Reaction to the Army Experience

Tuesday's class wasn't the first exposure I'd had to the Army Experience shenanigans. I had learned about it from a different class, but Pop Culture showed more videos about it, which just enraged me more. I honestly couldn't believe that the Army Experience was a thing. A place where teenagers could go and play video games for free? Seriously. That's called enabling. Or maybe the Army is thinking this is more lifestyle marketing, but still. I don't think it's ok to be offering this kind of thing to teenagers. For starters, it gets impressionable teenagers to think that war isn't a big deal and that it's just like this super awesome video game they're playing. IT'S NOT. They have no idea the kinds of repercussions that could follow from participating in a war especially if  they're not emotionally or mentally prepared. The video games don't show and tell all of the awful PTSD that soldiers suffer from, and they don't show the injuries that soldiers come back with. For my next point, I'm going to use a line from one of my favorite movies, Wreck it Ralph. "If you die outside of your game, you don't regenerate!" Which is true! If they screw up in a game, they wait five seconds and they can use their next life until they run out, then start the game over. War is not a game, folks. You don't get a second chance. The Army Experience is being really irresponsible in my opinion. Sure, they don't talk to kids under a certain age, and only if they come to the recruiters with questions, but they are still instilling a thought in these kids' heads by connecting the Army to these first-person shooter games; they are instilling the thought that war is just like these games. It's not. I would love to hear some feedback from some of the recruits who signed up because of the Army Experience and see what they had to say about war after going through it.