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News Media Links Shooting To Games

Posted by Zonk on from the because-rational-thought-is-too-hard dept.

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.

27 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Damn the White man by Mr.Dippy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From what I gather from this washington post article it was the white man who stole all the Indian land and forced the native americans to live shitty lives on reservations that cause the school shooting. If I lived the life that was describe in this article I might have done the same. And I'm white!

    --


    -Dipster
    1. Re:Damn the White man by Don'tTreadOnMe · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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.

  2. Blame Canada by briancnorton · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "We must protest and make a fuss before somebody thinks of blaming us"

    It never ceases to amaze me how reactionary people are to things like this. All the stakeholders get into their little defensive postures ready to strike down the pointing fingers from those that want to look proactive, and nothing ever happens.

    --

    People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.

  3. An original idea by StocDred · · Score: 5, Funny
    It's not an original idea of his; it's something that kids are exposed to by the millions.

    Or, maybe, if you intend to go somewhere and kill people, walking and shooting are pretty much your only options?

    I always thought video games got the idea to walk and shoot from real life. Now I know better! Thanks, MSNBC!

    1. Re:An original idea by MrHanky · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:An original idea by skadus · · Score: 2, Funny
      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).


      Shhhhh!

      They'll ban Final Fantasy, next!
    3. Re:An original idea by Ayaress · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, poisoning a watersupply is not more effective in this case...

      Remember, the point of a rampage is not just to kill people, it's to make a big scene and get your name on TV whilst doing so. If the point were just to kill people, then this guy had easy access to the means and cause of doing so much more effectively.

      Poison will kill people, but not make a scene. It may even be a while before anybody realizes it was intentional and not just Dow Chemical dumping dioxins in the water supply again.

      A bomb will kill people and make a scene, but it won't be immediately connected to you, and in the end you'll just be called a terrorist of some sort. People will ask what could have been done, but in the end, it'll be a relatively limited scene.

      A shooting rampage will accomplish all three goals. You'll be on TV, lots of people will point fingers all over the place, there'll be a very big scene. The whole effect will be much more gruesome, there will be wounded survivors who will also get on TV and talk about you. And inevitably, when the finger pointing starts, a lot of people will get dragged into the scene who had nothing to do with it in the first place.

      Game connection or not, this shooting was clearly the work of a deranged mind. The Smoking Gun covered how he frequented Neo-Nazi websites where he frequently inquired as to how he could best make a big scene killing people. He made a series of flash animations showing him killing stick men and then committing suicide. He drew pictures of guns in his school books.

      This entire article ignores one, very key question: Did the shooter even OWN any of these games?

  4. Let us not forget. . . by Bastian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Let us not forget. . . by tdemark · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      I heard that they even sometimes cause people to go crazy.

    2. Re:Let us not forget. . . by Bastian · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  5. Quote is about an animation! by Ender_Stonebender · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    --
    Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
  6. Gangsta rap? by DamienMcKenna · · Score: 2

    Why don't they also blame gangsta rap? There's as much talk of guns in much of it.

    Damien

  7. Losers R 1337 by DingerX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Interesting how the "authority" in the article repeated over and over that the kids who do these things do them to overcome being branded as "losers".
    He does have a few buried points about the nasty effects of conformism and homogeneity on adolescents: let's face it, if you set up and enforce a single system of human worth in a society, the community will seem very "safe", but there are gonna be as many "losers" as "winners". And "big losers" aren't going to have an easy time of finding an alternative value system that empowers them. Video games may provide the script, but then again so did John Ford.
    Homogenous communities are dangerous for just that reason: there's no social control at all on good old-fashioned deviants.

    Anyone have the link to the animation they're talking about (I don't wanna install IE/SW7)

  8. It's not just shooting by Winckle · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's kinda hard for me to talk about this, but back when Mario bro's first came out, I couldn't stop playing it, but then I took it too far. I decided to see what Mario's magic mushrooms were really like, and from then on it was a downward spiral of jumping on turtles and falttening brown mushrooms, I've been clean for a few years now, and I hope that kids jsut don't get influenced in the same way I was.

  9. Sure it's the games by Mycroft_514 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Sure it's the games by Ayaress · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Sure it's the games by FriedTurkey · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      So they used blocks to bounce the bullets away? Hmmmmmm. I wondered where they learned that?? Could it be....Pong??

  10. Bah! by marcus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Kids go to school by the millions.

    Perhaps schools are the reason(hint)?

    Every kid that has done this, has had parents.

    Hmm, parents are the problem(hint)?

    Millions of kids drink water evey day.

    Wait, every criminal ever coinvicted has been exposed to drinking water. That's it! NO More Water! NO More Crime!

    --
    Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
    - W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
    1. Re:Bah! by walt-sjc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hmm, parents are the problem(hint)?

      While you were modded funny, this is the REAL problem. Parents are disconnected with their kids. Too many kids grow up with both parents working full time (or only have one parent since our society seems to promote that situation today) and end up being raised by daycare / teachers / the street. Parents don't want to hear bad things about their kids. Parents don't discipline their kids. Parents let their kids do whatever they want.

      We also have tied the hands of public education - we can't discipline problem kids in any way. Bullying, taunting, etc. goes on everywhere and frequently gets out of control. Nothing ever happens until someone gets seriously injured or killed.

  11. RTFA, Not The Fucking Headline by G-Spot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you read the article, it actually dosn't blame video games for the shooting. Furthermore, video games aren't even singled out as a bad influence; violent video games are lumped together with violent movies. In the discussions of violent video games influencing violent behaviour, people often say such things as "violent movies have been around for x years, why don't they cause people to go on rampages, Mr. Smarty Pants?" Well, it looks like someone out the agrees with them. It's violent culture that's blamed, and not for causing the violence, but for giving them a role model to emulate. Dr. Newman knows that these children are disturbed to begin with. "What it tends to reinforce in the shooter's mind is not so much a violent impulse as a template for how to be notorious and alluring and cool as a shooter" She's acknowledging right there that video games don't cause the violence, the kid would have gone on the rampage anyway. He just would have had to use a little imagination to look cool while he did it. The real problem here is the title that MSNBC gave to the article. The hyper-reactionary slashdot community took the bait and, as usual, got up in arms. "Faded Columbine reality kept warning signs from being taken seriously" would have been a much more appropriate title for the article, as it spends more time on that subject that nthe subject of video games.

  12. Re:Thanks! by Mr.Dippy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Columbine was the same theme as this just different circumstances. The kids in both these events felt isolated from "Society". Compounded with emotional disorders and surronding themeselves with violent games, nazi books, and malcontent jerks on the Internet was recipe for disaster. But, at the core of it all was a bunch of kids who couldn't think out side the box of their current prediciments. Yes the Indian Reservation sucks. Yes, Columbine was full of phoney jocks with a school/community structure that told the kids "if you don't fit the mold you are worthless." But, once your 18 you can fly the coupe and try to make a life for yourself somewhere else. These kids couldn't think that far.

    --


    -Dipster
  13. Shameful. by Jakeypants · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm more concerned about the games that let you defecate on people.

  14. In a sense he's right by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He's right, but he has his logic kinda backwards. If (hypothetically) I were to go on a school shooting, I'd follow what I know from FPSes. But does that mean that because I know how FPSes want you to shoot stuff, that I'd do so in real life? No.

    Or how about this: suppose a bioweapons researcher went rampant and decided to kill a few people. I'd bet that he'd use some bacterial agent instead of using a gun (it's hard to get a significant number of kills with a gun in real life). But does that mean that these researchers are likely to poison people? No.

    It doesn't even say anything about whether researchers or gamers are more likely to kill people. It just says how they would once they've decided to kill people in the first place. And that's the problem we should be worrying about.

  15. From swords to frags by Corpus_Callosum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think we can pretty much all agree that video games don't make people go nuts and start fragging other people. The capacity and execution of that kind of violence is born in a disturbed mind, not a microprocessor.

    However, I do believe that the games might give such disturbed minds new ideas (and even training) on how to make their big day more exciting for them and/or more efficient.

    I must assume that teenagers that lived in pre-gunpowder times would also have gone on psychotic rampages from time-to-time. Probably the only media they had access to that could teach them about such things were books. So does anybody know? Where books on swordfighting censored so as not to corrupt the youth of the time into grabbing a sword on going on a berzerker streek, beheading all of their classmates?

    --
    The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
    1. Re:From swords to frags by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Informative

      ...how in the hell did this get modded insightful? Books were very, very rare until Gutenberg came along, and that was well after gunpowder was running strong killing people and making pretty colors in the sky. Besides, not like executions and other violence was public back then. It was an event to go watch someone get their head chopped off. Not to mention that most people knew what slaughtering an animal was like. They knew what happened, they had other outlets for their violence. What we have is a relatively new trend because people are so sheltered from the processes that keep them alive, and seem to have this mindset that rules will fix everything.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  16. Re:Absolute Garbage by slavemowgli · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --
    quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
  17. Weise's LiveJournal and Flash Animation by Caseyscrib · · Score: 2, Informative
    His LiveJournal can be found here, and his user info with a list of friends is here.

    The article on thesmokinggun.com that MSNBC mentions is here, which includes an archived link to the flash clip Weise made about shooting people. Also, his band's message board was located at http://6sik6.proboards25.com/, but it has since been taken down. No Google Cache of it either.

    Kind of scary stuff... for the most part he seemed like a fairly normal kid.