Children as young as 9 years old who are trying to win video games are launching attacks against computer networks. In an attempt to get any edge that they can against opponents in online games, they use mods and other computer software to attack the networks of their opponents, slowing that opponent’s network connection to a crawl. This gives them an edge and enables them to win the game.
Research has suggested that many young students do not consider it “wrong” to disrupt other players’ gaming experience because it is considered just “another way to win,” their peers are doing it too, and they certainly do not believe that they are likely to get into any trouble with the law.
While in the immediate, it is disturbing that children are slowing Internet service, the most troubling thing about this is the attitude. The “I need to achieve at all costs” attitude lowers the bar for what children consider cheating and unethical behavior. This attitude that it is OK to attack an opponent’s network to beat him at a game is the equivalent of hiding your opponent’s baseball bat in order to prevent him from getting on base. The children view it as “using your resources” to win the game.
It’s cheating.
This is an indication that children are viewing unethical behavior as something that is acceptable, as long as it helps you win. This is carrying over into other facets of their lives. They cheat on homework. They cheat on tests. When teachers call them on it, they claim that they were just using the resources available to them. Too often, their parents support this attitude.
So these children eventually grow into adults, and those adults have the same set of morals and opinions that they learned as children: a winner take all attitude where the ends always justify the means.
Now apply this attitude to politics. It becomes OK to stuff ballot boxes. It becomes OK to game mail in balloting. All that matters is winning, and gaming an election becomes a mere exercise in “using your resources” to win the game. At any cost.
We learn our sense of fair play, morality, and how to interact with others from playing games with other children when we ourselves are children. If we are allowing our children to think it is acceptable to damage computer networks to win at a video game, what will they think is acceptable when they want to win an election?
6 Comments
Toastrider · January 28, 2022 at 8:20 am
They are? The link goes to an MSN article, sourced out of the UK, about kids DDOSing their schools.
(And honestly, considering the quality of public edumacation these days, I’m not entirely sure this is a BAD thing.)
Divemedic · January 28, 2022 at 8:28 am
If you read the article, the kids are playing MMORPGs and are using mods to DDoS their opponents, many of whom are other children that are playing the game while connected to school Internet through WiFi.
Read the remainder of my post to see how attitudes like “it isn’t a bad thing as long as I win” are damaging our society.
Steve S · January 28, 2022 at 10:35 am
Where did it start? Hmmm…
Kirk, “I hate to lose.” (after being the only one to beat the Kobayashi Maru, by, eyup, cheating)
“If you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying hard enough.”
Yes, those originally were intended when that was the only way to protect your life and that of those you stand to protect. Somewhere the context got lost along with the attendant morals. Now it seems the only lessons they learn are selfishness.
Bert · January 28, 2022 at 12:04 pm
Would someone please tell those kids that the EBT system is what stands in their way of fun.
Burning It All Down Better · January 28, 2022 at 12:24 pm
Living in videodrome world won’t end well and no wonder people can’t handle reality after years of staring at a virtual world.
Any ends justifies the means isn’t just for the CPUSA anymore in the fake Potemkin Chiquitastan.
Big Ruckus D · January 28, 2022 at 2:22 pm
As you observed in the next post on inflation:
“We are riding this sinking ship all the way to the bottom.”
None of this gets “fixed”. We are a society riven through with sickness of mind and character (not to mention body) and have been for a long time now. Certainly my entire lifetime, closing in on 5 decades. I was born when easy sex and rivers of cocaine were the recreational pastimes of many American “adults”. They raised the first generation of latchkey kids, binged on no-fault divorce, pawned off much of the child rearing on schools that were already converged by leftists and proto-karens.
In the go-go 80’s greed was good. Hell, we had a major movie that glamorized it and said exactly that in an on screen monologue. Yes, the ending showed the consequences as well, but nobody wanted to pay any attention to that part. We got fat and lazy and fucked around until 9/11 when we got a wakeup call. The official and collective response to that was bungled (for profit, of course) and then nature tried to assert it’s whip hand again with the great financial collapse a few years later.
Once again, the experts “outsmarted” the consequences (not really) and simply banked more pain that would have to be suffered later on. All of this drove a mindset that we can bullshit our way to what we want, with no downside. The downside was and is always there, and one of it’s major effects is the coarsenening of societal standards. We are now morally, ethically and financially bankrupt, and still trying to avoid the pain by whatever engineered scam can be cooked up. Kids cheating on computer games by subversion is just one small indication of this.
No, this doesn’t get fixed, as if by snapping one’s fingers morality and proper standards of behavior can be magically instituted over night. These are traits learned through one’s formative years. The window of opportunity to get it right has passed for anyone over a certain age, and those young enough to be salvaged lack many – if any – good examples from whom to learn. So we will crash and burn, and the lessons will be learned through the imposition of pain. Lots of pain.
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