06-01-2022, 11:51 AM
At the risk of sounding like a goober, I'm going to have to say that enforcing a rule about playing Ram Ranch is not feasible, and special consideration for not queuing the song because a child is on is a bit much.
TL;DR: the song sucks but should be allowed to be queued, with or without children on
- We won't know that the song is queued until it starts playing; anyone who queues the song is most likely going to name the queue something "funny" (the queue names are seldom funny, and the queued music is seldom good, but that's for another time) so the first 2-5 seconds of the song are going to be heard before someone either stops the sound for themselves or a staff member stops the sound for the entire server. I'm also sure that equally bad songs have been queued in the past, whether they be sexually explicit or have "naughty" words in them like the n-word. Should all explicit songs not be queued because a child is on?
- The minimum age for someone to legally be allowed to play GMod is 13 (section 2.2). I have no idea how old Cody is, but if he's younger than 13, he shouldn't, technically, be playing this game in the first place. Beyond that, it isn't (in my opinion) the job of staff to tailor the queues for the needs of one person. We have more important things to worry about. Of course, if a queue is just completely explicit, tone deaf, racist, etc., action should be taken. But a meme song like this shouldn't be disallowed because there's a child on. If anyone, not just Cody, does not like the queue being played, they have the option to stop the song with !stop. Even when I was 13-14, playing on this very server, if I didn't like a song or knew that it was something explicit that I didn't want to listen to, I had the wherewithal to stop the queue. I didn't need a babysitter or a staff member tailoring the server to me, and I had no expectation of that. If I didn't like something, it was up to me to deal with it, and I did.
- Ram Ranch has made international news, being talked about on various mainstream news outlets including Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed News (I know), Vice (I know), The Ottawa Citizen, and even The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which is a public broadcasting station for radio and television, and is funded by the government of Canada. Some of these articles even have the lyrics in them for anyone to read. The CBC article even has audio of the first line of the song. My point is, news stations that have to answer to advertisers (and even the government) are referencing this song and even playing parts of it.
- Now the following may be considered an ad hominem fallacy, and I know that Cody isn't here to defend himself, but I'm using it to paint a picture. Cody's language on the server is vulgar. It's even more vulgar when we consider his age. I've told him multiple times to watch his profanity (usually in jest because this is the Internet and I can't control the words that fall out of his mouth), but some of the things that Cody says are just terrible. With him calling people derogatory names and swearing, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew about the content of Ram Ranch already. I really would like to know where his parents or guardians are because my parents could at least hear what I was saying when I was younger. If his parents/guardians aren't controlling him, should we? Maybe they're okay with what he's doing.
- This point I just thought of while writing point 4, Cody has (to my knowledge) not complained about Ram Ranch. If Ram Ranch was something that bothered him, it is his responsibility to bring that up. Who are we to assume what Cody thinks and feels about a song that some fart face queues on a public TTT server?
TL;DR: the song sucks but should be allowed to be queued, with or without children on