CORONO, CA — Touch dancing, marijuana, the ladies’ underwear section of the Sears catalogue — all gateway drugs to harder, more soul destroying forms of evil. Now a California morality group has added Nintendo’s Wii to the list.What has the Wii done to earn a place alongside such a rough crowd? According to The Porn Talk, which claims to provide parents with the resources to make “productive conversations with their children about porn and internet dangers,” the wireless technology is one of a variety of “portals to porno” due to its ability to access the internet via its built-in Opera browser.
The Kotaku.com website gained access to a leaked press release entitled “The Wii’s Dirty Little Secret,” from the group that claimed “Like many new gaming technologies, the Wii’s wireless internet capabilities make it a portal to porno.” Kotaku reports that the release goes on to emphasize that although parents may think only computers with access to the internet pose a pornographic risk to their children, the truth is far more unsettling. “Unfortunately,” ThePornTalk.com founder Mike Foster warns ominously in the release, “they are dead wrong.”
As Foster sees it, although there are billions of websites on the internet, including a large number dedicated to gaming, kids will immediately make a beeline for the smut. “Gaming devices like the Wii and the PSP aren’t just for fun games anymore,” he continues. “You’re able to surf the net, chat with friends, email, and view porn because of its internet access. Kids know this but parents don’t!”
While some might consider the ability of parents to lock out offensive matter via the parental control features to be an elegant solution, Foster does not. Parents are apparently no competition for their wily porn-hungry children, insisting that the controls will not be used, because “parents don’t see a need for them because they are unaware of the porn capabilities.”
What parents may also not be aware of is the fact that ThePornTalk.com is one of the brainchildren of the Ethur.org website, whose members hope to “create spiritually focused projects that change culture.”
One of the things that Foster apparently feels must be done in order to properly “change culture” is assume that all minors using their PSP are eager to get online and check out the depravity available there. Whether it’s a coffee shop or an airport, Foster sees its wireless connectivity via Wii devices as a mainline to porn. “This makes it very difficult to monitor as a parent,” he insists. “You can easily put safeguards on your house but it’s impossible to monitor in a Wi-Fi world.”
Foster concludes by saying that “parents need good info on how to keep kids safe,” something that the site claims can be done more easily thanks to its “conversation starters, videos, a weekly podcast, parent’s stories and other resources.” Contributing to the conversation are reputedly “child advocates, pastors, therapists, and kids themselves.”
Kids who presumably have spent copious times either figuring out how to surf for smut via their Wii — or found out how easily it would be, thanks to their parents bringing it to their attention; just another service provided by Ethur.org in pursuit of “making lives more fulfilling, interesting, and having them join this small rebellion against mass thought.”
