Video Game Prowess < Life Experience/Prowess

Today's featured "WikiHow" was entitled "How to Land a Plane in an Emergency". Naturally, I was drawn to this title and visited the posting hoping that it had been written by famed Cpt. Sully. Not to my surprise, but still disappointing, the article was not written by Cpt. Sully, but by somebody who I will mention later.

The premise of the WikiHow was what to do when the pilot falls unconscious and you are required to land the plane. This seemed strangely "Airplane"-esque, especially since the assumption that the co-pilot taking over was no where to be found. The first instruction was to sit in the pilots' seat, which our author graciously reminded us was on the left side. The second step, take a breather. Now I seem to recall a pilot who took a "prayer breather" during an emergency situation just recently in the news. That man had charges pressed against him...Let me continue to say that these are the first two steps of six. Evidently, you only need six steps to land a plane in an emergency, and the first two require you to assume the position, and breathe.

After you have successfully leveled the plane (step 3), called for help on the radio (step 4), and maintained a safe speed (step 5), you can effectively land the plane (step 6). In case you were confused, the author attached a video.

The video shows a flight simulator computer game. We join our narrator in the cockpit of a 737 on final approach to a small airport in NY. He can't stop complementing his 45 degree bank to line himself up on the runway, and comments that he doesn't use full flaps to land because they cause the plane to go to slow. After landing, he encourages us that this process will take some practice to get good at, but that you should be able to do it someday. What a douche.

So I got to thinking, and I recalled a moment this weekend in Best Buy that struck me. The kids that used to bug me by playing Blink-182 at the Guitar Centers on beautiful guitars and 2,000 dollar amps, have become the kids that play Rebel Yell on Guitar Hero on the big screens at Best Buy as loudly as possible. I received Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas and for once, had become decent at the game. When I saw these two hipsters playing, I noticed that they were playing on medium, and I thought to myself: "I might be ready to play Guitar Hero in public on hard and show these kids the rock star that I am". Fortunately I snapped out of it, but the emotion is real for so many other people who play the game. Think about it. The kids that are really good at Guitar Hero, Madden, World of Warcraft, Flight Simulator and so many others, really think that they are rock stars, pro-athletes, Mages, Cpt. Sullys, and life affectionados. You can't land a plane in six steps, even if you were a pro, just like you can't play guitar with five colored buttons and a strum bar, or win the super bowl with X,Y,O, and []. You are not an honorary Army Ranger or Special Forces bad ass because you are good at Call of Duty, nor are you by any means qualified to handle a firearm because you are deadly on a 1st person shooter.

At what point did our proficiency at video games translate into our life proficiency? It's always great to see Army recruiting stations because some are loaded with video games with "accurate" war-time situations. The Army knows. You think you're a bad ass because you're good at video games. You think that you can save the world. When you end up in Iraq with limited ammo and no health packets on the ground to instantly replenish your health indicator, you just done gone and fucked yourself.

I hope that Cpt. Sully knows that all he needed was 6 steps, just as I hope that Jimmy Page knows that all he really needed was 5 buttons and a strum bar. I'm just glad that I played Gran Turismo on PS back in '99, because the first day that I drove my minivan instead of my souped up GTO, I knew that reality was a bitch.


For your own, private time...
http://www.wikihow.com/Land-an-Airplane-in-an-Emergency