ISRAELI ARMY DISSES D&D

When I was 19, and Saddam was lob­bing Scud mis­siles at Tel Aviv, I had a brief urge to join the Israeli army. Good thing I didn’t. Because the gen­er­als there wouldn’t have been too happy with my dorm­room Dungeons & Dragons habit. Ynetnews explains:

18-​​year-​​olds who tell recruiters they play the pop­u­lar fan­tasy game are auto­mat­i­cally given low secu­rity clear­ance.
“They’re detached from real­ity and sus­cepit­ble to influ­ence,” the army says.
Fans of the pop­u­lar role-​​playing game had spo­ken of rumors of this strange pol­icy by the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces], but now the army has con­firmed that it has a neg­a­tive image of teens who play the game and labels them as prob­lem­atic in regard to their draft sta­tus.
So if you like fan­tasy games, go see the mil­i­tary psy­chol­o­gist…
“These peo­ple have a ten­dency to be influ­enced by exter­nal fac­tors which could cloud their judg­ment,” a mil­i­tary offi­cial says. “They may be detached from real­ity or have a weak per­son­al­ity — ele­ments which lower a person’s secu­rity clear­ance, allow­ing them to serve in the army, but not in sen­si­tive posi­tions.” (via Fortean Times)

March 9th, 2005 | Bizarro | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.