It actually came from a class discussion about Michael Jackson and his baby dangling thing. I said that's no worse than people who toss their babies up in the air and catch them, because a 7 foot fall is probably not going to be any better than a 20 foot fall at that point. My teacher said "Even when they catch them, it still hurts them because their brains are very fragile and shouldn't be shaken like that" Someone said "Don't shake the baby" and another girl said "Because you won't get any salt out of it."

As for the "modest proposal" part, well... [www.uoregon.edu] If you're offended at this (like so many are) it's probably because you don't understand what he was satirizing. As many still don't, even though it's been around for SO LONG...

Yeah... Sorry for the ass cover here, but I just looked over the comments and figured it was necessary.

 Reply

i consider myself a reasonably balanced individual and i don't understand why this game app has everyone so miffed. it's fiction. it's not real.

 Reply

Funny as hell? Definitely.

I am certain that the entire PC brigade would definitely label me (as well as any others like me who find the entire thing funny), as a sociopath, or some other such nonsense, but I honestly find the entire episode funny as hell. When I read the headline, I was already chuckling with the possibilities of how the play mechanics of this "game" would work. About halfway through the article, realizing that I had guessed it right, and someone actually had the cojones to make a "game" so blatantly crass, and distribute it for the world to see, I was in stitches. Learning that somehow Apple had actually approved the "game" and allowed it into the App Store, now that there is like a Visa commercial . . . it's priceless, and had me rolling on the floor in laughter.

Of course anyone with a brain knows that shaking a baby is wrong. Duh! But the hallmark of any comedy that works, has always been the element of "wrong" as it's central focus. If there was nothing wrong in a joke, then no joke on Earth would ever be funny. Don't believe me? Try it. Try making up a joke where nothing is wrong or goes wrong in it, and see how many laughs you don't get.

And that is what makes this whole incident so completely funny; it is soooo wrong on soooo many levels, that it is absolutely crazy. To not laugh at this situation, only shows how disingenuous and PC society has become.

My only regret from all this being that I find the iPhone in general to be an inferior product, and never got the chance to buy this crass piece of software. They should bring something like this game to WiiWare, and call it Bitch Slappin' Ya Ho or Clubbing Baby Seals. I predict a couple of sleeper hits (pun intended).

 Reply

@Peter Pinto: Look, I'm all for calling out ignorant critics when they deserve it, but Cooper Lawrence later apologised for her comments, adding that she'd watched someone play the game for a while and found it absolutely innocuous.

Should she have shut up in the first place? Ideally, yes. But she did admit to being wrong, and I doubt she'll repeat her mistake with ME2 (unless the folks at BioWare go mental and decide to include an actual orgasmic rape simulator, which doesn't seem too likely at this point.)

 Reply

Innocent infants =/= generic "marine" hero. When a Grand Theft Auto game gets a mini-game where you steal babies and shake them to death, you might have something that resembles an argument. Otherwise you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

 Reply

@Spoony Bard, Gorilla Snow is Maximum Risky, Antiterra, excel_excel: Thanks guys. :)

@Derek Rumpler: I'm not sure I understand your intention, but you "harvest" the Little Sisters in Bioshock by forcibly removing a parasitic slug. There's not much of that going in contemporary society.

 Reply

Sorry for the confusion.

 Reply

I'm not saying this game isn't crass and tasteless. Of course it is. I just find it interesting that commenters and writers here get their panties in a twist and call this sort of thing "offensive," but are equally likely to leave 200 comments berating anyone for suggesting that GTA, etc. go too far.

@Toasticus: Thing is, I'd call war a "real world problem" and a "real world tragedy," though. I'm not berating people for playing the games they do, but I also find it odd that there's no kind of consistency about what gamers and the gaming media apparently find "appropriate" violence--even to the point of defending the more outright problematic parts of RE5--versus "inappropriate" violence that needs to be censored, like this.

Both aren't "real" violence in the traditional sense, but the latter apparently needs to be chided with moral panic while the former is considered par for course, not worth thinking about critically, and verboten to be spoken of critically without getting jumped on by claims of "It's just a game." To me, this seems like an inconsistent consideration of the relationship between, and effects of, the visual/virtual representation of violence and the "lived," historical "real world" violence.

 Reply

I think you are oversimplifying things when really there are a number of factors at play here. The participants in the violence of Call of Duty type games are voluntary soldiers (I don't know of any that featured a draft) with military training, whereas babies and children are clearly incapable of defending themselves.

Additionally, in a game like Call of Duty, Killzone, or Gears of War, the violence is a form of contest between willing participants or part of a struggle to overcome an evil regime. But with a game like "shake the baby" the only goal can be sadism.

 Reply

Did you play manhunt?

 Reply

Maybe, just maybe... Had "Baby Shaker" incorporated a storyline that glorified the protagonist, and justified his actions (I use these words loosely, btw), then perhaps it could also sell 2 trillion copies, right?

 Reply