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Columbine Student on VG Violence
Sophia wrote in to mention some discussion of Video Game Violence on 1up.com this week. Brooks Brown had the experience of attending Columbine High School around the time of the now infamous shooting incident. Via his blog, Brown goes into a detailed discussion of Why Violence in Gaming is a Good Thing. From the article: "GTA isn't about fucking hookers or killing cops. It's a story of a guy who got screwed trying to get back on top. It is, by nature, a story game. Postal 2 may let you kill anyone you want in bloody and disgusting ways - but that's not what it is about either. It is, by nature, a tech demo in the abilities of programmers and AI. it is WE - the gamers - who change what the game is about and determine what happens. It is the person playing who determines what the game contains." Jane Pinckard has a quick reaction to his post. More commentary on this subject is available via John Davison's Blog, who met Brown at a taping of a news program which was ostensibly to be about gaming in general. Instead he was ambushed about violence in games and ended up walking out.
How people are actual killers and nut jobs? I mean this in all seriousness. It is probably a split percentage point. How many people can watch a movie with gore and walk home without thinking twice? Probably 99.x percent of the people on this planet.
The problem with his blog entry is that he talking about the vast majority and not the absolute minority. And while I don't think that video games on their own create killing machines, they are an influence. That is the problem, the summation of all factors is what causes the problems!
Here is the kicker, in his last statement he says the killers were "f'd up". Well, duh, yeah! However, they blended in since our society does not think twice about violence and that is a problem.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If I recall correctly, Opiates were first banned because there was fear and panic that 'drug crazed negroes' would rape white women. This was in San Fran, or one of those more westernly of the United States Cities.
This was also what stirred the first (recorded) police increase of calibre size, as it was thought that anything below a .38 would not be enough to kill someone on Opium.
Also, the reason Drug Use is pervasive amongst youth is because it is forbidden. You make something verbotten, and its appeal instantly skyrockets among teenagers, mainly because teenagers have a built in mechanism whereby the seek to break as many rules as they possibly can, due to the fact they need to explore and find the boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour, and more importantly, what they can get away with.
Probably important to becoming a well-rounded adult.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Isn't most of GTA:Sa(quite far into it) about a guy trying to go straight and stop drug dealers?
Shocking really.. who would of thought you that? I've only ever used a prostitute once just to see WTF it was that happened, then I couldn't careless.
I like muppets.
Yeah but you can only do any of that once you've beaten the crap out of some poor civil service worker who was just trying to do their job.
But seriously. GTA is about violence. Face it. We like killing things. Guns are fun! Acting out our fantasies in any way is usually fun. The point is maintaining the division between fantasy and reality which people these days are pretty crap at. For example, the male fantasy of women is percieved by women to be the ideal. Hence they end up with this stupid distorted fantasized body image.
Killing things is fun, and as long as nobody actually dies it's fine. Can we all just grow up and admit it now please?
I worked at a company doing QA work for a while. Long hours (like 80 hour weeks). Low pay. 30 people crammed into workspaces that more ideally fit 10 or 15 people max.
After a while, crammed in with the same people in close proximity for 6 days out of 7 for weeks on end, the rough edges of everyone's personality starts to grate on your nerves.
Then we started setting up LAN games of Ghost Recon: Desert Seige during the lunch hours. It was great.
For an hour a day, I wasn't a sardined-in cog in a corporate machine... but I was ZANG, mighty hunter of the eviiil otherpeople, ownz0ring each game map with my trusty sniper rifle, or M60 machine gun... striking terror into those unfortunate or foolish enough to be in my path. Lots of adrenaline, and shouting back and forth between sections of the cubes.
Then the lunch hour would end, and it'd be back to checking out a few hundred more entries in the database searching for dupes, and wading through a couple dozen more non-sensical blathering emails from clueless upper management posers.
But, after the massive adrenaline rush and mental escape provided by each day's LAN game, things went smoother.
Personally, I think that there would have been a lot more problems and breakdowns in the work group structure if there HADN'T been the "release" of video-game violence every day at lunch time.
Same thing with kids and video-game violence. Better that the local 16-year-olds be all at home playing at being imaginary thugs in GTA, than be hanging out bored in front of the 7-11 at 10 at night looking for something to do.
It is just sad you are true. Anyone that looks into the recent (as in 30 years) history of the US will understand at least some of the antipathy against the US. Just the fact the US has a history of wanting to influence other country's politics will have set some major antisympathy...
The really sad thing IMO is that Osama got what he wanted: the US full of fear - NO, it was not about those people, it was about the fear... and he succeeded.
Oh, and why hasn't he been captured yet? His kidneys are disfunct - how can he keep evading the US troups?
Hey all. What we need to do is instead of just sitting on Slashdot discussing the problem, make the counsellors and principals and parents realize that this problem exists and make them pull their heads out of their asses. What I have done is taken the very first comment on this page (the one I am replying to right now), which was EXTREMELY insightful btw, and have made a nice PDF out of it. I am making an anonymous hotmail account and emailing this to my guidance councellor.
I suggest everyone else do the same.
I myself am sort of a mixture of some sort. I am friends with all of the "cool kids". I smoke pot with them. I get so drunk I can barely see straight.
I also run Linux on my desktop at home and read Slashdot. So I know how things are on both sides of the fence.
At school, the bigger kids used to pick on me. Then I would pick on the even weaker. I did this until shortly after I read a commentary similar to these ones about Columbine.
Ever since that day, I'm the person who is always telling my own friends to fuck off and leave the nerdy kid ive never met before alone. Most of the people who pick on other kids do it to fit in (at least I did), so that they aren't put in the "geek's" shoes. They want to fit in with the other bullies.
The thing that fucking pisses me off, is that the Teachers have the power to stop this, and they just don't care. They know little Johnny gets beat up every day at Lunch, yet they would rather run off for a smoke break instead of letting him work on homework in the classroom during Lunch, or even just watching him from afar. Some other kids beat the living shit out of another "geek" and get suspended for a few days. That little geek brings a pocket knife to school to try and be cool and fit in with the popular people, and he gets expelled and a letter sent home for it.
Columbine, while being a complete and utter tragedy, was also a glowing oppurtunity. If only stories like this, and comments like the first one for this story, were posted on the front page of the newspaper, instead of fucking stupid articles like "Are Violent Video Games Going to Make Your Kid Kill?", maybe all of the bullies, teachers and principals would realize that those students died not only because of the two "crazy kids" but because of people like themselves. That the principals at Columbine, the teachers, the counsellors, the parents of the killers, are owed just as much blame as the killers themselves. That this mass murder was the fault of Society and not the fault of the "nerds". It could have made all of the difference in the world, even if it only saved one kid from being bullied. But instead of taking advantage of this oppurtunity, America (and Canada where I live, as well as numerous other countries) instead went on an all-out witch-hunt, while being so incredibly naive...and, well, downright fucking stupid....that they just made the problem worse.
So I say everyone print off the first comment for this article and make sure as many people as possible see it.