The Nanny Plague
Please note: Despite the following rant, I am not racist. Please also note that this is going to be a very long entry.
Over the past decade, the Nanny Plague that has been spreading throughout the countries of the west has slowly been eating away at Pokemon from within. In the good old days Pokemon had a much higher target audience, but America misinterpreted it, thinking Pokemon is for little kids when it's really meant for people over the age of 10 (under-10s can also play it, as I did back in the day, but they weren't quite the target audience), and that has resulted in so many good aspects of Pokemon being ruined.
Two of the most well-known victims of this plague are black Jynx and slot machines/coin-buying.
No-one in my age group who watched the Anime back then would have ever thought that Jynx could've been racist. The only person who thought that was a racist American called Carole Boston Weatherford. She was responsible for giving Jynx a bad name, making Jynx what it never was - a racist figure. While you're at it, why not ban Umbreon too? It's black!
The slot machines of generations past definitely did not encourage gambling. I talk from experience. I was below the target age group when I got Yellow, and was 9 when I played those machines for the first time. Nowadays I avoid real-life slot machines whenever I encounter them. Even when I visited an RSL with my nan once a week, and was given $2 AUD to spend on their slot machines, I'd just take the $2 and leave because Pokemon's slot machines taught me that playing slot machines for money is not worth it. All Pokemon players know that it's way more worth one's time to buy coins and pretend the slot machines didn't exist, because it's so much easier and faster that way (In DPPt one can get 10,000 coins in half an hour without using the machines).
Pokemon, however, is not the only sign of the Nanny Plague. Just look around in real life, and you can't miss it.
In my day, Year 12s used to spend their last day of school before exams having fun, dressing up, and playing various pranks on the school. We used to call that day "Muck-up Day". Then came the Nanny Plague. Now teachers think that name encourages long-term violence and crime, and we were forced to call in "Celebration Day"!
Back in the olden days, nearly every cartoon had slapstick violence. Then came the Nanny Plague. Now people think that slapstick violence encourages real-life violence, and slapstick violence is seldom seen. When it appears in movies, they now give warnings under classifications, which they never did before.
Ask yourself, are you racist because you've seen black Jynx? Are you a problem gambler because you've played gambling minigames in video and computer games? Have you become violent because of Muck-up Day or equivalent, or because you watched cartoons with slapstick violence?
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