That’s what one of my co-workers used to shout out when he nailed somebody in Half-Life (or Counterstrike, technically, if you want to split hairs about it =) See, I used to work at a cyber-cafe in college. Pretty glamorous, right? Serving Giga-Lattes and Digi-Biscotti to posh, young urbanites, as they check their email or rush to meet the deadline on their freelance graphic design gig? Well, maybe that’s the way things will go down in the smash-hit NBC sitcom version of my life, but in reality, things were much stinkier.
Our store was divided between “home office” workstations in the front and “gaming” stations in the back. This seemed like a reasonable setup, since gamers tend to be a little bit rowdier than folks using Hotmail or Microsoft Excel. Keep the two crowds isolated, and everyone goes home happy! Oh, except… Waitaminute… Did I say “a little bit rowdier?” Try “mental-hospital-just-ran-out-of-thorazine” rowdier!! The guy shouting “WHORE!!” after every kill (And he was doing this on break, in uniform, loud enough for everyone in the store, including the “home office” customers to hear)? He was the least of my problems. Kids were stealing from their parents to pay for access time (not that I could prove this, but I had my well-founded suspicions), cutting school, and swearing like Dick Cheney in there, and I was not getting paid to be their babysitter.
Of course, I was also not getting paid to physically bar them from entry or give a shit one way or the other about them either , so I basically just let them do whatever the hell they wanted, short of arson or murder. It was pretty entertaining, and every once in awhile, I’d overhear a rare gem of an insult (my favorite: “Oh yeah, well at least I don’t give blow-jobs to my Grandma!!”), that made the whole thing worthwhile.
Now this was all fine and dandy, and I was perfectly content to sit there serving up jumbo Mountain Dews to these monsters (I was going to say little monsters, but some of them were 16 and bigger than me =), but of course, this would have been too easy. The “home office” customers were constantly complaining about “noise levels,” the cursing, and pretty much all the other crap the kids were doing. And it would seem, at first, that these folks occupied the moral high-ground in this dispute. (It would seem that way until you realize that “home office” was, more often than not, a euphemism for “porn viewing” or “software pirating!”) And, so anyway… It “became” part of my job to negotiate between the two user factions, keeping both sides pacified, while also trying to sell new customers on the “smash-hit, NBC sitcom” version of the store.
So when I read about new cyber-cafe legislation in Los Angeles requiring cafes to eliminate closed booths, install security cameras and bar minors during school hours, I totally understand where the lawmakers are coming from. And I can imagine that if there had been any “real world” violence at or around my cyber cafe, as described in the article, I’d probably feel even more strongly about things. That being said, I’m still not sure this legislation will really help the situation, as it seems like just another example of parents passing the buck for the education and discipline of their children. And make no mistake… Despite whatever technical skills these kids may be picking up while killing each other in 3D, they could still use a little good, old-fashioned book-learning. Just ask Wesley Thompson, age 14, of Northridge, CA. When asked why the cyber-cafes are so popular, Wesley replied: “Most people can’t afford computers that work this good.” Indeed, Wesley… Indeed. I couldn’t have said it any gooder myself!