At Six Flags, war is a virtual sideshow (Boycott Six Flags!!) Ugh!

[Breeze54]

At Six Flags, war is a virtual sideshow

http://www.accessatlanta.com/entertainment/content/entertainment/stories/2008/04/11/guiterhero_0412.html

By JOHN KESSLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/12/2008

The teenagers crowding Six Flags Over Georgia during this week's spring break have an alternative to the endless lines for the Georgia Scorcher: a virtual combat zone set up by the U.S. Army to thrill these kids, entertain them and maybe even recruit them.

The Virtual Army Experience — a noisy world of genocidal killers, Humvees and improvised explosive devices — looms under a tent at the edge of the park. The show, which launched at the Daytona 500 in early 2007, travels the country and already has had 60,000 visitors.

Strapping Army officers in battle fatigues greet the youths, take down their contact information and give them official-looking tags to wear on lanyards around their necks.

Next, the teens enter the tent for a welcome blast of air conditioning and a taste of things to come. They first assemble by a bank of XBox 360 consoles and learn to play "America's Army True Soldier" — a first-person shooter that costs $50 and handles just like the popular Halo series.

"This is awesome!" says Harrison Bentley, 14, who was visiting Six Flags with students from A. Crawford Mosley High School in Lynn Haven, Fla. "I was going to buy a Mario game, but now I'm totally going to get this one."

Next, the couple of dozen kids herd into a briefing room and break into combat units — Charlie, Delta and so forth — indicated by squares on a carpet.

"Listen up, soldiers!" shouts Josh Hernandez, a Green Beret with a shaven head, square jaw and T-shirt that defines every muscle rippling beneath it. "Your mission is to deliver supplies to a humanitarian aid force inside hostile territory. But a genocidal indigenous force will try to stop you!

"Now who here knows what an IED is? Anyone?" continues Hernandez. One hand tentatively goes up.

Hernandez leads the youths onto a gaming floor with six full-size Humvees and two overwatch stations, each positioned in front of a panoramic bank of floor-to-ceiling video screens. The participants were issued replicas of M-4 carbine assault rifles with pneumatic recoil so they feel like real guns when fired.

The Humvees, though stationary, seem to approach in convoys through a cartoonlike projection of dusty streets and cruddy storefronts. One store has a fading billboard of a man holding up a bottle of soda pop. "Taste!" it reads.

The bad guys emerge from the building. Bam! The teenage sharpshooters kill them with lasers.

A bag of garbage on the side of the road? An IED? Pow! followed by a flash of light.

When the bad guys die, they fall bloodlessly and disappear. They keep coming — standing atop silos, pouring from buildings.

The scream of a female voice rises above the cacophony. This is not a game effect but a young girl manning the turret gunner in one of the Humvees. The lights of the IED simulation startles her. Hers is the only scream.

Eventually the animation leads across a bridge to a place that looks like a bombed-out hospital where healers attend the sick.

"Mission Accomplished" read all the monitors. Game over.

Hernandez then brings the teens together to watch a video about Sgt. Jason Mike, a Silver Star recipient who provided medical services and cover fire for his unit after it was ambushed on patrol south of Baghdad.

As a special surprise, Mike, himself — one of eight "Real Heroes" traveling with the show — runs out from behind a door to address the group. He tells them the ambush was like the game, but it took 45 minutes and it was, well, real. But now he has his own action figure that the kids can buy.

So, does anyone want to join the Army?

"I'm somewhat interested," says Sam Marlow, 17. "It looks like such an adrenaline rush while you're there, and then there's the teamwork. It seems kind of cool."

Bentley also said the Virtual Army Experience gave him a good impression of combat. "After seeing this, I really do think I could join the Army one year. I think I'd be good at it. But I'm good at astronomy, too, and that seems a little safer."

If he wants to practice before making that decision, the Army has a parting gift: a CD with a version of the game to play on his computer.

BOYCOTT SIX FLAGS!!!!!

:grr: :grr:

[mac2]

1. We wonder why our teenagers and soicety is so violent.

[Breeze54]

5. I'm not sure this is making them violent but the military is using it to recruit them!

A-holes!! :grr:

[unhappycamper]

2. It wouldn't surprise me if there weren't a trojan virus on the CD. n/t

[Breeze54]

14. They have to register with the game online to play it then they send e-mails and track them too!

Another underhanded way to get their information. :grr:

The online sites have recruiters manning the game sites
and act as the "Game Masters" and befriend the kids and
'talk up' being in the military to these young kids!

[Berry Cool]

3. The Army has figured out the perfect way to recruit them.

Convince them that joining up and going over to fight is as exciting and bloodless as a video game, and the mission (and the bad guys) just as clearly delineated.

How are they to know any better? They've been playing video games all their lives.

[Breeze54]

4. And the A-holes are targetting 14 year olds!!!!

:grr:

Motha fockers! That really pisses me off!!

[napi21]

6. Hmmmm....I realize the virtual reality technology makes this

different, but I'm 64 and I played cowboys & indians, Lone Ranger * Tonto, and The Cisco Kid when I was a young GIRL! All little boys had little plastic army men and played war. How is that any different than what's going on at Six Flags?

People want to blame violence on video games and movies, but I don't think there's much of a connection. Sure there are a few who will be influenced, but that's the same as the few back in the 50's who jumped out a window trying to be Superman.

[Breeze54]

7. Because they weren't taking your CONTACT info and trying to recruit you at age 14!!!!

:grr:

[napi21]

8. NO? I doubt you're old enough to remember. I remember the BIG

board sign saying "Uncle Sam Wants YOU!", and they weren't just outside of the PO. George's pre-emptive war has made a lot of people hate military service. I know I was proud of my uncles who went to war, my BIL who served in the Marines for 24 years, and my son who served in the Navy for 14 years.

[Breeze54]

9. You doubt I'm old enough to remember? Ha!!

That's a joke! Gheesh!

Did they come to your junior high and take your personal info. and start sending you info, cd's, fake credit cards, call you at home regularly, try to meet you for lunch in school, give you free violent video games at Amusement parks and at video rental stores? I think not!! This is underhanded recruitment tactics, targeting minors and sanctioned by W and the other asshole warhawks!

[napi21]

10. They didn't HAVE TO. There was a DRAFT...REMEMBER?

When we were little kids, we played war. When we got older, we wrote letters and sent goodies to the friends who were drafted and went to war.

[Breeze54]

12. My brothers, friends and husband were drafted and they weren't recruited in Jr. high!!

That's the point you seem to keep missing!! It's contemptible!

[Glorfindel]

11. They didn't have to; they had the draft, as I can personally attest

Different times call for different measures. I agree that it's contemptible to recruit 14-year-olds, by the way. The whole society has changed in its attitude toward what we used to call mercenaries. Now it's the "all-volunteer" army, when it used to be "citizen soldiers, doing their duty when their country calls them." Same shit, different approach.

[Breeze54]

13. 'the "all-volunteer" army' is a lie!! They are stop lossing many...

Not all the citizen soldiers volunteered to go fight in Iraq!

They were stop lossed or conscripted by the A-holes' federalizing them!