Kratos slowly climbs the back of a lumbering volcanic beast with his Blades of Chaos at the ready. When the God of War reaches the summit, he stabs the titanic creature in the eye and grabs hold of a passing harpy to make a quick escape. He stabs the winged she-devil in the leg several times as she carries him across a great expanse and towards a mossy embankment, where the level’s endboss awaits.

The pallid one-man war machine wastes no time in removing the head of his victim. He tears it off like the cap of a childproof pill bottle and holds it up for the camera to see. The man’s mouth still sputters, a fountain of blood shoots from his gnarled and broken neck.

The kind of shit that twelve-year-old kids fucking love.

“Holy shitzu. I can’t believe I just saw that,” says Tatum Lewis, who is at his friend’s house for the afternoon to catch up on the latest video game previews. “That’s the coolest frickin’ thing I’ve ever seen. Dude, play it again.”

“You seen this one?” asks Tatum’s friend, Mark White. He clicks on another movie listed beneath the ‘Recommended’ banner.  A prompt pops up, stating that this video is for matures audiences only. It asks for the viewer’s age. There are three entry boxes – year, month, and day.

Mark quickly types in his birth date, subtracting ten years from his year of birth. He clicks on the ACCEPT button and the video begins to play. The boys are immediately rewarded with the sight of a man stabbing a cyclops in the eye and then riding him around like a chicken with its head cut off. Techno music plays.

Why are these children being allowed to see something so mind-blowingly awesome at such a young age? It used to be that Americans would have to wait until they were at least fifteen to see a man get skullfucked by a hammer. But that isn’t the case any more.

It’s simple. The internet only knows what it’s told. If it thinks that Mark White is a 22 year old college graduate, owner of an American Express card, and lover of black on black anal play, then that’s who he is. The truth – that Mark White is 12 year old seventh-grader, owner of a blue and white Magic: The Gathering set, and lover of black on black anal play – doesn’t really matter. Welcome to the digital age.

Mark’s mother raps lightly on his bedroom door. “Marko? Do you boys want some tuna melts?” she asks. She cracks the door and watches her boys stare blankly at the horrible images broadcast over the computer screen. They’re completely non-responsive.

“Marko?”

“MOM WE’RE BUSY,” Mark shouts. “GO AWAY.”

In one afternoon, Mark and Tatum may find as many as thirty movies on the internet in which someone is either punched to death by Batman or raped by a rusty spoon. There is a never-ending amount of mind-blowing shit on the world wide web for a pair of industrious young men who know how to subtract ten from their year of birth. All they have to do is seek and they shall receive.

There is a dark side to this story, however. Boys and girls like Mark and Tatum have become so accustomed to subtracting ten years from their birth year that they are doing it more and more out of habit.

Stories about young men and women as young as eight filling in the wrong age on applications to join the Garfield Fan Club or the local chapter of the National Merit Society pop up every day. The truth is that there is a sizable section of our populace living the lives of twelve year olds, but are technically ten years older on paper.

Tatum is approached by his math teacher, Ms. Finley, the morning of the state proficiency exam. She holds up his answer sheet and points at the Year of Birth section.

“Tatum, are you twenty two years old?”

The boy stares at his teacher, unsure how to answer. Is he? He’s not sure anymore.

“You’d think that such a smart boy would know what year he was born,” she adds. She sets the exam down on his desk with a pencil to correct his error. As she walks away, the embarrassed twelve-year-old stares at his teacher’s back. He imagines a miniature version of himself climbing up her craggly behind and stabbing her in the eye with a glowing orange blade and then taking off to the skies with a big-titted harpy.

Nobody would stand in his way.