Once again…Great show everybody…Terra…YOU NEED TO WORK IN RADIO!…I could imagine you hosting a Morning show in some market

Now this mall -- well, any mall, really -- is a family-friendly environment. The center atrium was already decorated for Christmas and for photos with Santa, there are children’s shops all about; there’s even a carousel near the food court. And that has a Spencer’s Gifts right across the way (if you’ve ever been in one, that is most assuredly not a family-friendly store).

The bottom line is this: no matter where you are -- be it Home or in the real world -- no one is going to do all the work for you when it comes to controlling what you want or do not want to see. Same thing goes for your kids. And if they inquire about it, you explain to them in a way that is age appropriate.

Is Mass Media’s marketing strategy egregiously crass? Absolutely. But it’s no less crass (and in some cases a lot less crass) than what children as young as my own son get exposed to on a trip to the mall to get photos taken with Santa.

You can argue all you want about how Home “should” be different from real life, but what other road map do we have? We each make our Home experience unique to ourselves, and that freedom I think far outweighs some one-size-doesn’t-necessarily-fit-all blanket edict cast upon us from on high.

That said, I think a distinction needs to be made between Home being a “family” environment and Home being a thirteen-and-up environment. The two are *not* the same thing. In my personal view, Home is hardly a family environment; though it’s far more of a controlled atmosphere than other virtual realities such as Second Life, Sony isn’t — as far as I can tell — making any overt pretense of catering to families with Home. They’re catering to gamers, teenage and up. And that’s a huge difference in target demographic.

A schoolgirl with large breasts and an open shirt is unquestionably salacious, in much the same way that Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” video was salacious. Both easily meet the requirements for a PG-13 rating (heck, both meet the requirements for a PG rating). Can both examples cater to ephebophiles? Sure, absolutely. But as Gideon pointed out in his fetish article, it’s virtually impossible to block every possible fetish indulgence someone might have in Home.

Home, to me, has never been a “family” environment. I discovered that within the first five minutes of watching all the horrid misbehavior that took place throughout the old Central Plaza. It’s simply a thirteen-and-up environment, and it’s the same sort of behavior (and a lot of the same clothing) that you’d see in most any public high school across the country.

Does that mean that I support Mass Media’s marketing tactics and product lineup? Hell no. But within the parameters of what Home actually *is* (versus the perception of perhaps what it ought to be), I have to conclude that it’s acceptable for sale in Home.

Even if it is ridiculous and tasteless.