Miss Bimbo?

I thought the whole "digital pet" craze was over, but apparently it's just mutated in some disturbing ways. According to CNN, a game launched in Britain called "Miss Bimbo" is causing quite a bit of controversy. Perhaps meant to be satire of the "glamorous" lifestyles of female media stars, the game instructs players to find rich boyfriends for their characters to leech funds from, blow their money on breast implants for their avatars, and throw a few crumbs to their "bimbos" to strike that balance between emaciated and dead.

Oddly enough, the #1 consumers of the game are young girls aged 7 to 17. Does the game have a bad influence on them (especially the younger ones?). Parents say "Yes," but the creator of the game, a 23 year old man named Nicolas Jacquart, says "No." Quote Jacquart;

It is not a bad influence for young children. They learn to take care of their bimbos. The missions and goals are morally sound and teach children about the real world.

...

The breast operations are just one part of the game and we are not encouraging young girls to have them, just reflecting real life.

Jacquart sounds like a bit of a jackass to me, and he probably thinks he's pretty slick. There's a tidy profit to be had from the game as it exchanges real world money for "virtual money" ("It's like your money, only I have it"), and some young girls are already racking up bills to make sure they can keep playing the game. If a player runs out of "bimbo dollars," they have to pay into their account via paypal or text messages costing about $3 apiece, and some parents are reporting high phone bills as a result of their children playing the game.

While the creators of the game probably intended it to be a caricatured look at what shows up in so many tabloids, the satire is probably lost on most of the games players, especially young girls. What's more, it sets a kind of trap to dupe the young girls with cell phones or credit cards into paying loads of money (or, rather, getting their parents to pay) for their infantile game. Jacquart may not have much of a conscience, but I am sickened by the way he's taking advantage of young women.