News Media Links Shooting To Games

Via Kotaku, an MSNBC report entitled School shooter followed video game-like 'script'. If you're going to scapegoat in the wake of a tragedy, who better than the entertainment industry? From the article: "What I mean by 'a script' is that when you look at popular culture, movies, video games, you will see this kind of "shoot 'em" pathway running through many of them. It's not an original idea of his; it's something that kids are exposed to by the millions." Given that another story on the MSNBC site states that the suspect talked about shooting people before the incident, it seems like there is more than enough finger pointing to go around.

Comments

Let us not forget. . .

[Bastian]

Let us not forget a couple of decades ago, when the news media were throwing a shitfit because Dungeons and Dragons was causing children to commit suicide.

Let us also not forget that when somebody finally conducted a study to figure out if there is a connection, it showed that kids who play Dungeons and Dragons are less likely to commit suicide.

Re:Let us not forget. . .

[Bastian]

I don't think the news media is going after deeper pockets. If they were, they would be trying to make money through litigation rather than viewership.

What it comes down to is that the news attracts viewers (and money) by appealing two two things: people's prurient interests, and people's egos.

Blaming the problems of America on some group is an excellent fall back that mixes both of these - you get some mind-porn in the form of talking about children killing each other or whatever, and you get to make people feel better about themselves by scapegoating it off onto some easy target that kids happen to like, thus helping people to avoid any serious introspection into why bad stuff happens and what they can do to fix it.

Quote is about an animation!

[Ender_Stonebender]

Considering that the quote in the summary was actually about an animation that the shooter posted, not about how he actually went about shooting people... ...c'mon, guys. I mean, what the fuck? Really, take the time to read the whole article before misrepresenting it on Slashdot. In the end, it isn't entertainment media that's blamed, but the isolation of the small towns.

--Ender

Sure it's the games

[Mycroft_514]

That's why my mother-in-law saw a shooting in school as a little girl - in the 1920's. Has to be the video games that caused it.

Re:Sure it's the games

[Ayaress]

Something I'd pointed out before when a case like this came up: In my state, there was a school shooting in 1980 or 81. It made Columbine look like Sesame Street On Ice. Something like 90 people were hospitalized, and it came down to a gunfight with the police. The shooters (there were six of them, all social outcasts as if I had to point that out) were more organized than any of the ones on the news here. They positioned themselves so that there was no line-of-sight from outside to them, and blockaded themselves into a hallway.

All the crimes that get blamed on video games have one thing in common: They have no special identifying characteristics. Had those six gunmen in 1980 been dressed in red and yelled, "Death to the Amerikanski!" they would have been called Communists and Russia would have been blamed. As it happened, they had long hair and thusly drugs were blamed.

This guy was sick, in more ways than one. Look at his MSN profile. That's not the result of somebody playing too many video games, it's a product of a very deeply disturbed mind.

Re:An original idea

[MrHanky]

Of course it's not the only option. Poisoning the water supply could be far more effective, and probably easier to get away with. It doesn't make a great game plot, though. And it's hard work (you need lots of poison). Or, for the less ambitious, a well placed bomb could just do the trick.

So maybe it's a good thing that games take the most spectacular but least effective route for killing people. If the kid actually gave some thought to his murders instead of just going on a FPS rampage, he could've had more success. So computer games may once again have saved thousands of lives.

But then again, he might have just chosen his strategy from the available weapons and transportation vehicles. As they say: If all you've got are your legs and some guns (and a chainsaw!), all problems look like Doom.

Re:Damn the White man

[kaellinn18]

That's funny... according to that article it looks like the last thing he did before going nuts was watch the Columbine shooting. Gee, I wonder where he got the idea?

Re:Damn the White man

[Don'tTreadOnMe]

Hmmm... Simplistic, perhaps, but not idiotic. But then, most knee-jerk reactions are simplistic.

From an economic viewpoint (that is, the view of the average economist), your response would seem accurate. But let's look a little closer. Take West by God Virgina (USA) for example: Large portions of WV are depressed economically, with few job options. Working at McDonalds isn't an option - There isn't one at which to work. So we suggest that they move away. But look at the options economically:

1. Live in a depressed community, surrounded by your friends and family.

2. Move away to some place where you don't know anyone and you have to take a job that doesn't pay very well or give satisfaction.

Neither one is very attractive, really.

It's easy to point the finger at other groups and say, "Bah! Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!"

It's even easier to say that when you yourself have successfully done that. But really, it is a problem of society, to try to improve educational opportunitues, and try to break the cycles that groups get stuck in.

[dismount soap box]

Either way, it's not so simple as it appears at first glance.

Re:Absolute Garbage

[slavemowgli]

I read an insightful comment regarding this on Slashdot after the Columbine incident. According to that comment, the reason (or one of the reasons) is simply that it's a case of competition:

1. News stories are made/broadcast by the massmedia corporations.
2. Massmedia corporations (usually) don't just broadcast news, but also lots of other shows.
3. Those corporations rely on advertising for their revenue, so they have an interest in getting as many people as possible to watch their shows.
4. Video games are direct competitors of TV shows; a kid who plays a video game doesn't watch TV and thus does not create advertising revenue.
5. Thus, it's in the broadcasting corporations' best financial interest to portray video games as the root of all evil; every kid whose parents take away his/her video games is more likely to watch TV and thus create advertising revenue.

The poster back then managed to get this idea across far more elegantly than I can, but I think it's something to think about. It's the same reason why mainstream journalism is usually critical of blogs (when they acknowledge their existence at all; either denouncing them as biased and unreliable, or just plain ridiculing them) - they're direct competitors.