There's no 'I' in Deathmatch.

Which is to say, all of the salt.

Look, I've never read The Hunger Games, I've never seen the movie and I'll probably never bother with either. I'm content with being the kind of person who judges a book if not by its cover, then by the synopsis on the back, or by word of mouth, or by whether or not it's been turned into a series of movies aimed at tweens. Am I being closed minded? Probably a little, so you're welcome to take my criticisms of the Hunger Games summer camp with the proper amount of salt.

Yeah, The Hunger Games summer camp. Here's the Tampa Bay Times article about it, which, as you can imagine, makes it sound like the terrible idea it is. The camp's organizers however, were unhappy with this characterization of their Summer Murder Camp for Kids and blogged their alliterative outrage. Behold:

It's not so much teamwork as it is pack hunting...

Unthinkable!

Here's a quote from the blog post, imagine it being read in an indignant 'how dare you!' voice:

"County Day School always prioritizes the emotional and physical safety of our students. As we purposefully promote peace and kindness with all of our students, it is unthinkable that County Day School would ever support or encourage violence."

-From the County Day School blog

Um, I'm not sure if 'unthinkable' is quite the word. I mean, The Hunger Games (according to my exhaustive Wikipedia research) is about children fighting to the death in some kind of WB version of The Running Man. So really it's totally thinkable that the school is encouraging violence. Like I said, I've never read the book, but I'm pretty sure that the kids aren't into it for the lesson in teamwork.

Above: A scene from the movie version in which the
characters discuss how to use teamwork to murder their rivals.

On the other hand, the Assassin's Creed
series brings history to life, and then
lets your kids stab it to death...

Look, as a childless shut-in, I have exactly zero stake in this, but I'm really kind of surprised that people aren't more upset. Like, I get carded by Gamestop clerks younger than my Final Fantasy III save because there are people out there who don't understand that Assassin's Creed is probably not appropriate for their nine-year old, yet somehow the County Day School found 26 middle schoolers with parents willing to drop them off at j.v. Thunderdome? I know it's Florida, but still.