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This is just a rant, don't bother with it if you're looking for gaming related stuff.

Anyway, to get to the point: I don't understand why, judging from television, our culture seems to find it acceptable to lie about moral topics. Like somehow the idea that you're lying to help someone else makes it OK to lie. The worst offenders in this regard have to be the anti-smoking campaigns...

Now, don't for a second think that I'm saying something like "Smoking isn't bad for you!" That's not what I mean. What I mean is the blatant mischaracterizations you see in those "truth" and "no butts" campaigns. Cigarettes were not created to be addictive - they were created to smoke tobacco. Their addictive properties may have been enhanced later, but even that is, I think, a stretch of the truth. It's most accurate to say, I think, that cigarette companies knew they were addictive and did nothing about it. That's not even remotely the same thing.

The worst offenders, and the ones that really piss me off, are the "truth" ads. That campaign is the most misleading, pulling the wool over your eyes, pedantic crap that I have ever seen on TV. They're worse than the commercials where the passionate christian guy drags a shoeless child through a muddy village so that you feel bad that she doesn't have any shoes. (Then give her your shoes asshole, I note you're not barefoot!) No, the truth ads are worse - they downright lie.

The current one making the rounds is the one where a dude walks into a gun store and asks for .38 light bullets. The gun store owner stares at him bewildered and says, "There's no such thing" -- which, we're told, is meant to illustrate how the evil smoking companies are worse than gun makers because they make so called "light" cigarettes that don't actually contain less nicotine... or something. But here's the problem: Gun makers do make ".38 lights" they're called "half-loads." They also make .38 "heavies" - those are called Magnum loads. The whole damn ad - from premise to conclusion - is a lie made all the worse because they call what they're doing "the truth."

I'm not a pro-smoking. I used to smoke. It's a horrible habit that will eventually kill you. But, you know what I hate worse? People who lie. People who claim to speak truth and instead feed you propaganda. I look around at what passes for social commentary in our world now a days ("the truth," "divided we fall," "christian children's fund." -- take your pick) and I'm pretty damned disgusted -- even when I do agree with the message (that kid really does need some shoes).

I guess what pisses me off the most is the mindset that must exist for people to think these ads are necessary. It's the thought that these people likely think we're too immoral or stupid to do the right thing without help - I mean why else would they use lies to push their moral agenda? We don't need to be fooled into doing the right thing you assholes; stop underestimating us.

Maybe people don't want or need your "guiding hand." Treat us like the informed, reasoning, beings that we are and you may just find that your moral issues go away.

Then again, if your moral issues do go away, who's going to pay you to keep peddling your "truth?"

- Snipehunter

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