I don't know if anyone else has heard about this website kwedit.com, I heard about it from a segment that Stephen Colbert did recently. This site is incredibly strange. Basically it is credit for kids so they can play online games. Play now, pay later is the slogan. This is really disturbing when you find out what the games are. Foo Pets is a virtual pet game where you have to pay real money for food and other virtual products for your virtual pet. If you don't pay to keep your virtual pet happy they will take it away. I can not even completely express how messed up I think this is. To get kids to borrow money that they have to later pay back in order to keep their online virtual pet.
I personally don't think that kids at such young ages in which this site targets, should be dealing with credit especially in such a manner. This kind of media technology is supposed to teach kids about credit, but what is it really doing? The kid is going to get in debt buying virtual products and the parents are going to have to pay their debt for them. They even explain this as "passing the duck", this means that if you don't have the money you can ask someone else to pay for you taking the responsibility off of the kid. This kind of media technology seems sketchy to me for a young child to be responsible for. I think the idea of this being an educational experience seems odd to me as well. I feel there is other ways to teach a kid about credit without having them buy virtual pet food.
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god what a waste of money! kids shouldn't have to worry about being in debt before they start buying actual tangible products. i can kind of understand something like webkins (barf), where you buy a plushie, and it has an online personality you can play with, presumably for free. at least you paid for a product. not virtual dog chow.
ReplyDeleteJai. You have an artist's name. You are the man Jai.
ReplyDeleteWith the recent reforms in "real world" credit, it makes sense (in a sick, world-weary sort of way) that "innovations" in "credit products and services" moves into virtual worlds. I recommend a book by Edward Castronova called SYNTHETIC WORLDS--his notion of the "permeable membrane" between "real" and "synthetic" worlds is borne out by phenomena such as this. (We used the book one year for COMM 396, back when we taught 396!)
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