talking to? If this is a hoax, then the people who posted it must have the combined I.Q. of a sea slug.

"Kidnaps a young girl to satisfy his bestial desires."... this is what i define as a "WTF situation". Have they actually seen the secret cut scene where Kong does this to this woman? And honestly, how do they get access to children through the DS? is it the online capability? If thats it, why dont they smash to PC also, since that has chat sites on its internet capability. Honestly, i find it more funny than anything that she took the $200 device she bought for her child and broke it.

Ok regardless if this is a hoax or not. I was under the impression for even chatting with people over the DS you need to give out your DS friend code. If both sides don't had the others friend code you can't do anything. So how could this be used for anything but friends talking?

Whatever happened to the "don't talk to strangers" rule? Is it thrown out when kids play video games? Isnt' it common sense?

Well, I don't care about the blog being a hoax or not. But television going fear-mongering on the DS? That's funny and ridiculous!

See, the child molester issue is with the Japanese DS, not with the American DS. I'm pretty sure that the Japanese DS will sprout tentacles an have it's way with you.

if its real, then all i can say is that its [b]MADNESS[/b], however, if its a fake, then its still rather stupid.

however, i agree with the dude's general idea that raters should have to play the game all the way through before they can rate it, i think thats what the whole Manhunt 2 issue came down to, ESRB looked at the 'worst' parts of the game and said "well, thes've been toned down enough"
while the BBFC looked at the game as a whole and said "The whole game's attitude to murder is above an 18" and so they couldn't classify it.

IF the statement is true:

...Those evangelical Christians really make my heard hurt. Those silly superstitious bastards. Bowing before an invisible genocidal war God, but at the same time, denouncing a perfectly safe toy that thousands of children around the world love. True values at work here, folks.

In the same spirit, if you ever see the obscene great book of hate and lies [Holy Bible] laying around where a child might find it, I suggest you follow Brownback's words: grab that tomb of hate, snap it in half, and know that you have just protected the intellectual, social, and moral development of a child.

As I've said before, the only way to stop these bible-thumping idiots from raping every sense of our autonomy as both adults and gamers is to meet their hateful, backwards, superstitious, and inconsistent belief systems head on.

fighting hate with more hate is the stupidest thing you can ever promote, Pandralisk.

I see nothing hateful about destroying a book placed in a position where children can find it that endorses genocide, hate, and superstition... it is no worse than putting a copy of Postal 2 in the hands of a young child, or leaving a few hardcore copies of porn strewn about a play room.

We ONE of need two things here, folks. I perfer the first option.

1. All people, bible thumping idiots and normal people alike, need to respect the autonomy of other people. ALL forms of censorship and restrictions should be lifted from games, and we should all be allowed to make up our own minds and do as we wish.

2. We need to consistently crack down on forms of media that damage the development of children. If bible-thumpers want to cite games as a child-damaging source, we need to remind them that the Bible is just as hateful, contradictory, obscene and detrimental to the growth of a child as is violent games, porn, and violent movies. In fact, I'd argue that it is MORE damaging -- the matieral is being presented as a "universal truth" in a half-ass form, down the throat of a child who is not capable of reading most textbooks, and the superstitious illusion itself is being taught as REAL. Games do not claim to be an aspect of the natural world.

Totally fake and totally hilarious. I was 99.99% sure it was fake when I read the comments here, but this segment from the furries article clinched it.

"Check your child’s closet. Check his browsing history. Check his picture directory. Examine his stuffed animals. And if he’s involved in this, beat him to within an inch of his life, cut his Internet service, throw away his computer and all of his custom CDs and DVDs and hustle him to a deprogrammer immediately. He may or may not thank you later. But you just might save his soul, and those of a trail of future victims."

ROFL. Unfortunately there is probably at least a few people in the world who would beat there children for being furries, otakus, etc.

@ Pandralisk

C'mon that's a bit much dude. I'm an agnostic and not a fan of religion by a long shot but your saying we should don the exact same thing that the evangelicals are doing but in reverse. I hate fanatical atheists as much as I hate fanatical believers.