• Flying Squid
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    27 hours ago

    If there is a pre-teen able to read and understand Orwell’s language, and there are precious few of those, I think they could handle the sex and the torture. As the cartoon suggests, they’re seeing it on the internet regardless.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      16 hours ago

      I disagree. The intelligence to understand the language is separate from the maturity to handle the content.

      And yes they’re seeing things on the internet… and shouldn’t be. That’s a long-standing debate in society about how heavily to shield them from it. But do you think the fact an 8 year-old might see awful things on tiktok means there’s no value in telling them to wait a few years before reading a book like 1984?

      • Flying Squid
        link
        16 hours ago

        What 8-year-old is reading any Orwell? You’re talking about something that is probably an issue for .00001% of people at that age. Like 3 or 4 prodigies. So why do these bans which, again, do not differentiate between 7 and 17, need to be in place?

        Also, where are the parents of these 8-year-olds? Shouldn’t they be aware of what their child is getting from the library?

        • @[email protected]
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          fedilink
          15 hours ago

          It sounds like we’re talking cross purposes now. I don’t know what children are reading Orwell. Not like in the comic, I imagine. For that matter, I hope most children are not, in fact, seeing videos of cats being killed.

          • Flying Squid
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            15 hours ago

            Kids are seeing a hell of a lot more violent videos than they are reading Orwell. That was even true when I was a kid in the 80s. I saw every Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movie that came out while I was in elementary school.

            Amazingly, it didn’t leave me horribly scarred.