19 year-old gamer becomes mayor of Oklahoma town
Teen goes from zoning out to zoning laws
By Ben Silverman
Like any red-blooded American teenager, John Tyler Hammons digs rock music, fast cars, video games and...fiscal planning?
Apparently so. The AP reports that the University of Oklahoma freshman trounced 70 year-old Hershel McBride to become the mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma, making it the first city in the nation to be governed by a self-admitted gamer.
But while he could own any of his peers at Halo 3, the fresh-faced leader is turning his sights on cleaning up the town's politics by establishing an independent ethics commission and locking down campaign finance reporting.
"I'm sure the (city) council will work with me on these issues," he said. "I campaigned on this, and this is something I intend to push."
Tired of the same old political shenanigans, the townsfolk are backing their new man.
"He doesn't have the baggage. He doesn't owe anybody anything," said cafe owner Gary Armstrong. "It's sort of a fresh start for Muskogee."
Best known as the subject of country legend Merle Haggard's 1969 hit "Okie from Muskogee," the unassuming city of 38,000 is considered the archetype of virtuous, small town America, a "place where even squares can have a ball."
And now, so can gamers.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/19-year-old-gamer-becomes-mayor-of-oklahoma-town/1215787
I suppose we can only hope for this trend to continue.
Hahah! Yea! I hope he's the greatest mayor that town has ever had. Give us gamers some good news, other than the usual GTA = real life violence nonsense. 😛
Good for him. 
Well, over 50% of American males 18-50 play video games, according to some statistic somewhere someone said. One of those not-made-up statistics.
So we are shocked that he is a gamer... and not that he is only 19?
XDXD! Oh no, i'm shocked at the 19 thing as well. But games are more important. Duh. Come on man.
So we are shocked that he is a gamer... and not that he is only 19?
Age is just a meaningless number. Besides, the kid sounds like he is a lot smart than many of the people in federal office.
Hehehehehe, Muskogee.
~Tobe
But gta is real life violence. PEOPLE ARE DYING INSIDE MY TELEVISION AND THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING NOTHING TO STOP IT.
=O Oh man you're right. Madness!!
Wow he's just....9 years older than a 10 year old
I didn't realise you could become mayor at such a young age.
<strong class="quote-title"
B Vulpix wrote:
I didn't realise you could become mayor at such a young age.
I am pretty each municipality in the United States can make it own decisions about the requirements for mayor. Apparently, this small Oklahoman town I had never heard of prior to this thread either does not care about age or has a unusually low age requirement for mayor.
I repeat, age has nothing to do with ability to be a leader, or ability at anything for that matter.
o.o It seems like both the article and the replies here focus on how he's a "gamer" instead of on which kinds of games he's playing... ok, they mention Halo 3, but it's probably not the only one and I doubt it gives the general idea of what other games he's into... Video games are a medium of entertainment, not a kind of entertainment; I doubt it'd make sense to lump in both Myst (which I haven't played, but from what I've heard about it it's supposedly fairly non-violent) and GTA as being the same kind of entertainment just because they happen to share a medium. I'm not saying that makes GTA bad, (ironically I myself have played a fair bit of GTA2, even when under 17 for that matter) but that being against GTA or against violent games doesn't automatically mean being against video games altogether.
It's kinda ironic how equating anti-violent-game with anti-game is, in a way, equating "game" with "violent game"; it's the same approach often used on the other side of this debate when people say that "video games" promote violence; even aside from the idea that people should be able to distinguish entertainment from real life, it still depends on what video games you're playing. It's even similar to the idea that "rap music" objectifies women; it depends on what kind of rap you're listening to. If it's something like NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" then probably. If it's something like Tupac's "Baby Don't Cry" then probably not.
I remember finding the following article in a magazine a few years ago (and I found it online more recently) and I found the part about video games appealing since I'd like to think I've benefitted academically from playing Sim City: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1056290,00.html
As for Jeffery Mewtamer's idea that age is a "meaningless number" I wouldn't go that far. The number of years they've been around would imply what time period they would've been brought up in, and probably how much they'd have learned and/or experienced; it would probably have some effect even if it varied from person to person and/or wasn't as significant as society says it is... but in any case that doesn't mean the older candidate is the better one; sometimes young people would generally tend to understand some things better than old people, such as things they'd have been brought up in... I remember a few weeks ago my parents suggested to me for this year's summer job to be at the library tutoring old people in using computers, and I was thinking about how computers probably weren't even around, let alone part of the cirriculum, when they were in school... that wasn't the one I chose (wasn't available so I settled for serving ice cream in the gander mall...) but that's beside the point; with age differences, it's not a one-way street.
o.o It seems like both the article and the replies here focus on how he's a "gamer" instead of on which kinds of games he's playing...
it's cuz no one cares enough to investigate further.
o.o @ everything else
it's cuz no one cares enough to investigate further.
Yeah but when it comes to whoever wrote the article, maybe they should care, since it's simplistic to think of this in terms of "gamers" and "non-gamers" when there's a difference between games like GTA and games like Myst... and I was kinda rebutalling HS2K3 at the same time, since he was suggesting that the idea that GTA caused real life violence (which I don't agree with at all) was bad news for "gamers"; it's bad news for GTA fans, not people who enjoy entertainment that just had the same medium as GTA. I doubt the controversy over "Catcher In The Rye" was bad news for "book-readers"
o.o @ everything else
Why? The rest of that paragraph as well as the next one were relevant to the "medium favoritism" point, the third one was about an article suggesting that video games (among other entertainment labelled "dumbed-down") can give the brain a "cognitive workout" which was relevant to the fact that a "gamer" is now mayor, and the last one was a rebutall to Jeffery Mewtamer.
it's cuz no one cares enough to investigate further.
Yeah but when it comes to whoever wrote the article, maybe they should care, since it's simplistic to think of this in terms of "gamers" and "non-gamers" when there's a difference between games like GTA and games like Myst... and I was kinda rebutalling HS2K3 at the same time, since he was suggesting that the idea that GTA caused real life violence (which I don't agree with at all) was bad news for "gamers"; it's bad news for GTA fans, not people who enjoy entertainment that just had the same medium as GTA. I doubt the controversy over "Catcher In The Rye" was bad news for "book-readers"
o.o @ everything else
Why? The rest of that paragraph as well as the next one were relevant to the "medium favoritism" point, the third one was about an article suggesting that video games (among other entertainment labelled "dumbed-down") can give the brain a "cognitive workout" which was relevant to the fact that a "gamer" is now mayor, and the last one was a rebutall to Jeffery Mewtamer.
Hey man i'm all with you, I don't think GTA casuses real life violence either. But it seems nongaming parents/people believe GTA is the majority of what's out there or something. Remember that thing with Hillary Clinton and San Andreas on PC...they like...had a crackdown on video games, or so it seemsed to me. They never even talked about the good clean fun, "rated E for everyone" type games. Thn with the Wii lately...and Wii Fit games in the media has been somewhat nice, for a change.
As for the games he's playing...it would be cool to know what others. =P I wonder if i've played him on Brawl. lol
o.o @ everything else
Why? The rest of that paragraph as well as the next one were relevant to the "medium favoritism" point, the third one was about an article suggesting that video games (among other entertainment labelled "dumbed-down") can give the brain a "cognitive workout" which was relevant to the fact that a "gamer" is now mayor, and the last one was a rebutall to Jeffery Mewtamer.
Why? Because I wasn't in the mood to deal with the rest of your post, hence the "stare" at its Hulk-busting capacity. It's laziness, not indifference.
o.o @ everything else
Why? The rest of that paragraph as well as the next one were relevant to the "medium favoritism" point, the third one was about an article suggesting that video games (among other entertainment labelled "dumbed-down") can give the brain a "cognitive workout" which was relevant to the fact that a "gamer" is now mayor, and the last one was a rebutall to Jeffery Mewtamer.
Why? Because I wasn't in the mood to deal with the rest of your post, hence the "stare" at its Hulk-busting capacity. It's laziness, not indifference.
*snickers* Ha Psx can't read. *snickers*
Hey man i'm all with you, I don't think GTA casuses real life violence either.
Well just to make it clear I wasn't saying that you did, just pointing out that anti-violent-game doesn't mean anti-game and as such I wouldn't think of the GTA controversy in terms of "gamers vs. non-gamers"
But it seems nongaming parents/people believe GTA is the majority of what's out there or something.
Well, I'm guessing some of them do and some of them don't; but that's all the more reason to think of what games they're playing instead of just whether they're a gamer or not.
Remember that thing with Hillary Clinton and San Andreas on PC...they like...had a crackdown on video games, or so it seemsed to me. They never even talked about the good clean fun, "rated E for everyone" type games.
Video games as a whole, you mean? I don't know much about the Hot Coffee scandal, but I think it was about how a sex-simulating mini-game could be unlocked with a patch (that wasn't even from Rockstar, IIRC) and it had to get re-rated AO so that certain major stores could no longer hold it; kinda ironic that they treated it worse for the simulation of sex than everything else in the game, though I got the impression that Hot Coffee was more so an opportunity than the actual reason... that said, I thought they had a crackdown on violent video games instead of video games as a whole. o.o I like the way Maddox put it (language warning): http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ticket_to_hell
As for how they didn't talk about "clean" games, I doubt that means they were implying there weren't "clean" games, so much as that there being "clean" games was irrelevant to the subject of what to do about the "dirty" games...
