Gamer Girls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSrnGMA-C-Q

I was going to do a review about the Family Matters gun episode.  I found out that there’s an episode of Family Matters wherein Laura gets a gun pulled on her by a female bully so then considers buying a gun to protect herself.  Then a friend of hers gets shot during an attempted shoe robbery.  

At the end of the episode, Urkel does a rap at school during some gun amnesty and encourages his fellow students to drop off their guns.  Carl is there in his role as a police officer.  

I haven’t actually seen the episode.  This is just what I’ve pieced together through clips.  I tried downloading the episode but it was mis-labelled and I’m not going to download the entire torrent of every episode of Family Matters just for this shit.  

But yeah, this is what Kieran was talking about in episode 2 of the Cinemassacre podcast when he referred to episodes of sitcoms where they encourage you to “turn your guns in.”  

Yeah, it’s hokey and it’s ridiculous and poorly written but this is a show for children.  And how can Kieran possibly disagree with the basic message?  Does he think it’s appropriate for teenagers to bring guns to school?  

This episode aired three or four years before the Columbine shootings.  It was 1995.  Violence in schools was becoming an increasing problem in America.  

Gang violence was perhaps at its peak.  I remember going to some kind of an “assembly”…is that what they were called…it was a talk in the school auditorium.  It was about gang violence.  This was probably in 1994 or 1995.  And they had police officers encouraging us not to get involved in street gangs.  They gave some grisly examples of stuff that they’ve seen.  Murder scenes and whatnot.  Scared straight shit.  

And then he said, “If you want to join a real gang, join our gang.”  That stuck with me.  Here’s a fucking police officer comparing his profession to a violent youth street gang.  This is how he sees himself.  It was a Mexican guy, by the way. Our school had a fairly large Mexican population and most of the gang activity was Mexican gangs.

I grew up in a fairly impoverished, urban area but I don’t remember anything particularly bad happening in school.  There were fights and whatnot but no weapons.  

People were tougher back then.  It seems like Columbine was the catalyst for the pussification of American society.  Some kids get picked on so they shoot up the school.  That didn’t happen in my day.  If somebody was fucking with you, you punched them in the face.  There were no guns involved.

And there wasn’t this whole “bully” mentality.  That’s become a big thing in the past 20 years or so.  Even grown adults will talk about being “bullied”.  “Bullied” at work, for example.

Nobody fucking bullies me.  I’m an adult.  Nobody is knocking me down on the playground.  What is this shit?

But after Columbine, people became hyper sensitive to “bullying” because they were afraid that somebody else would shoot the school up.  And this all lead to safe spaces and transgendered students and whatnot.  

For example, I think that gym class is largely optional now.  If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to.  

When I was a kid, not only was gym mandatory but there were also mandatory communal showers.  How crazy is this?  No stalls, nothing like this.  Just like five shower heads in one open room.  And there would be a teacher watching to make sure that everyone takes a shower.  

I heard that shortly after I graduated, they stopped that shit.  Not only were showers not required, you couldn’t take a shower.  

I once read that up until the late 70s or so, it was mandatory for men to swim naked at the YMCA.  It was considered unhygienic to swim with trunks on.  This is probably why the YMCA was a big homosexual hangout.

Anyway, nobody cried about anything or got lawyers involved or any of this shit.  You just got on with it.  

The most fun I had in gym was thinking of ways to get out of playing the games.  Like in baseball, you have the batting lineup.  I would just constantly let people go in front of me.  We must have played baseball 50 times and I only batted once.  Some asshole on the other team finally complained about me letting people go ahead of me so I had to bat.  I got a base hit.

Dodgeball was another good one.  I was able to dodge the ball well enough but I never attempted to catch the ball and I hated being the last one left because then the game just goes on forever with people throwing balls at you from both sides.  So I would find an opportune moment to go the “captured” section.  Somebody on my team would be hit, or maybe even two people, there would be some commotion, and I would sneakily make my way to the “captured” section.  Why would the other team complain?  Very occasionally somebody on the other team would complain but why?  I’m giving up.  They were just assholes.  But I didn’t make an issue of it.  I didn’t complain about “bullying”.

Also great is just “forgetting” to bring your gym clothes.  Then you can just mess about on the bleachers with the stoner kids who also didn’t like gym class.

Anyway, nobody had to have their parents write a note to the teacher excusing us from class or complaining about feelings being hurt or any of this shit.  You’d be a fucking laughing stock if you did that.  We took the initiative ourselves.  

I was reading something about how it’s normal now for parents to bring their children to college/university for their first day.  Are you fucking kidding?  To college?  As an 18 year old?  NOBODY did that when I was in college.  

This is what people are like now.  Giant pussies.  It’s a generation that’s been completely coddled and told that everything that they do and think is right.  And as a result, they can’t do anything like a normal adult.  Youtube participation trophies for all of the gamer grrls.  Yeah, your videos are all shit but at least you tried.  Maybe you didn’t even try.  But you did something.  Don’t worry about getting a job like a normal adult.

Anyway, Kieran and his love for firearms…pretty weird.  But there was actually a Family Matters episode about this.  He wasn’t just making this up.