Saudi Arabia Bans 47 Games In Response To Two Child Suicides (ign.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IGN: Saudi Arabia is apparently banning 47 games in response to a pair of children committing suicide after allegedly being encouraged to do so while playing an online game. Per the Associated Press, the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media said yesterday that a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy have taken their own lives after playing a social media game known as Blue Whale. Also called the Blue Whale Challenge, the disturbing social media phenomenon is a form of extreme cyberbullying. It's not clear how the Saudi government believes this connects to more mainstream video games, but it nonetheless appears to have banned 47 popular indie and AAA games in response.The Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media's website actually says the list of banned games was last updated on July 2, but the Associated Press' report claims the bans were just announced Monday.
any excuse will do (Score:5, Insightful)
Backwards thinking people will look for any excuse to justify their lousy attitude.
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Maybe beating people to death with a giant dildo.
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Clean the basement and stop abusing you're socks.
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Sorry AC. I didn't vote donnie two scoops.
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Blue whale?!? (Score:1)
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It is. And even the Wikipedia link in TFS says that's it's bullshit.
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Need's more typos'.
Re:Blue whale?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know why the Saudis banned video games since Blue Whale has nothing to do with video games, but they were part of another big panic in the 90's (remember Jack Thompson) where everyone was sure violent video games would turn little Billy into a killer. Maybe they're still hung up on that one as well.
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The sad part is that the kinds of bullying that "Blue Whale" promotes are encouraged by adults in the "real world" of sports and fraternity hazing and other adult-led or adult-tolerated organizations.. In high schools, faculty encourage bullying as a way to maintain social order mostly through inaction.
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I remember when it used to be Dungeons & Dragons being evil and then daycares practicing satanic rituals and abusing children.
At least those days produced wonderful "articles" by unintentionally hilarious companies like Chick Publications.
One of my favorites was the article where the guy claimed he was something like..... "An Alexandrian priest heavily involved in the worship of Satan," and that TSR came and took detailed notes so they could make sure D&D's Satanic rituals were as accurate as possible.
Re:Blue whale?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trolling: Most Extreme Edition (Score:2)
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Keep in mind how stupid the media and children are.
The Tide Pod Challenge was a joke until the media sensationalized it and pretended it was a real thing. THEN it became a real thing.
Re: Trolling: Most Extreme Edition (Score:1)
Actually, the Tide Pod Challenge was an outgrowth of accidents with said detergent packs that only gets blamed on the media because of the idiots who think they didn't come up with the dumbest shit without help.
Then again, these idiots were snorting laundry detergent and mothballs for decades already.
Probably a problem for cavemen parents too. Somebody had to be the first person to eat a rock.
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... Probably a problem for cavemen parents too. Somebody had to be the first person to eat a rock.
That's not paleo? what?
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Nah. What's really disturbing is adults actually believing that children are falling for this, when there is not a single confirmed case of it.
Nobody did (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody in Saudi Arabia wanted to crack down on video games, probably because they're helping to secularize their society and there's lots of very wealthy and powerful men who don't want that. That's all this is.
Just ban stupidity (Score:2)
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Theocracies depend on stupidity. We could teach our kids critical thinking skills. But then this would be the end of religious authority.
Some of these make no sense (Score:2)
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Banning videogames like this makes no sense to begin with, so looking for logic there is your first mistake. Maybe it's just the list of games the kids had played. Better safe than sorry, right? Ban em all!
Oh, and certainly don't investigate this case more deeply, looking for anything like abuse, bullying, or an actual trigger for the suicide. That might embarrass someone important.
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http://prison-architect.wikia.... [wikia.com]
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Only way to truely enjoy coffee.
Why can't we ban Saudi Arabia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice Conspiracy Theory (Score:2)
"The Syrian civil war? We're involved in that because before the Syrian civil war, two pipelines were proposed..."
Nice lengthy conspiracy theory but Syria was regarded as a country antagonistic to the US for decades prior to the planning of these pipelines. The much simpler and more logical answer is the US saw the turmoil happening in Syria as an opportunity to get rid of an ally of two of our most significant adversaries, Russia and Iran.
This Clinton Foundation shit just sounds ludicrous. I mean, if Hilla
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Finally watched your video link. You watch this garbage? Sure, the gus has a British accent which sounds intellectual to many of us Americans but he drops the word "fuck" like a 13 year old trying to prove something. I couldn't take this guy seriously even if what he was saying wasn't rubbish.
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"It's all backed up with references"
References are certainly nice but they don't make something true. I'm sure if I cherry picked the right references I could "prove" that the Nazi's won WWII.
"and what's more, it makes sense"
No it doesn't at all. The Clinton foundation conspiracy theories all rely on the foolish assumption that the Clinton's have some how managed to consolidate a completely unprecedented amount of political power under themselves, meanwhile Hillary can't even carry Pennsylvania in a preside
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"Syria wasn't an adversary of America."
I'm not trying to insult you here but you're either being willfully ignorant or you don't know your modern Middle Eastern history very well. Syria has indeed been an adversarial nation to the US for decades. Russia's naval base in Syria was built by the Soviets in the early 70's and cemented them into the Soviet sphere in terms of the global order of the time. The naval base in Syria was essential to the Soviet positioning of it's 5th Operational Squadron in the Medite
Not the reason. (Score:2)
The real reason is that women are now driving and oil prices were down for a bit.
Forward Thinking (Score:1)
I salute Saudi Arabia and its forward thinking policies. We need more countries willing to take difficult decisions when it comes to combating social interactions that drive people to suicide. It is very clear that social pressures can be made very intense not only by peers locally or online but most of all by older and authoritative figures in society. It is for this reason, I am certain Saudi Arabia's next step to ban Islam. The call to violence by the dogmatic of any religion or belief system is no l
No, they didn't. (Score:5, Informative)
https://twitter.com/malekawt/s... [twitter.com]
These games, or at least most of them, were already banned by Saudi Arabia for various reasons just like other countries like Australia ban games. This specific news event had nothing to do with it. Just the media getting shit wrong again as usual.
Rob
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Comparing the banning of computer games to other countries that also ban computer games is perfectly valid. Any inference made between the two nations system of governmnet exists purely between your ears.
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fakenews shareware (Score:2)
blue whale was nothing but a free demo from whoever is selling fake news as a service.
It was a way to prove it worked for maybe a big client. That's why it spread so well and is so idiotic and completely baseless. 100% of the reports goes back to one single made-up tabloid article in russia.
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"In the United States, one site, also called the "Blue Whale Challenge", does not identify as an effort to combat the game, but offers fifty days of challenges that promote mental health and well-being."
So they really blew it with this article.
YO-KAI WATCH (Score:2)
I looked at the list of titles as a list of games I probably need to check out... The last on the list Yo-kai watch... man oh man... that looks like pretty subversive stuff...
https://www.google.com.au/sear... [google.com.au]
Let's get rid of all sucide (Score:2)
Looking at the PCA analysis of suicide, several risk factors can be identified that increase the rate. So, in order to bring the rate to practically zero we need to make sure that all people on Earth are:
not very intelligent
peasants
with big families
religious
poor
at war
Careful what you wish for!
This is why (Score:2)
Saudi Arabia Bans 47 Games In Response To Two Child Suicides
... because the games didn't encourage them to bomb the infidels while they were about it
Why these games? (Score:2)
Philipp Budeiki (Score:2)
While there is some hysteria surrounding this and the fact it is unfathomable doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
There will always psychopaths that will seek to exploit these things for their own sick reasons.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/... [bbc.co.uk]
Journalism... (Score:1)