Consider

We treat children as if they are the most fragile things to have every exist. That is not a bad thing of course; most of them have not figured out the magical world of consequences just yet, so looking away for three seconds is enough for an infant to somehow hurt themselves. My observation is that parents have the quickest reflexes among all humans and that they spend three quarters of their day worrying about their child. Not only that deserves my respect, but also I am amused by how much maintenance a child requires just to survive.

I'm so glad we no longer live in the nature. The time between a human person being born and them to require no more parental guidance is exorbitant. To put into perspective, most dog breeds don't even live until 18. We just suck at growing up, I guess.

That is the sticks and stones part of the discussion though. At that age words don't just break a heart, but they cause lifelong trauma or poison their social manners for the foreseeable future. If you use the F-word near an infant, there is high likelihood the infant will for some reason pick up that one among the thousand words you used that day. Now it is their favourite word and there is nothing you can do about it.

Hence the need to be extra careful. We try to protect them from physical dangers as well as verbal vulgarity, gore, emotional distress, obscenity and so on. Some of these may change based on culture but I think a majority agrees you should not watch an HD body horror video with your four year old. That makes sense.

But where is the line? If watching about body horror or describing torture methods to a child is bad, would drawing such horror with your child be okay? For today's philosophical discussion, cue Hangman.

"What is a good, playful punishment for when someone who guessed an incorrect letter in this mystery word I am forcing them to guess letter by letter," someone asked one day. Then the other person promptly replied "I know what! Let's hang this fictional person!" They were both satisfied with this answer until someone who overheard their conversation decided to come up with a better idea. "Let's not do it the humane way and just finish the job quickly. Let's cut the person into pieces first, and sew up the parts one by one every time there is an incorrect guess!"

First of all, who is this person? What did they do to deserve it? Do we take a different innocent person from the street every time we want to play this game, or do we have a designated corpse we use over and over again? Neither of the options sound great.

Whatever universe is this, where we just randomly decide to hang people, should reconsider their law regarding public safety. If anyone can get a pencil and paper to kidnap a stickman interdimensionally, that calls for a higher budget for their interdimensional defence industry. I am not good at politics or law though, so I will leave that to professionals. Also, I am straying further and further from the topic. Where was I?

Oh yeah, children. For whatever reason, we also decided this is a fun game to play. In front of children, or sometimes with children. We collectively agreed "Yeah, these fragile small human people who cannot even handle the F-word that we were talking about? Let's teach them about execution, gore, injustice, body horror and torture at the same time!" That is wild.

I am surprised there is no major pedagogue backlash for this. Why didn't we choose something more innocent? Like, instead of hanging a human person, we could build a snowman. Or if we insist on the hanging part, we could hang decorations on a Christmas tree until it's too full. There were so many other ways to do this which does not involve a corpse.

Also, could we talk about how the severity of severing the body completely depends on the executioner? There are no set rules on how many distinct body pieces make up a human body. Some people separate the eyes from the head, for example. Some even defy physics and separate the mouth. I guess the execution method does really depend on how much blood and mess the executioner erally wants. Seriously, who writes these laws?

Hangman is brutal. I have already mentioned the gore aspect of what's going on and the potential traumatic damage it may cause to unsuspecting children. Despite what I have already listed, it's still far from perfect and it has serious issues. I cannot consider Hangman well-designed in any way, for that reason.

Let's start with sexism. This game is focused on hanging men in particular, so it fails on conforming the gender equality. "Let's hang women," said the author, genuinely nervous that someone will take that out of context. Moreover, there is no indication or hint that the man we are hanging is not cis or not straight. This may either mean the game is very accepting of orientation fluidness and sees all orientations equal, or the game is just against queer representation. That remains inconclusive.

We don't know about the specifics of how the man is chosen for execution, so there is a high chance the law is unjust. Do we have any recordings of the court case or any information that the man was pleaded guilty? Can we trust the law of whatever dimension they come from? In a serious punishment such as execution, there is no room for mistakes.

Even if they are guilty for sure, such that they were caught red handed with a lot of witnesses, is this a humane method? Why don't we consider therapy and rehabilitation first? Jail or even execution feels lazy to me. We are not trying to get these people back into society. That's a loss for the community. Make one mistake and you are gone forever. What if this person was a genious who could end world hunger with an invention if they used their intelligence for good? But no, this game decided that killing them is the way to go.

Lastly, I am curious about the sustainability of the game. As stated previously, the game is keen on killing men only. For reproductive purposes, you need a bird and a bee, so the birth rates must be plummeting in that universe. Soon there will be no men left and the population will be declining so rapidly that hanging anyone will be possible. That, or they have already figured out a way to clone themselves or a way for asexual reproduction. In that case, I am surprised that they don't use their advanced technology to revolt against us. Does that mean they are willing to be hung?

Too many questions indeed. As much as I like the game, I will defend there are more tame ways to punish incorrect guesses. To prove my point, I introduce the game Gallon the Cup.

The cup starts empty. It can contain 1 gallon.
Incorrect guesses cause 0.91 liters (1/5 gallons) to be poured into the cup.
The guesser loses when the water overflows.
Oh and, there is a gal on the cup for representation of women. Finally!

See? No violence is required!

Guess a single letter, or guess the full word below. Good luck!

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antiphona on 11 June 2023

But what if the man is only created into existence as he is being hung? Is it better to be born only to die, or to have never been born at all? Now, that's something to consider. (unless you are a member of Queen then you know what you wish for).