Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”
I don’t know how he came by this knowledge, and as someone who has never hunted armed men, I don’t know about the validity, but I can guess at how true it is. Dangerous game is addictive. Hunting squirrels and rabbits after hunting lions and tigers is probably a bit of a letdown. The thrill of taking on something that can kill you is real, no doubt.
But hunting isn’t a game. It might be a sport in many ways, but it’s real and often rather boring. It’s a nice walk or sit in the wilderness, punctuated by moments of heart-racing excitement as you put an animal in your sights.
I don’t pretend it tells me much of anything about so-called gun violence, though, because it’s not really the same thing.
That’s a lesson that one Huffington Post writer needs to be made aware of, because she didn’t even hunt living animals. She thinks she’s an expert now because of a trip to Chuck E. Cheese.
Yes, really.
In October, I celebrated my daughter’s third birthday at the Junior Casino: Chuck E. Cheese in Metairie, Louisiana. Like any toddler, my daughter insisted on using her card and trying every game, even if the controls were too tall and her feet couldn’t reach the pedals.
Predictably, she’d stay locked in for the first 15 seconds, then hop to the next game with her dad while I tried to “get our money’s worth” — which is how this grown woman ended up fully committed to a toddler arcade challenge.
Insert me, 5’10”, on my knees, shooting crabs, aiming at their little plastic bodies. Each blast of air earned points. The faster I pushed them back, the more I scored. Then the game stopped.
As I backed up, I could feel the adrenaline spike that pushed me, a proud anti-gun American, to empty my “clip” on plastic crustaceans. I was all in. My brain craved more.
Then it hit me: The machine wasn’t neutrally fun. The lesson came through loud and clear: This game was a cleverly designed lesson about power. It was dopamine served in short, violent bursts.
As I knelt, plastic trigger in hand, I was taken back to a sobering memory. Fourteen years ago, I was a student-teacher in Washington, D.C. One day, as I monitored the playground, I watched as Latinx toddlers reenacted ICE raids and deportations. I came to realize that they were imitating their real lives. It was devastating.
Dramatic play, when children repeat scenarios and situations they see in real life, is vital and fuels early childhood development. Children typically cook or play Mommy and Daddy. My daughter’s favorites are cashier and hairdresser. Regardless of the activity, dramatic play supports the development of language, social-emotional growth, creativity and problem-solving through storytelling and role-negotiation.
As a former educator, I can tell you that shooting games offer none of that. The narrative is singular: me versus them. The rewarded skills are mechanical, not creative. There is no collaboration, no storytelling, no emotional processing. Just aim, fire, repeat.
Who wants to bet she’s fun at parties?
A game isn’t about anything except entertainment. The dopamine hit that the writer got was the result of accomplishing something. Games are designed to give people that dopamine hit, which encourages them to use more quarters, tokens, or whatever else might be used to warrant the game remaining in restaurants.
It’s not remotely the same thing as a gun fight. It’s not about gun violence. It’s about shooting a plastic crab. That’s it.
What’s funny, though, is that this woman laments the shooting game, then talks about “dramatic play” and forgets that large chunks of the American population grew up playing Army, cops & robbers, cowboys & Indians, and a host of other games that involved “good guys” shooting “bad guys.” Even taking away toy guns doesn’t accomplish much, as kids are great at finding sticks or using their fingers to accomplish the same thing.
And most kids can tell the difference between playing games at Chuck E. Cheese and playing out things they see in their lives. There’s room for both, and there’s not nearly the connection with shooting games and actual shooting that the author wants people to believe.
In fact, this is just a rehash of how violent video games create violent people, when there’s actually evidence to suggest it’s the opposite.
What we have here is a grown woman who got a little pumped up playing a kid’s game because she felt the reaction the game’s designers wanted her to feel. The dopamine she felt was the intention because that burst of a neurotransmitter that triggers the reward center of her brain felt the sense or reward and accomplishment. That’s it.
It has no bearing on anything beyond that.
It’s no different than feeling a sense of reward for getting your laundry done or while you’re dancing at a party.
But when you’re a fan of Huffington Post, you think you know more than everyone as it is, and the truth of the matter is that comparing violence on the streets of America to shooting plastic crabs is about as cringeworthy as a person can get. It’s the equivalent of saying that you know what homelessness is like because you stayed at a cabin that was part of a mountain resort, and you didn’t have a coffemaker.
Please, be stupid somewhere more private than the pages of a large publication.
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