Seeing as how this story is already all over the internet, I wasn’t really going to bother putting it up … until Teddy Gage e-mailed it into tips (thanks, dude). Seeing this pop up in more and more places by the minute frustrates me to no end.
We all knew there would be porn on the Wii. The console is called “Wii” for God’s sake. From the second people found out about the “Wiimote” with the built in rumble (read: vibrator), jokes more pain-inducing than David Hasselhoff’s hair in Knight Rider have flooded the internet, slowly but surely chipping away at our brains one cell at a time. Women have used it to do their business. There is a downloadable browser for the console. For the past month, websites (especially those of the adult variety) have been changing their layouts to accomodate the Wii browing experience. And do people take note of this? Nooo.
For Laurn Schroeder, protecting her first grade girls is a priority. “[They’re] innocent, and we want to try and keep them that way,” she said.”
“It’s very upsetting something this popular—a kid game—can go that direction so quickly,” Schroeder said.
No arguments there, Ms. Schroeder.
“That’s why it’s so important to read into and do research and background checking before you invest in it,” Schroeder said. She studied her daughters’ Wii to identify the built-in parental controls.
Damn right it is.
Other parents, however, complain that Nintendo’s scheme is unsatisfactory, and that the Wii browser lacks a “cyber-nanny” or filtering function.
Here’s where it gets retarded. Scheme unsatisfactory? A cyber-nanny? Let me point a couple of things out:
1. Everyone watches porn. Well, at least all men do. If you don’t want your kid looking at porn, don’t let them go online unsupervised.
2. The browser is still in its beta stage of development. Obviously there’s no built in cyber-nanny. This is Nintendo we’re talking about. The company that won’t allow the release a simple mature game without covering their asses well in advance.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a damned thing about parenting. But like Ms. Schroeder said; do a little research on a product before you buy it. It’s easy. We’re not living in the 14th century. If you want to protect your kid, then by all means do it.
