Theme Week: Responsibility and Pokemones (UPDATES)

Teenagers in Chile calling themselves Pokemones are having oral-sex orgies in public parks.

I'll wait for the "Herpes, I Choose You!" jokes to die down.

...

Whenever you're ready.

Okay?

Good to hear. Since this is responsibility week, it would be fairly simple to say that "the kids ought to know better", and they should. But that's not the entire story. They're experimenting teens who are just starting to have monetary freedom in a world where the Cat-hol-ic (as Tom would put it) Church is an omnipresent force in their lives, a very conservative omnipresent force, I hasten to add.

Let's not forget that this has certain parallels to American History, both socially and economically.

And so, it does not take a psychic to tell you that the Church is going to use this as an opportunity to say "look, I told you so, and the kids are craaaaaaazy these days". If the Church is going to present itself as the upright moral members of society, which I will bet they will, they ought to direct the kids to a STD center where they can get tested and learn about what, precisely they may have and how to deal with it later on in their lives.

Being the moral center of the country means that the Church will sometimes have to lead the sheep, calm them down and tell their charges it's okay. I don't see the (Holy Mother, as my mother might say) Church doing that. I don't think they will*. If they do, it will be against a comfortable precedent. I hope the Church gets uncomfortable.

I hope, far more fervently, that not too many STDs and horrible consequences befall the teenagers. We all were once like that, and I just want them to learn and be given a pass, but I know, to my great Dismay, that it just won't happen.

*This is of course, not to say that the Catholic Church is evil. I see a precedent. I see young, impressionable, and soon to be scared kids. This is not ideal. I hope for many good things for these teenagers, whom, in another life, I suspect, I would be fairly close to. I write this listening to Lagwagon's Automatic, a song about the habits we fall into in a life, off of a disc that was spawned and written from when a good friend of the band committed suicide. It's an interesting juxtaposition.

**There is at least one person on Kotaku who says that Newsweek is full of crap, and has terrible sources, so in keeping with the current era of the internet, I point you to that link to continue your education on the sensual expressions of Chilean teenagers. 

I'd say I'll keep you updated on the matter, but frankly, I don't want it to become a theme.