Chinese Couple Sells Children To Support Online Game Addiction 131
hypnosec writes After several controversies arising about in-app purchases, a Chinese couple has done the unthinkable by selling their sons to buy in-app items. An unmarried couple, A Hui and A Mei, severely addicted to online games, were accused of selling their sons and were arrested. In an interview with Guangdong TV, they revealed that they chose to sell their sons to child traffickers. A Hui said A Mei is fond of playing online games and likes to buy game items. As he could not give up his in-app purchases, he was not able to support his first son and they sold him to Fujian-based child traffickers. When the wife bore another son, they felt they would not be able to support their second child either, and they again sold him to the traffickers.
title (Score:5, Insightful)
spelling plz, we aren't all Onlione yet
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Fixed it. Thanks.
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I just assumed it was the new "Highlander Online" game, where there can be Onlione!
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We will take these poor destitute kids and give them to our children's perversion services (cps) whose job is to take at risk kids who might be being molested by their evil nonconformist homeschooling parents and send them to a giant concentration camp where they are guaranteed to be molested. Social services depends on a steady supply of children to feed their bidget . No state senator or representative should have to spend a summer w/o the comfort of a nubile child. usian parents aren't having enough, so we need to import them from south / central america. President Obama has realized there is a crisis of not enough children so he is on the southern border to import more. It takes a village to molest a child, and the usian government is the village elders. The USA needs the worlds children.
Is a Bidget some kind of "usian" child eating monster? Like the German witch in the Black Forest that cooked up poor Hans with carrots and potatos?
Oblig. Monty Python (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that's it, we're broke. It's science experiments for the lot of you!
Re:Oblig. Monty Python (Score:5, Funny)
medical experiments
'medical' is a good woody word. 'science' is tinny.
Re: Oblig. Monty Python (Score:1)
Beats being raised by gamers.
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Re:Oblig. Monty Python (Score:5, Insightful)
"Won't somebody think of the children!!" Cry me a river, then piss off. We all have plenty of much more serious stuff to fret over than a couple of losers that made a bad decision. The sheer stupidity and rarity of the action makes it ludicrous enough to be surreal - it makes a joke of itself.
Lighten up, Francis.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Eat your shorts hypocrites.
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What do you expect from Linux users? :popcorngif:
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I just wish it had happened to YOU when you were born. Then I wouldn't have to deal with trolls like you. That's right, trolls. You dried-up-cunt type PC thugs are making it impossible for anyone to have a conversation of any kind without "offiending" someone like you in some way, thin-skinned douchebags that think the world should stop every time you sneeze. If you had your way, humor would be outlawed and/or impossible because it would always offend someone somehow. You PC assholes love to try and ma
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Did you get a refund?
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Silly season much (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
From 2011
You might think this is getting to be epidemic in China or somebody over there takes advantage of gullible westerners ?
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2 documented incidents in a country of 1 billion people.... No it is not an epidemic.
On a side note, at one point in my life I was seriously addicted to gaming. It was all I did while I was awake. But the addiction was more of a coping mechanism. It did not 'ruin' my life, it was the only way I could face the day having almost no real prospects. Eventually I attacked it by attacking the cause of my depression, not the symptom. I suppose I am lucky to be smart enough to figure it out, and also lucky to
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You miss the point, I am calling the story bullshit. Slow newsday made up crap meant to appeal to people's prejudices and fears leaving them with an undeserved sense of moral/cultural superiority. Crap like this is why "His Girl Friday", or "The Front Page" should be watched as documentary films not comedys
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Re:Silly season much (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't China still have a 1 child law.
So? Who says you can't have a second child after you sold the first one?
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Who says you can't have a second child after you sold the first one?
Peasant Han: "Honest officer! Our child was sold into slavery over a year ago!"
Officer Zau kicks over the wood stove, lifts open a patch of the tile floor and shines his light into the darkness below. A dozen eyes shine back.
Officer Zau (screaming): Zui cha. Chaqu. Yongyuan!
Officer Zau unholsters her Type 15 pistol, takes aim at Han and puts her finger on the trigger.
(fade to black)
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Officer Zau kicks over the wood stove, lifts open a patch of the tile floor and shines his light into the darkness below.
Officer Zau unholsters her Type 15 pistol, takes aim at Han and puts her finger on the trigger.
I think there's something more interesting going on here than simple population control...
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Officers Zau and Zau are a highly efficient partnership who do not let their marriage make problems in the workplace.
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The law. In fact, even if your first child dies, you're still not allowed a second child. Doesn't stop people doing it, but those couples who lose a child early on to a medical condition, or being run over by a drunk driver, etc, and try to follow the law, aren't allowed a second child.
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I watched the Chinese news broadcast, but, while it did feature prison interviews with both supposed parents, didn't really have a lot of details. Of course, there probably wouldn't be too many details given even if the story were true. Still, I found it less than convincing.
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It depends on who you are and where you are. Ethnic minorities can have more than one child, so their ethnic group and culture do not become diminished. Rural villagers can also have more than one child sometimes, especially if their first child is not a boy. In some cases, they can keep having children until they get a boy. That is thought to reduce the incentive to engage in infanticide of female babies. Doctors are also not allowed to tell prospective parents whether their child will be a boy or a girl -- that is forbidden because it could also lead to infanticide. Finally, if the parents are wealthy, then they can simply pay the fine for extra children, and then it doesn't matter.
What? Infanticide is discouraged?
Those savages! Don't they know it's a woman's choice? Gasp! China is a such primitive backward society!
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Doctors are also not allowed to tell prospective parents whether their child will be a boy or a girl -- that is forbidden because it could also lead to infanticide.
I would think that would lead to abortions, which would greatly reduce infanticide...
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Source:
Thanks for bringing some credibility to the discussion, AC. What the fuck is a "Tier 1 Chinese city?"
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Doesn't China still have a 1 child law.
Not exactly, it depends on the number of siblings you have:
- if both members of a couple are single children, they are allowed to have two kids.
- if at least one of them is not a single child, they are not allowed to have more than one kid.
There is also the possibility to pay for the "right" to have additional children, and I think that you then also have to pay for their education and medical expenses (whereas those are free for the 1st child).
Actually, if you look at the demographics of China, the succ
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It's almost certainly BS, and you are spot on regarding those movies.
I assume you're referring to the 1931 Lewis Milestone version and not the (also pretty good) Billy Wilder version from the '70s.
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Life also becomes a lot less turbulent once you are done school and into a career.
Yes there are still big problems later on in life, but the major stress drivers you find while still in school/starting your career are mostly resolved by that point (for better or worse).
Silly season much (Score:1)
you can get alot of money giving chinese babies to white americans. all i'm saying
Re:Silly season much (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
From 2011
You might think this is getting to be epidemic in China or somebody over there takes advantage of gullible westerners ?
ok, I'd like to argue your point. You seem to think online gaming addiction isn't a "Thing"
First you'll have to accept that "Gambling addiction" is real and causes people do these same sorts of things. If you don't that's a different argument.
Then I, of course, am going to say that Online Gaming addiction is one and the same as Gambling addiction. And not that they are similar to or trigger similar things in the brain... no, it's that online gaming has turned into true gambling.
As an example I'm going to cite "Neverwinter Online"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
It's not the only one like this, but it's a good example of what I mean. They've taken strategies strait out of casinos and applied them to an MMO.
First, they have so many currencies that are so confusing you can never keep track of what you have. There are dozens, if not over 100 of them:
http://neverwinter.gamepedia.c... [gamepedia.com]
Secondly, you can BUY one of these currencies with real money. Zen:
https://billing.arcgames.com/e... [arcgames.com]
Then you can turn around any buy a whole host of items with this Zen in the game.
But, those items are expensive. But, you can buy "Keys" that open magic boxes that drop like rain in the game.
Those boxes have completely undisclosed "odds" that can change at random.
This is where it gets interesting...
You can then sell the items that you got in those boxes at a profit in their online auction house.
Then use the money you get from the sales to buy more keys
Open more boxes
You're getting the idea...
On occasion you'll get a "winner" and get some fantastic item that sells for a lot.
Often you'll lose a "small" amount and on occasion a LOT
To get back into the game you have to buy more Zen...
and it goes on like this. This is clearly gambling in my eyes. People are being used an manipulated. The fact that they hide the odds should be a red flag, but it's still going on. And before you argue that this isn't gambling because you don't get real world cash out of it... you can. There are plenty of people that will buy your currency for real money if you're selling cheaper than the game is. They make no attempt at all to stop it. There are a lot of people that make their entire living in markets like this. Ironically, most of them in China.
So yes, I think it could get as crazy as these articles suggest. I don't propose banning it or anything. But more disclosure on odds... less pretend bullshit that this is anything less than what it is: Gambling... would do us all some good.
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I would have picked something more mainstream; its very nearly just as bad: Diablo III for example.
Chest drops, valuable rare farming, AH selling... its all there. And some people are just as obsessed for exactly the same reasons.
It applies just as well.
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Diablo III for example....AH selling... its all there.
What is this "AH" you speak of? The version of Diablo 3 I play never had it.
All PS3 version related snark aside...the PC version doesn't have it anymore either. It was shut down on March 18th...didn't you get the memo?
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didn't you get the memo?
Lol, evidently not. I don't play D3. Good on them... i guess.
So now you have to use a 3rd party site? Has anything really changed, other than to make the whole situation a bit less offensively in ones face to the people who don't want to engage in that "meta-game"?
Is it still the case, that if you want to be 'competitive' that you will engage in that sort of play-style? After all, just because blizzards not hosting the AH, doesn't mean its not still there, or that its not still the "
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Is it still the case, that if you want to be 'competitive' that you will engage in that sort of play-style?
No, they changed how loot is dropped, a part of it is called Smart Loot and was first revealed in the console version (the console loot system is nicknamed Loot 1.5) The PC version has what they call "Loot 2.0". So Playing self-found is viable.
http://www.diablowiki.net/Smar... [diablowiki.net]
http://www.diablowiki.net/Loot... [diablowiki.net]
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They made all items worth using "soulbound", meaning you can't trade them. So no, there's no 3rd party item selling. You can only use what you find.
Interestingly, STO (Which Charliemopps complains about being too much like gambling) has done the same thing. All of the best items are character-locked, let alone account-locked. Also, in STO you earn dilithium ore for just playing the game, you refine an amount every day, and you can trade it for Zen (locked to STO) on the exchange.
Researchers have found that given access to alcohol, monkeys are approximately as likely as us to behave the way we do; that is to say that teetotalers, social drinkers, lushes
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You have enumerated the reasons I will never, ever play a "Free 2 Play" game.
Ain't nothing free.
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My favorite thing about free to pay games is that so many games (FtP or otherwise) are only really fun during the buildup phase, and then they get a bit samey. You can go through all that without actually spending any money. You lose the time either way. Then you move on to the next game. Along the way, if you're feeling generous, you might file some bug reports. That is an awful lot like actual work, however.
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Eh "Ain't nothing free" even if you try to get a game in a store.
Re:Silly season much (Score:5, Interesting)
I have gambled many times many ways and it is nowhere near as addictive as gaming is. i have played video games since i was 5 i think, i am currently 36. in my 31 years as a gaming addict there never was enough time to game... oh i learned a few other hobbies but gaming was always the excuse for someone to get me to read or do other acts besides the gaming. portable gaming just made the problem worse, and i started to have money -- to rent games. so i rented. my grades in school suffered because i always had to have that gaming fix. when i skimmed through school and finally got a job, i used that income to you guessed it game. i had 14 credit cards and an inability to hold down a job -- because it interfered with my gaming. had i hit rock bottom? nope i got a bankruptcy and eliminated all my debt all $35,000 of it and with nothing to show for it, because i lived off cash advances when i couldn't hold down jobs just to keep all the bills paid. and that wasn't rock bottom not yet. i had had problem in years past with starcraft, and broke, living with my parents i found the sequel to a game i had played years ago, the old game being warcraft II. warcraft III was way more addictive and when it's expansion came out i played it for a long time warcraft III The frozen throne is a game i literally played 8,000 ladder matched games plus countless thousands of non ladder games such as DOTA. this was rock bottom for me. i would play a good 14-16 hours a day into just one game i read this website and other while waiting for matches or when i felt the game was lost and stopped trying. i was having issues sleeping at night and i wasn't on any drugs not even caffeine since i had no funding to pay for it. i basically cracked and developed PTSD but it went unnoticed and i finally got help i needed, for other issues that were not related to the gaming but perhaps were increased by it. i had to quit games cold turkey as in hospitals it is very hard to game seriously because everything with a cord is prohibited and i only saw people using handheld games, like a hand held poker game, for example. nothing even as close to as addictive as the warcraft 3 game. tbh i even occasionally play games but i set pretty strict rules about when and how much i can game. fortunately i like to read and watch movies, and it no longer is 'instead of gaming' but rather because i don't dare game more than a few times a day (currently playing League of Legends a dota clone, which was spawned from warcraft to keep up micro skills of ladder players.) it is a free to play game, and is slightly easier to play than regular warcraft 3 tft. but even with all this addiction i never bought in game items (and there are plenty of them to buy) though i can see how people can be addicted to that like gambling. the adrenaline rush of playing a game is way more addictive than drugs or money, because there are ways to find cheaper fixes that are just as addictive. money is nice don't get me wrong, and yes chemicals can make you feel good but, dude an AAA video game is $60 a computer to play it starts around $400, for decent parts, my personal rig cost me $1100 in parts, including os cost, and it plays everything out there. how much heroin can $1,200 buy you? whereas between renting and internet research finding the game that addicts you most can take you down a long and windy road that only requires a little bit of electricity compared to drug costs to get the same effect.
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Gaming also apparently interfered with your ability to use linebreaks. What, enter was never hot-keyed in any of those games?
Re:Silly season much (Score:4, Insightful)
Except it's not, because Slashdot is a piece of shit and requires you to use the break html tag, which not everyone knows about. Maybe it's been fixed in Slashdot beta, I don't know.
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Of course, you don't have to post as html in the first place then
lines can have line breaks.
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spending 3 hours lying in bed reliving the games and mistakes i made that cost us wins kept me up. it was not something i needed a pill to fix, at least i didn't need a 'sleeping' pill also i was using wired lan. wifi was pretty lame back then, now that you get 96 megabytes per second with low packet loss is pretty good, and oh i lived in private homes not apartment complexes either.
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You might think this is getting to be epidemic in China or somebody over there takes advantage of gullible westerners ?
Just a slow news day.
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No, we're all just shocked that they sold their boys. If it was girls being sold, it would not have made the papers or attracted the attention of the Chinese cops.
The good news? (Score:1)
Still, surgical sterilization would do the job as well, and unlike the death penalty, it is at least possible it could be reversed, should it eventually come out that the two were somehow framed and not really guilty.
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Yes, but you can't buy World of Warcraft experience points with a kidney.
I tried.
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Please give some context before your code snippet.
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Without being in favor of the death penalty it sounds like it may well have a silver lining in this case.
No, the murder of two people does not have a silver lining, especially mentally ill people.
Why didn't they sell these kids to adoption agencies? The kids would have been better off. Is there some law that prevents the sale of children to adoption agencies such that they turned to slavers instead?
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A good news story? (Score:2)
If these parents preferred in-game geegaws to their children then even going to Fujian child traffickers there's a fair chance that the children would end up in more caring homes than they started in.
The real world isn't pretty (Score:2)
So long as the child traffickers sell them for adoption into family homes... and not to those who will raise them for prostitution, or raise them for farm labor, or raise them to cripple them and set them to begging, or...
How much did they get? (Score:2)
Re: How much did they get? (Score:1)
What's the going rate for teenagers ? Or do you have to pay for someone to come and take them away ?
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Slashdot editing standards (Score:1)
Have they fallen so far as to ignore proper spelling in the title?
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You must be new here.
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These folks need drugs. (Score:2)
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In all seriousness, is this what happens when you make drugs punishable by the death penalty?
I don't think so. Actually, drugs seem to be very easy to come by in China (At least that was my impression in Beijing earlier this year).
While the death penalty for drug trade exists on paper, according to wikipedia, it has not been applied in over a decade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
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Replying to myself: My Google skills mislead me, that wikipedia link referred to the Republic of China (Taiwan), not mainland China (which does seem to have capital punishment on drug trafficking, no idea how commonly it is applied).
Scare story (Score:1)
Why not something even more sinister, like "Toothless United States junkies sell children for meth"
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Their "teeths" fall out because of multiple factors. They don't take care of them, they tend to drink a lot of soda and eat a lot of candy bars instead of eating actual food. They are often subjected to violence that results in traumatic damage to teeth. Other than trauma, the damage occurs over a period of months to years and they can see what is happening in a mirror as it happens, but the attraction of the drug is so powerful they can't stop. I occasionally see them and extract some or all of their t
I thought the sons were keepers... (Score:3)
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Stop being so judgmental - it's not easy to replace the Russians overnight. Get with the program, commie/traitor...
It was Don Onlione (Score:2)
He made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
Sell Them? (Score:2)
We've got to get this news to Central America. They are sending their kids up to the USA for free.
Not unheard of. (Score:3)
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Importance isn't gaming but ease of selling childr (Score:2)
Correction (Score:2)
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More of that high-quality Slashdot/Dice.com editing.
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More of that high-quality Slashdot/Dice.com editing.
Is there any other kind?</snark>
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More of that high-quality Slashdot/Dice.com editing.
Is there any other kind?</snark>
Well then you do it! Seriously dude you show thes asshat editors that make a spelling mistake and show them how a really smart person does it. I am looking forward to seeing many articles from none other than Safety Cap.
In a breach of playground protocol, I triple dog dare ya.
Now, now (Score:2)
Now, now, be fair. The "editing" was bullshit before DICE took over.
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Somehow I remembered the panels where the guy goes to the ATM and sells his family when I read this news:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/a... [theoatmeal.com]