QWOP

I was hanging out with my 10 year old cousin the other day and he said, "Have you played QWOP yet?" And I said, "No. What does QWOP stand for?" And he said, "QWOP."

So we went online to here and it's a really simple game that's really hard to play. There's a guy trying to run a marathon and you just press the buttons Q, W, O, and P to make him go. I couldn't even get him passed the finish line, but my cousin went like 10 yards. It was really cool to play.

At that moment I realized that I rely on my little cousin to show me a ton of stuff on the internet like games and applications and he explains them really well when I don't understand them (besides when he said, "QWOP"). I thought that 8th grade was a young age to get my own first e-mail address, but I guess kids in grade school have them now.

I try to keep tabs on my cousin on myspace by checking out his friend's profiles and regularly checking his pictures (his mom does too) but I've got to admit it's got to be scary allowing kids to be online by themselves. When I was younger I was so dumb, and I didn't really have the internet at the time when I was really foolish to guide me into anything really bad, but I wonder what would have happened it I had access to it all the time. I think parents play the most critical role in protecting their kids against things online but I imagine it's got to be a tough job. I've gotten away from my original blog about QWOP but it's okay because I wanted to write about young kids and the internet, and couldn't avoid that topic.

So, QWOP is proof that it doesn't matter what type of graphics you have or how totally sweet the player has control over what they're doing. I think QWOP was so awesome to me because it's so simple compared to the rest of everything that I play online or see my cousin playing online. It's different, not better, and that's all.