The Boys Are (Mostly) Alright

I grew up in the early 2000s, in the dying days of the Marilyn Manson moral panic, when parents across the land sincerely believed that heavy metal music inspired Satan worship. After that came the dawn of the “Grand Theft Auto will destroy our boys” phenomenon, in which tabloids and radio hosts railed against violent video games, arguing that the mere simulation of violence and criminality would herald the end of Western civilization by encouraging hordes of young men to become philanderers, drug dealers, and cop killers.

“We are training our kids to be killers, and we are training our sons to treat women like whores,” ranted talk-show host Glenn Beck on CNN in 2008, at the peak of this mania. “Whatever happened to Pong?”