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Why Do Computer Games Claim Lives?
Ektar wrote to mention an article from Chosun, a Korean newspaper, asking the question why do videogames claim lives? The article is in response to some recent high profile gamer deaths. From the article: "Apparently rare overseas, such cases make frequent headlines in Korea. Why? Experts point to the poor environment of the 'PC bang' or Internet cafes that have mushroomed nationwide. Generally dark and poorly ventilated, they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn."
From TFA:
On Dec. 8, a 38-year-old man died suddenly after playing Internet games for 20 straight days at an Internet café, sustaining himself solely on instant noodles.
I think we just nailed it in this case. What's the mystery?
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
because vin diesel made warcraft too awesome
I think not!
Gotta love the shift of responsibility.
I take it the game just reached out on its own volition and killed the people?
Thats as bad as saying "the SUV ran over the child", or " a gun shot the teller during the holdup".
Cant anyone take responsibility for their own actions any more?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm not even a gamer and I can tell this is just another example of sensationalist journalism.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
from Wacko Jacko Twatto Thompson :-)
Um... darkness isn't deadly.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
People die all the time while laying in beds. No one publishes an article every time it happens, wondering "why beds claim lives". Yet every time someone dies while playing a game, it's big news. Never mind that they've chosen to go for days without eating, drinking, or sleeping; apparently it was the game that killed them.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
> they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and
> light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn.
And this is different to the den of the average console gamer how?
tell garrett that.
Videogames claim lives because the government wants to regulate video games.
...just demanded that game companies changes worfs line in star trek mmorpg to "it's a good day to die not playing games"
The longer you live, the more likely you are to die of something new. The newer it is, the more likely it gets your dead self in the newspaper.
The more hype it gets in the news, the more people think it's more significant than getting hit by a car or falling out of a tree.
Someone cries on TV. Lawyers get involved. New laws are passed that prohibit things. Life becomes a little less worth living. People resort to videogames to escape. And then...
Maybe someday, we'll wise up and just allow people to make their own choices.
Time to get out of the basement.
I need to disagree with your comment. Hundreds of adults die on freeways out of MILLIONS. If the same begins to be true for gamers (from poor nutrition, hygiene, etc), then it certainly is a crisis. From TFA, someone who plays games for 20 days straight in a net cafe, REALLY does have a problem. If cases like this grow around the world, then it is a problem.
Anyone would get that way sitting in front of a computer that long. I do. Why blame games exclusively?
even living claims lives, the gamers are just dying doing what they like to do best.
"Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit.'"
All good gamers know that you play until your hit points get low, rest, then come back. The period of time between resting grows longer as you level up.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Generally dark and poorly ventilated, they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn."
So the games themselves do not cause death. Instead, and unhealthy environment, poor nutritional habits, and general Lard-assed-ness cause death.
Who knew?
Next we will discover that video games don't make you kill others, and that guns just sit there unless some picks them up and uses them.
What is this, Masters of the Obvious week?
Feh.
I mean, isn't it obvious? The videogame's parents must not've given it enough attention during the early formative years. They probably let it watch as much TV as it wanted, eat junk food, read dirty magazines.
Come on, let's stop passing the buck and put the blame squarely on the Super Mario cartridge and the X-Wing collector's edition CD who had unprotected sex on the dirty matress behind the YMCA.
FOR SHAME!
Holy cow! That alien jumped outta nowhere! ughh... help! I'm dying of a heart attack.... ughhghhgh uhhh.....
(falls dramatically on the floor)
Headshots
I've seen several of these stories. The "victim" plays games to the exclusion of everything else.
He neglects small health problems until they become life threatening. Lack of sleep, malnutrition, etc. add to these health problems.
Suddenly, one less gamer.
Any compulsive behavior could possibly lead to one's death.
Who would have thought the /. would ever have such a headline?
"Would you like to play a game?"
Agreed. People who play games until they die have a problem; but the problem is not a global one, it is purely personal.
But more importantly, if someone makes a choice which causes their death, they are still free to make that choice. There are many circumstances when death is preferable to life, and it is selfish of you to "save lives" because it makes you feel better about yourself.
That said, if i am going to kill myself and you try to stop me, i will kill you and then myself.
If what you say is correct, and they really are that weak in the head, then good riddens.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So are these deaths statistically significant, or could I also claim that it wasn't the game but the simple fact of owning a gaming device? It seems that it's more a case of a few but fairly well publicized deaths. I mean I'm sure there are people who have died do to eating oranges, should we write articles about the horrors of oranges then?
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
It's the radiation from the monitors that killed them. Everyone stay away from computers, they'll kill you! No, wait! I'm on a computer! Aahhh!
Someone save me from this sanity.
People commit suicide for many reasons. Most of them stupid (loss of love or wealth, failing at something) The gamer suicide probably stems from an unusually strong emotional investment and the subsequent loss of or failure at that which they so irrationally care so much about. It is no different than someone committing suicide over the loss of a girlfriend/boyfriend or for the older the loss of a job. The fact that it was gaming related is just a novelty.
If something exists that does not need a creator (god) then why must the cosmos need one?
As with anything, there are extremists in video games. Yeah, video game extremism is a little less written about than say, religious extremism, but there are some people who take everything to the extreme. And doing anything to the extreme can lead to serious injury or death, be it gaming, drinking, sports, what-have-you...
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
Has this ever happened to a black man? Or a white man?
I somehow fail to see how a mere 20 day bad dieet could kill you. Especially since it is merely poor nutrition. Not like he stuffed himself with lard for 20 days. Or drank cappucino's like it was water.
Perhaps he was just you know. One of those people that die young. It happens. Sure if he had taken better care of himself he might have lived but everyone can tell you they heard of this health nut who died at XX age while their chainsmoking uncle will never see 100 again.
People die. Go figure.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The question shouldn't be, why do games seem to cause more deaths in Korea than elsewhere? The question should be, what leads Koreans to game so excessively to the point of death?
I firmly believe it's not the games at fault, but the environment/Korean culture which leads those people to obsessive behaviour towards games. As a Korean, I know the culture intimately. Japan seems to be the archetype for the overworked person pressured by family and society exclusively toward the goal of achievment to the point where it seems the message is, "achieve or die", but Korea has taken this attitude to the next level. The cause could be the fierce competitiveness between Japanese and Korean cultures, the number of jobs versus the number of people, ingrained competitive attitude towards other Koreans, or other cultural factors. Whatever the cause it appears that all this has culminated in a group of highly stressed, obsessive people. Using a game as an outlet to focus both the obsessive attitude and the stress seems to result in a "higher" death rate.
$sys$droids
humans are obsolete, kill all humans?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. I rest my case ^_^
Other factors are mentioned by the article; I'm sure they're very valid. However, I suspect these problems are amplified by some other factors that, on their own, are relatively harmless or positive.
Basically, people in south asian countries have, on average, very high IQs. The best data I have on South Korea is that the average IQ there is 106 (normalized on UK=100, where the US has an average of 98- http://www.isteve.com/IQ_Table.htm ). That may sound wonderful, but with a high average IQ you get high IQ personality problems, such as a tendency toward addiction to video games (whether high IQ folks have a general tendency toward addictive behavior is another argument).
I'm not too surprised. I expect similar problems in China (average IQ = 100 *before* many rural citizens live in a 'modern' IQ-enhancing society, and before they've had access to iodized salt and enriched bread and such). China's decision to curb the MMO culture by limiting playing time may end up a wise move.
I have a feeling this is what's going on here as well. Propaganda to keep the video game man down!
Even U.S. gov has admitted to starting rumors in 60's to get people to stop doing acid and other drugs.
Maybe if Korea stopped with this death crap and went with something more important like "... another man goes impotent because of overplaying Counter-Strike
- - -
When you ask a question that begins with why, you usually already know the answer.
For those of you who don't believe that computer games claim lives, you should check out War Games. The game came close to leveling the entire planet! (kidding)
Korea is communism rolled up into a get away from the Ills internet bang cafe. Sad if you think about it, but who cares, it's Korea, where they call your pets dinner.
http://www.degreeradio.yk/http://www.degreeradio.y k/LAMENESSFILTERsays;shellcodewin32FUCKubiatchhaha hahaugottoldlikeagfhfgfhfgfla9alenja,dhjemhttp://w ww.degreeradio.yk/WALALALALALAL.com/slashdot.porgy orgyfrombravenewworldbitchfukkkfofkfofkliedieschmy why
this isnt gonna get KARMA IS IT!
Except for me, it wasn't games, it was just computer use in general. After I graduated from high school there was nothing stopping me from sitting in the chair from the moment I awoke until way too late... chatting on IRC, programming, browsing the web, all while doing my best to ignore my bodily signals. Try doing this, combine it with high stress, and you can get into trouble.
For me it was dehydration. When the day is almost over during the summer and you finally cannot ignore the hunger pain anymore, you jump up to grab something and begin to pass out, then it becomes clear how you can die from computers. I obviously survived, but I was malnourished and it was difficult rebuilding my strength both mentally and physically.
People think this is insane I'm sure... but I am proud to have such mental dedication. I don't think it is an abnormal skill for humans, but I do think it is something much more common in Asia due to their culture. This is probably why the coverage is from there and not the USA. Most Americans just can't handle much discomfort without giving in.
"Why Do Computer Games Claim Lives?" It's not the games; it's the environment. People who are addicted to crack will die in a crackhouse if it's poorly-ventilated. It's the addiction and where it's being fed that causes the deaths.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Nothing aganist Korean of Chinese gamers, just personally every article I've seen on /. and other sites always is about a gamer in a different country.
Aw Frell this
Sound like my basement, but the smoke is not always from tobbaco products :)
When playing mortal combat this is a good thing right?
This guy is responsible :)
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
What the hell are you talking about?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't regist
There was a time cars claimed lives. This was in the day when it was thought that having a sharp metal pin aimed at the drivers chest and directly connected to the front of the car was a good design feature. Same with regular glass windows and nice sharp metal knobs. Saves you the worry of how to get out of your vehicle after a crash I suppose.
In that way cars killed their passengers although the more accurate claim would be that it was the designers of the car that killed the passengers.
You can say that smoke claims lives (smoke as from a fire) but this again is a fairly direct form. You would not say that love claims lives despite the fact that an awfull lot of people commit suicide over a broken heart.
It is not the gameplay that killed them. If say you were playing a DDR game that just kept getting more and more intense until the user falls dead THEN the game would claim lives. If you played fear and got so scared you suffered a heart attack THEN the game would have claimed a live.
Just taking bad care of yourselve is not the games fault. Sitting motionless in a chair eating bad food is not restricted to gaming. Just ask your average soccer widow.
All these guys seemed to have neglected their body for a prolonged time and were probably not the most healthy in the first place.
One article claimed the 38 year old male in question had existed on a 20 day diet of instant noodles. Eheh and before? Because I know from personal experience that the body can live a lot longer then that on instant noodles. I am willing to bet a few bucks that before he wasn't exactly a 2fruit+veg a day man either. So the real newsstory is, man who neglects his health totally does not live to a ripe old age (38 was once an advanced age for a human to reach)
The other has someone having a 9 hour gaming session? Well I doubt anyone would be able to do that without having to pee and even then so what? I done far longer sessions. Perhaps this person was not the most prime example of the human species? If 9 hours in chair kills you then all this proves that darwin was on to something. You know there are people out there who for fun do 12 hour marches? What about pole-sitting contests?
Nah I am afraid that as I read these stories it is just, not very healthy person dies doing something to extreme. I had an elderly neighbour who died going to the toilet (yeah how do you like to discover that eh?) Apperently the "pressure" caused a bloodvessel (internally) to burst and she bled to death. Going to the toilet is bad for you? No she just was old and that was her time. If it hadn't been then it would have been if she had bend down to lift something heavy. Sad but that is live. No need to make a headline off it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
this shit happens in taiwan too.. very frequently. i dont see why people die..
True playas don't die, they grind till the end of times, deaths are mere cases of n00bishness.
We should not be surprised.
Games claim lives:
Asian kid dies after playing WoW for days straight.
Stupidity claim games:
The parents of the asian kid sue Blizzard, partially to convince themselves their kid didn't die because they were terirble parents (or maybe for the cash, dunno).
---
Question: Why does stupidity claim games?
Take a look at home many gamers there are out there, then look at how many of them die from these kinds of situations. Not that terribly many, right? Now take a quick peak at two of societies most common forms of entertainment, nicotine and alcohol (for those cultures who don't subscribe to those particular poisons, I leave it up to the reader to substitute). How many people dies every year because of those two? And not just from the direct causes (alcolism / lugn cancer) but from side effects such as the users killing others.
So the point is, games are far less dangerous than alcohol and nicotine. Fix those problems first instead of whining about obvious cases of mental illness where society is unwilling to find and treat the people who are sick.
Now move along, nothing to see...
Which is the fart-riddled chairs that release a stinky puff of poot everytime you sit on them!
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I admit, I stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning playing PC games, but then I go to sleep for the normal 8 or 10 hours a person would sleep and get up at 2 or 3 in the afternoon. However, what these people are doing is completely different, they stay up non-stop, for days and even weeks on end. Of course staying in a room with bad ventilation and a bad air supply (smoking) will cause asphyxiation, and of course staying up for days on end will drain your energy to the point where you can't move.
My point is, its not the games that kill, its the life-style that these people are living.
Shouldn't these cafes just place somewhat generous limits on how many hours per day a person can spend in them? 6 hours seems like more than enough. Besides, I imagine that after a day or so, the body odor would drive some customers away. As for these places being dark and poorly ventilated, wouldn't it make sense to at least ventilate the place? All that smoke and crappy air must surely cut into the life span of the computers. And oh yeah, into the life spans of the customers, too.
COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?
<i>It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.</i>
8 monster%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_%2
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
Or, as my roommate likes to joke: "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by Vin Diesel."
For the sake Flood Control Dam #3!!!
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
In Soviet Russia, games kill YOU!
Err...
Well, let's think about this. * The government wants to regulate video games. * Assume regulation of games is bad for sales. If I happened to make a video game that was particularly addictive, and I was in any danger of government regulation, I wouldn't wait for the feds to get involved. I'd make my game stop after 8 or so hours (you know, some reasonable amount of time to play a game without stopping), and force the person playing to take a 5-10 minute break. This doesn't even have to be for the player's benefit (though, if they've been playing for >12 hours, it probably is). This is basically, as a video game company, to cover my own ^ss and say, "Hey, I gave them a chance to stop. It's not my fault if they keep staring at the screen now."
When you're born you must die. One leads to the other, now if I have a choice between 20 hours playing a game or 2-3 years suffering from cancer, I know what I want my fate to be. We should celebrate it not mourn it!
I like muppets.
If I happened to make a video game that was particularly addictive, and I was in any danger of government regulation, I wouldn't wait for the feds to get involved. I'd make my game stop after 12 or so hours (you know, some reasonable amount of time to play a game without stopping), and force the person playing to take a 5-10 minute break.
This doesn't even have to be for the player's benefit (though, if they've been playing for >12 hours, it probably is). This is basically, as a video game company, to cover my own ^ss and say, "Hey, I gave them a chance to stop. It's not my fault if they keep staring at the screen now."
Most comments posted here mock the main article, saying that games obviously can't physically kill a person; what actually does it are the living conditions that the gamers put themselves through (junk food, bad air, etc.) Yes, that's true. But why do the gamers do that to themselves? Because they are ADDICTED to the game; and in that sense, isn't it the game's fault? Regardless, the game IS involved, at least indirectly, in the person's death.
This article isn't very well written and most of all, do you really have to believe anything you read online? In fact, why the hell are you people clicking on this link? Crap, so did I. I think I go outside now. You do know there is an outside? No? Then back in the womb you....
Every time some article comes out against games, we get a thousand posts running to the game's defense. The fact is that some dude was so addicted to a game that all other life sustaining activities took a back seat. It's very much like an addiction to alcholhol or crack. Just stop for one second, guys, and consider that maybe games can be addictive.
I just spent the last few months living in South Korea and trust me, a PC Bang isn't a whole lot different than the kind of people's apartments that frequent them. Yeah some of them can be kinda crappy, but so is my living room. Lots of them are pretty damn nice though. It's kind of like a bar though. You can drink beer in a shady hole-in-the-wall or the same beer somewhere classy. Up to you.
Most people go to a PC Bang for a couple hours, leave, and live to come again another day. RARELY do people spend more than a few hours. Even after asking many of my Korean friends, none of them personally knew anybody who broke the 24 hour mark.
An easy remedy to this situation though for those very, VERY RARE situations is just cut the guy off after a while. Bartenders do it all the time, so why shouldn't PC Bang owners? I understand they want to make some money, but at the same time they probably don't want the paramedics coming to their establishment so they can scrape some dead guy off a keyboard. I'm sure plenty of PC Bang owners actually do this, but we're only ever going to hear of the ones that don't because those are where people die.
This just in: people die doing stupid shit
... for their own actions. I mean look, video games can, for some people, I suppose, be as addictive as drugs. Liquor companies are no more responsible for alcoholics than video game publishers are for video game addicts. That is to say, neither video game publishers nor liquor companies are responsible. In the U.S., we've been building this culture of "it's not my fault." Cigarette companies are sued for people dying from smoking, McDonalds is sued for people pouring hot coffee on themselves or getting obese from eating their food.
I'm a big believer in Darwinism and the "not my fault" culture goes completely against it. It's like those stupid warnings on hair dryers that warn you not to use them in the shower. If you protect idiots long enough, they'll breed. That's bad. If a guy is going to spend 20 days straight playing video games and eating noodles, then he should die. There's obviously something very wrong with his genes and that's not a trait you want to pass on to the next generation.
That might sound cold and heartless, but to some degree, you need to be able to follow a basic instinct to survive or you need to be pulled from the gene pool. Protecting all these people from themselves actually encourages bad genes to propagate and it actually hurts the race as a whole.
Oh well, guess I'll get off my soap box, but I just wish people would start taking responsibility for their own lives and stop blaming their bad habits on everyone else.
Actually, it's not "Hundreds", it's "Tens of Thousands". Cars _are_ dangerous.
In 2002, 48,000 people died on the road. Your yearly odds of dying a transportation related death are about 1 in 5,953.
Your odds of dying as a car occupant are about 1 in 17,625
Strangely enough, you're more likely to die of falling down, poisoning yourself (accidentally) or shooting yourself (intentionally)
http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
Too many levers! I blame big lever. All those folks at Acme are the reason we're in our War for Levers.
I'm sure that these gamers' being safer drivers on cell phones will more than make up for the deaths in terms of fewer car crashes AND increased productivity.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
so what? everyone dies...of something.
drugs, sex, sleep, boredom, work, etc, etc.
Make a list.
ohhh...gamers are going to die.
FUCK YOU!!!!
Stupid journalist....having a slow news day????
Guns kill too......you dumbass.
billions of gamers.....1 is nothing.
People blame movies for violence/sex/[ place noun here ]/etc.
People blame games for death....lol.
Humans.....an inferior species.
Well, for much the same reason that automobiles claim lives, collapsing buildings claim lives, defective medicines claim lives, use of illicit drugs claims lives ... usually it's because somebody did something stupid. Sometimes they have to pay for it, sometimes other people pay for it. Not much more to it than that, when you get right down to it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Anyone who has died while obsessively posting on ./ please reply ...
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
What are you REALLY doing when (getting played by) playing a video game (aka - combat simulator)?
1. Wasting your life time (it's finite you know - no saves).
2. Wasting your money in three ways:
the money you spent on the game,
the money you could have made while playing the game, and
the money you lost from the skills you didn't gain because you were playing video games.
3. Sitting motionless - not good for that bag of flesh you call your body.
4. Tweeking your endocrine system - trying to get an excitement rush in some fashon...
5. Gazing into a flashing light bulb. Bright lights mess up the biological cycles in chickens (making more eggs)
I would guess constant exposure to light would fry a human brain too.
And the problem of flashing lights has been shown to cause sezures in people who get sezures.
6. Causing simulated post-traumatic stress disorder in your brain - feeling drained after playing for 87 hours!
Overall, it is the waste of time and resources, much like TV, that make games bad.
If all the TV and video game man hours were put to helping your family, social causes, volunteering, or just exercising -
the Nations productivity and overall happiness would radically increase ten fold or more!
So turn off the game console and remember:
Video Games are not make believe - You are Real, and no one else can live your life but you.
Actually, AIDS itself only screws up the immune system. But because of this damage, it is easier to contract deadly diseases, and more benign diseases also become more virulent. The diseases then kill you. So, bad analogy. (insert infinitly long medical paper here as well)
13. Any legal action is absolutly excluded. (Pi World Ranking List rules)
This is nature's way of telling the guy that anyone who plays a videogame for 20 hours straight DOES NOT HAVE A LIFE.
I think I'll revisit my theory on the collective human intelligence.
When humans first evolved (or were created, for you religious wackos), there were pretty smart. They used their big brains to find ways to work around the fact that they were scrawny hairless apes whose tiny little teeth and pathtic fragile claws couldn't harm a rubber baloon animal. Because of their success, their population grew.
After a time, they started forming permenant communities where they could sustain their power and influence over nature, and now humans are the dominant species on the planet.
I maintain that the number of actual neurons in the human species has not increased. Where we originally had a set of neurons shared amongst a few hundred thousands humans, once we hit around a million, we stopped producing new neurons.
As the population continues to grow, those same neurons get spread thinner and thinner, until the internet was created -- at which point many of them started to die off. By 2010, the Chinese will have captured all available working neurons and they will be the sum total of human intelligence, until the internet takes over in 2015 and we become simple batteries.
Looks like the grandparent needs to read this.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
He was playing StarCraft. Those battlecruisers take forever to build.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
You know, if games, much like smoking, overeating, narcotics, and STDs throw a little chlorine in the gene pool, what's the problem? We're all ultimately better off that they aren't breeding.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
There is already a game that kills people. It's called "The World"
In Korean the word DDaal-DDaal-Ee means to masturbate and due to the non-existance of the R sound of English, Koreans simply pronounce the R sound as a vowel closer to an Ee sound. Because of this, it is possible for Koreans to abbreviate the Korean word for masturbation, DDaal-DDaal-Ee, as DDR, which quite a few Koreans do.
Now, lets go over the quoted text again.
If say you were playing a DDR game that just kept getting more and more intense until the user falls dead THEN the game would claim lives.
Next time your friends ask you if you want to join them in a game of death match DDR.....
The problem is that use of heroin has the predicable effect of addition and other serious life-draining problems. Somebody with no history of drug usage or addiction can still easily become addicted after using heroin for a few times, whereas regular will not predicably cause high-level addiction in most individuals.
Jack Thompsons existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want him on that wall. You need him on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!
"Man drives racecar and is killed - drunk white people get all snot-nosed on each other!" sounds fine, but for some reason "Man dies because the glowing poisonous sword that was propping up the last remnants of his self-esteem was stolen by a freind," raises eyebrows. I've wanted to bludgeon my freinds over the head with a controller before for less.
In South Korea, only old people die from videogames!
Sit on your ass doing anything for 20 straight day would kill you. Which means I HAVE to get up out of this chair in about 6 hours.
According to Wikipedia, the record amount of time one person has stayed awake is 12 days. 20 Would've been a most impressive accomplishment.
DATABASE WOW WOW
most games are about killing people.... psychologically, people like killing people from a stand off position, you dont see many "lets get along" computer games now do ya?
Experts point to the poor environment of the 'PC bang' or Internet cafes that have mushroomed nationwide.
Obviously, if PCs and Internet cafes explode into mushroom clouds you can expect a lot of deaths.
Before we all panic at the thought of "poor light and ventillation" killing people (ha ha ha), don't forget that many South Koreans believe in "fan death."
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death):
"...The legend states that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can result in the death (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia) of those inside. This belief also extends to air conditioners and the fans in cars."
Various newspapers have described the problems thusly:
"...On Friday in eastern Seoul, a 16-year-old girl died from suffocation after she fell asleep in her room with an electric fan in motion. The death toll from fan-related incidents reached 10 during the past week. Medical experts say that this type of death occurs when one is exposed to electric fan breezes for long hours in a sealed area. "Excessive exposure to such a condition lowers one's temperature and hampers blood circulation. And it eventually leads to the paralysis of heart and lungs," says a medical expert."
I think I'll sleep easy on this "news."
Why do they insist on playing so long....... I know I cant even play mario kart for 10 minutes and my brain goes off somewhere else
>As I noted in another comment, this seems to be connected to the cafe gaming
>environment, which maybe makes the enjoyment more intense (or whatever, I don't really
>know). If it is that way, then we can just ask(/regulate) the shopkeepers to pay some
>attention to what their customers are doing.
Then again, I think the exact same thing is true of a bar. Why is it that all these people can go to the bar, and get drunk (with the bar's staff being quite happy to continue shelling out more drinks as long as the cash keeps coming in), and then once the customer is completely drunk, they walk out to their car, and on the way home they run into and kill someone.. and none of the blame goes to the bartender..?
I'm not saying it's all the bartender's fault - on the contrary, it's the drunk's fault for getting drunk. But if anybody (read: the bartender) cared about either the drunk or the person he killed, they either wouldn't have let the guy get totally drunk in the first place, or at the very least would have tried to make sure the guy took a taxi home or something.
It seems to me it would be a little like a gun store owner seeing two guys get into a fight out in front of his store, and then one guy ducks out of the fight to come into the store and buy a gun... and the owner sells it to him. Sure, it's true that the guy who then proceeds to leave the store and shoot the other guy he was fighting with is the one responsible for the death. But the gun store owner knew what he was going to do with it, so shouldn't that count as being accomplice to murder or something?
I don't have a problem with beer, or guns, or video games.. if you use them properly. And people only start dying from them when you *don't* use them properly.
Early bird may get the worm.. but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Right, and cancer only grows and grows until it, by its very size, fucks up the functioning of what's around it. The tumor doesn't kill you, its the effects of the tumor. Kind of like how AIDS doesn't kill you, the effects of AIDS kill you, or how inhaling water doesn't kill you, its the subsequent lack of oxygen that kills you. Thank god you saved us from that mistake.
"Child was killed by A SUV driver" ? Still short enough for a headline, but closer to the truth.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But it's not. The effects of another disease kill you. AIDS just makes it much easier for you to catch the disease that effects the killing.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Heh heh. It's funny because it's true!
... and then they built the supercollider.
See that big-ass fan cooling that fully loaded P4? There's your problem!
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
You're missing something here -- as you yourself pointed out, sometimes the dumbasses go out and kill someone else. If possible and reasonable, efforts should be made to reduce the situation that leads to such stupidity. You can't just say "oh well, let the dumbasses do whatever they want, the world's better off this way".
"Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times." -Mark Twain
If you don't know what the subject line refers to:
look no further.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I would hypothesize it's a form of psychosis based on an addiction such as nicotine or sex.
I understand what AIDS does, genius. Its effect is to allow any old disease to infect you, and you eventually die from that infection. Without an immune system weakened by AIDS, that infection most likely either wouldn't have happened or never would have gotten so bad as to kill you. It doesn't make you sound any smarter to keep insisting that AIDS doesn't kill you just because there's an extra step involved. Next up, I can explain that jumping off a building is fatal, even though it's hitting the ground that kills you.
... so what's the Korean for 'I told you I was hardcore'
I don't care about "seeming smart" - I'm just talking about facts. You admit that AIDS is not what kills you, just as you admit that jumping off a building does not kill you. then you claim I am wrong, even though you admit it?
The examples aren't even comparable. jumping off a building, short of bizarre air current, results in hitting the grounds. Getting AIDS does not necessarily lead to contracting a disease that will kill you. Logic, man!
... and then they built the supercollider.