Despite the mom joke just there, I am not a parent. However, if I were, it would seem to me that I would do a few things to make sure my child had the best possible upbringing. For purposes of brevity, so I don't have to keep saying "my child" all the time, I'll have a theoretical son named Kevin. Why "Kevin"? It was the #1 boy name of 1984, when my favourite Devo record came out.
First, I would get him an old-style Nintendo 2DS with 1 3DS game and 6 standard DS games on physical media for the last night of Hanukkah in 3rd grade. In the fortnight leading up to Hanukkah, I would discreetly open the box and hack the firmware, then parse through the list of Nintendo 3DS titles and correlate them to his demonstrated interests to come up with a list of 6 games which I would then download from the No-Intro Collection and install onto the system. The physical media would serve a pair of functions: first, it would provide a shield of sorts to prevent dirt and dust getting into the cartridge bus. Second, it would return the feeling of personal connection with the console. As it is with games as a service, where everything is downloaded from the internet and only exists as an icon on a screen, you are necessarily disconnected from the device you're playing the game on; and this is by design. The corporate feudal state can ensure a feeling of helplessness by deleting physical media from the equation, making users feel as though they've only been lent the device on an extended basis; that it really still belongs to the company. Also, children need to be able to put things into slots. To connect things up to ports, to click two objects together in a satisfying manner; not just for hand/eye co-ordination or fine motor skills, but the feeling of compatibility. The feeling that they have fixed something, feeling like they are able to make something work. Up until the Great Technology Shift, this was possible with records, tapes, diskettes, and game cartridges; but, from about 2012 onwards, all that went away.
Why the Nintendo 2DS and not something more foldable, like the New 2DS XL? Or a standard 3DS? The slate design of the 2DS is standard Nintendium; intended to remain functional if dropped from a height of about a metre and a half. The screens might get scuffed a bit, the edges might get dented, but it has none of the shiny aspect of the standard 3DS and none of the heft of the New 2DS XL. It's not a museum piece or an industrial machine, it's a game system. Also, why not the Nintendo Switch? Yes, it's possible to crack a Switch just like a 3/2DS, but Nintendo are cavey to that and are making it harder to maintain a cracked system. Also Google ad integration.
That brings us to our next point. Second, I would amass the largest datahoard of films and television programmes you've ever seen. 1 HDD for cartoons, another for live-action TV, another for films, another for documentaries and how-to programmes (you know, PBS-level stuff). This datahoard would be connected up to a refurbished Windows 10 computer that would also contain home console emulators and as many games as Kevin wants. "But, wait! Isn't it bad to give your child everything they want?" Well, I didn't say everything he wants, did I? I just said all the games he wants. This is easy to provide, because it's all free if you know where to go; and I would instill in Kevin a strong anti-capitalist mindset. Where his schoolmates all have to connect to the internet and be under corporate feudal scrutiny every time they want to watch a show, Kevin would not. I could come home one day with a pizza and announce, "It's movie night—who wants to watch Star Wars?" and then turn on the TV computer, navigate into the datahoard, and just play the damn film. No advertising, no monitoring, no internet. He would still need to get my permission to play a particularly controversial game or watch a particular film; that's how parenting works. But, I would operate under the assumption that, at some point, probably around his 13th birthday, Kevin would discover that my permission does not control the computer's ability to load files, and he could play Brutal Doom without asking first. However, I would also have taught him to respect my opinions, in the large part by respecting his opinions.
Third, while he was still young—like, birth until about age 10 or whenever he feels it is no longer necessary—I would read him a bedtime story. We seem to have gotten away from that for some mysterious reason, probably related to those schlock new-age parenting blogs that appeared one day at the turn of the last decade. This would aid in getting him to fall asleep, or if he's anything like me, he's constructing a world around the story that was just told to him, occupying his mind until he falls asleep anyway.
I certainly wouldn't make him feel guilty for anything. Not intentionally, anyway. There are things that people do without thinking that can manifest guilt in others, but I would not willfully seek to cause it. This is the bit that is especially confusing to me; how parents are encouraged by parenting blogs and even empowered by the state to make their children feel guilty. "You spilled your water cup? There's a drought on and that water could have been used to grow a plant! You got a B- on your Social Studies report? How dare you not apply yourself 110% and shut out all known and potential distractions! You mispronounced 4 words today? What a dolt you are." This never happened to me, growing up; but I knew kids that it did happen to. They put on the veneer of normalcy, but I could just tell they were ready to explode at someone under the slightest provocation.
One place we're going to run into a problem is with toys. Toys today suck, and they're made by companies that suck worse. Taking the current events into account, there isn't a toy company in operation today that hasn't come out with some official condemnation of Hamas. It's a rarity amongst Jews, but I'm not a zionist, thus Kevin would not be one either. Back on task. Even if toy companies weren't allied with Israel, their products suck. Action figures without articulation are more figurines; statuettes to place on a shelf and dust every so often. We had the Incredible Crash Dummies, we had Star Trek, we had Star Wars, we had WWF, we had all type of action figures that you could do a proper GoldenEye fall with. I'm serious that our WWF action figures back in the day had 10 articulation points so that you could stage all the Friday Night Smackdowns and toybox WrestleManias you wanted. The Crash Dummies were designed to break and be put back together, and their playsets and vehicles were too. Admittedly, the Star Trek figures weren't particularly articulated; a lot of them couldn't even sit properly.
But, another thing we've gotten away from is promotional toys in kids' meals at fast food places. I can't tell you how much fun I had, going to McDonalds every month for 6 months, getting Happy Meals so I could assemble Inspector Gadget. Of course, we have the same problem with fast-food as we have with the toy companies; they all support Israel. But, even if they didn't, fast-food isn't as friendly as it used to be. I used to love seeing the McDonald's drive-thru signs because that meant there was an indoor play area with a ball pit and slides, and fun to be had by all. Burger King was more colourful, however; they tended to use secondary colours, like green and purple, while McDonalds preferred (as one might imagine) yellow and red. Now what do you have? Gentrification. Muted tones of blue and grey. Krabby Patties being stamped out of compressed kelp meal and sold for stupid high prices. Indoor playgrounds are being left out of new restaurants and are being phased out of older ones. You can't even linger at McDonalds all day anymore; your tray has an NFC chip in it that tracks how long it's been away from the dock and the manager comes over and ushers you out of the building as soon as it ticks over 16 minutes. Pretty soon, you'll need a McDonalds app on your phone just to disengage the locks on the door.
And therein lies our next problem. Automation. Data brokers are making a mint collecting and selling as much information on you as they think advertisers can use. At the same time, AI processes are now part and parcel of apps like Facebook, Google Translate, Camera, and personal assistants like Bixby and Cortana. It's not enough for these giant corporations to simply know things about you, now they must figure out how to manufacture information as well. Amazon has the ability to create a TTS engine from a 3-second sample of your voice... well, who does Alexa report to? Deepfakes and AI fuckery are getting better and better and, within the next 5 years, will get to a point where all Amazon needs to duplicate anyone is a voiceprint and a single photograph, from any angle, at any resolution. I'm not sure how I would protect Kevin from this. All I can do is limit his smartphone usage, not keep an Amazon Echo in the house, and tell him to keep his face covered everywhere except the park.
Several paragraphs ago, I said I would get Kevin a 2DS for the last night of Hanukkah in 3rd grade. What would he do for fun aged 0-8, then? I would let him direct me to what he finds fun. I'd provide him with several options, none of which having anything to do with tablets or smartphones; colourful board games, such as Monopoly, the Game of Life, Clue, and some stuff I would have to recreate myself. For instance, there was a tabletop game from the early '90s called Mystery Mansion that was about as close to Rogue as you could get with that medium. I liked it because it had trapdoors, treasure chests, and a customisable layout. I'd have to look up the rules again, because it's been about a thousand years since I've played it, but this is something I could recreate with my current level of technology. Also, I have a bevy of old toys; not like wooden horses and stuff (I'm not that old), but Crash Dummies, Star Trek, whatever I have in my catch-all drawer. I'm not particularly concerned about action figures being collectible; they're not made to waste away inside a climate-controlled vault, they were made to be played with. This would skirt the issue I was having a couple paragraphs ago when it came to toy companies allying themselves with Israel, as well as the problem of modern toys sucking major ass. I also mentioned having a datahoard full of cartoons; because a VLC playlist is a much better virtual babysitter than Tiktok. Not that I'd leave him sitting around on his own for very long... but, my day job is writing music. If I'm on a deadline, I often need to spend an unbroken 3 hours at my workstation. Surely I can assemble a cartoon playlist for him that lasts that long. Then, of course, there's the unfriendly reality of being in American public school: you get homework every night starting in 2nd grade. Hey, life ain't all fun and games, kid.
All that having been said, I am not a parent, nor does it seem likely that I ever will be one. I guess I only wrote about any of this because I wanted to pretend for a bit. There are more reasons not to have children now than ever before, or at least since the '80s; of course, I can imagine that conversation taking place between prospective parents for all that time. "Should we really have kids while Reagan is in office?" "Would it be fair to subject a child to the constant threat of nuclear annihilation?" "What if the world ends on New Years Day 2000?" "What if our child ends up getting drafted into Bush's war in Afghanistan?" "Should we really have kids while Trump is in office?" American society has never had to look very far for hardship, especially for poor people like me. In my case, it's even harder because I'm transgender; not the physical bit, so much as the fact it looks less and less likely that trans people are going to have any place left in society after the Heritage Foundation runs roughshod over it. I can imagine a similar conversation happening in April 1990 between my own parents. Obviously, they gambled that they would be able to beat the odds and raise a child in spite of all the adversity. Anyway, that's a discussion for another time.
--14 February 2024--