Don't Know What Fun Is Anymore

There was an article in the February 23rd edition of the NYTimes about the collapse of speciality toy stores, you know places like Toys 'R Us and F.A.O. Schwartz and Kay-Bee. The article mainly hits on the fact that low-cost outlets like Wal-Mart and Target are beating down the toys-only stores. That maybe true, but I tend to think that kids today don't give a fuck about toys the same way as kids did say 15 years ago.

Video games are the predominant form of entertainment for kids under the age of 30. For the under 12 set, that's the main for of "having fun;" sitting in front of a TV screen maniupaling a hand-control, watching images that have been loving cobbled together with polygons and painted in Photoshop by 30-year olds (who grew up on Fisher-Price and LEGO and Playmobile).

Do children today even really know what it means to have fun? Are they bombarded by TV and Internet images to such an extreme that they are being told what "fun" is, as opposed to finding out what fun is on their own? "Fun" that is dictated to you is a style of enjoyment that is rife with subliminal messages of what is hip, what is cool, what is geeky, what is lame, what is awesome, what is wack, what is chump.

As the giant Toy stores that were once a staple of the youth experience of America dwindle away, and the "direct" buying of toys at Wal-Mart and Target become the methodology of finding toys. I say buying, not shopping because shopping denotes the act of going to a retailer and browsing; nothing in particular is part of the task. Didn't you ever go to the toy store looking to get the latest LEGO set, but stumbled across at boardgame like Stratego or Operation? And then begged and pleaded with your mom to that game instead of the LEGO? Or kicked and screamed on the floor because the Hot Wheels car that you wanted was sold out, only to have your father assuage the whole situation by purchasing the latest Mego Captain American Action Figure? During the whole ride home as you salt-water tears dried on the side of your face, you envisioned thousands and thousands of new scenarios where Batman escaped the clutches of a Decepticon? Sure those two toys weren't in the same pantheon, but you didn't give a fuck back then, you just wanted to have some "fun," goddamn it!

Alas, Xbox and PS2 (soon to be PS3) rule the day -- that elusive element of all fun - IMAGINATION -- simplity disappears; replaced by more and more heightened simulation.

Is that when thought-control starts to get secreted into the binary code?

You tell me?