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Gamers Grapple With VA Tech Shooting
I imagine it's been a hard week for a lot of people; gamers in particular have been jumping to defend their hobby from the likes of Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson, both of whom were quick to link gaming and the tragedy in Virginia. Despite their vigor, it seems like game enthusiasts can breathe easily this week. As far as most people can tell, gaming was in no way involved. Even the mainstream media is coming to realize that gaming isn't always the right place to turn when youth violence grabs the headlines. Just the same, some activist gamers are still trying to make sure their hobby comes out of this unscathed, and at least some folks think they may be overdoing things: "While I'm all for activism for one's beliefs, I really think this may do more harm then good. As gamers, we feel a need to defend our passion, but we run the risk of ending up looking no better than those seeking to shift blame, while further disrupting the already-mourning. I say that the thing to focus on at this point is simply remembering those lost and cherishing what we still have. Now's not the time for political vendettas, and gamers need to step down and just humbly accept the fact that blame will always be shifted to the popular youth activities: be it a KISS concert, a video game, or something else."
From Wikipedia: "In one of the videos, Cho compares himself to Jesus Christ, explaining that his death will influence generations of people."
He was Korean. Starcraft has to be involved some how.
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Regardless of whether they play games. Millions of people play games and don't kill people. If we're going for causation through correlation, that should be enough.
The only thing a gamer truely grapples with.
Water linked to mass murderers'! The killer at VA Tech drank water, and there is a lot of supporting evidence that other serial killers also drank water as well.
was priceless.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
...the shooting at UT-Austin back in the 1960s? Someone see Counter-Strike in a premonition?
Seriously, gamers aren't "grappling" with anything. It's the idiots on TV who can't seem to get ratings from speaking intelligent, well-thought, insightful words and have to resort to fear-mongering and dumbassery (TM). Nothing for anyone to see here, please move along.
His words spoke of being like Jesus, not like being a Level 70 WoW hunter. I think the blame falls squarely on religion, and the guilt/self-loathing that entails. Maybe we can combine the blame and point it to religion *and* the Left Behind gaming franchises.
I guess I don't see what the big deal over what Dr. Phil said. He isn't saying violent games make these people kill. He is saying that mixing violent media with psychopaths is going to set these people off. Really, if gamers are so upset by this, they are over-reacting...probably from having to be on the defensive so much from morons like Jack.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
In Korea, only old people are swayed into mass shootings by the violence they experience while playing video games.
Violent video games have become the scapegoat for societies problems with violence because they are an easy target. Violent games can desensitize children to violence, but this is the fault of the child's parent / guardian. Children have a limited natural sense of what is right and wrong, it is the responsibility of parents to help their children develop a value system that works in society.
The problem is that too many parents fall into one of two categories:
a) The parents who shelter there children from all negative stimulus, and then turn them lose on society at 18 without the ability to determine right from wrong themselves. These new adults now go into society without having someone to tell them what to do and act out on the impulses.
b) The parents who do nothing to develop the child's sense of right from wrong. These parents belive that by never having a consequence for any action their child will magically develop a set moral values. Children who are raised like this can develop tendancies to lash out because they have been taught that their actions have no consequences.
Instead of banning violent video games, we should ban bad parents.
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
I consider the whole, impressionable children thing to be dubious when we are dealing with older teenagers, anyway, but I consider it ridiculous when talking about adult men.
So, what then are Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson trying to say, that video games will turn anyone into a killer, even adults? I think it's interesting that this guy didn't commit any serious crimes until he was well into adult hood.
To me, this represents a shift in the debate. At Jonesboro, you had children commiting mass murder, so trying to figure out what made innocent little boys into monsters makes sense in a way. This is not what we have at Virginia Tech.
Are people going to do this with David Berkowitz now? Jeffrey Dahmer? etc? If some 40 year old murderer gets caught, are they going to check him for Counter Strike experience.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I haven't been able to play it since the shooting. I'd been playing "Liberty City Stories" on my PSP for a couple of weeks now, but I just couldn't handle the thought of running into one of those "rampage" symbols that required me to, say, gun down 25 people within 2 minutes. I just had to play something else.
Games aren't to blame for VT. GTA is hella fun and has never once made me feel like I should purchase a handgun, much less use one to hurt someone. But many of the images in our games are of some of the basest acts attributed to humanity. If we just ignore this little fact, the people we'll end up hurting is ourselves. Frankly, I was relieved at my emotional reaction to the game. What kind of a person would I be if I just didn't care?
Ted Nugent has a little more common sense than Jack Thomson when it comes to finding things that contributed to this event...
t /index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/commentary.nugen
Kids picked on him in high school. No one stood up for him.
Kids picked on him in college. He bought guns, and killing people.
The only time he every really stood up for himself was when he turned violent. And at that point it was too late. I think it's the culture of indifference that caused this to grow inside an emotionally unstable loner. It has nothing to do with the music he listened to, games he played, or lack of prayer in schools. Society did nothing more than try to ignore him, while he finally refused to be ignored. And in a tragic and unforgivable way, we all stood up to finally pay attention to what he had to say.
Someone could also argue this is the other "CSI effect" After commiting a murder as a crime of passion, a new criminal realizes the he will be caught and sent to to jail or even killed. The perception is genetic science insures he(or she) will be caught. They then decide to 'go for it' and settle every grudge in the time before they are caught because there is nothing else to lose.
We need to restrict access to police dramas depicting successful investigations!
Oh wait that's stupid. :/
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
http://www.gamerpride.com/index.php?option=com_con tent&task=view&id=317&Itemid=95
Just mentioning the fact that my website, GamerPride.com, is strongly behind the fact that this had nothing at all to do with gaming.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
link?
i'm a farker but i missed that thread.. probably because im mainly on totalfark and not the main page.. unless it was a totalfark thread.. either way i missed it, link?
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This guy had no life and was an English major! Worst... He took a horror literature class where they read and talked about Stephen King. That's what really set him off.
Alas, homicidal English majors don't have the same sex appeal as homicidal video game players.
as Ars Technica points out.
People should worry less about virtual violence, and more with the real thing.
And celebs should just shut up.
Greetings and Salutations.
I ran a D&D campaign for WAY to many years, and, while there was a lot of violence at times, anyone that participated in it understood that there was a real difference between the fantasy violence and violence in reality. However, I have seen folks that are unable to keep those separate. I do not, though, think that the games are responsible for violent behavior in real life. I do agree with the other poster that dings the parents for not giving their kids a solid set of positive values.
But then, I also think that the biggest problem with the VT shooting was that there were too FEW guns on campus. After all, if an armed student, or staff/faculty member had the ability to defend against this rampage, it would have cut the body count down by QUITE a bit.
Gun control is not keeping weapons out of the hands of citizens. It is being able to put half a dozen bullets into a 1" circle at 20 yards or more.
Thanks for the opportunity to dump out some fuel for a flamewar.
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Going by all the accounts of his roommates, Cho didn't play videogames. Not that this will stop all the scapegoating and justifications, which is just human nature after all.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
It's really hard to blame games for a crime when its commited by someone who has a long history of mental instability who has been in and out of various instituations for half his life. You can argue that violent video games promote certain amounts of aggression (I'll buy that, in fact), but it's hard to prove that video games promote levels of mental instability to the degree that this person has shown.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Knee-jerk reactions like this just go to show that people with an agenda will use anything to support their agenda, even if the simplest check reveals it doesn't do so. Anyone remember when Mayor David Dinkens used a stabbing to call for gun control?
So, who has jumped on the VA Tech bandwagon:
Gun control proponents (obviously)
Gun control opponents ("let them shoot back")
Violent game opponents ("It was just like a first-person shooter")
People who want more funding for mental health programs.
People who just want to put weirdos in nuthouses
Security people ("A rent-a-cop in every classroom keeps everyone safe. Oh, and us employed")
Security consultants (obviously)
Drug warriors (he must have been high to do that)
Drug legalization proponents (if he'd just smoked a little weed he'd have had a better perspective)
OK, I made the last two up. But Ariana Huffington (who falls into several other categories) validated "drug warriors" for me, though referring to legal drugs.
Personally, I blame Microsoft and SCO.
What these wingnuts are missing -- particularly the righties that are saying "Ah, the victims were weaklings and pansies for not jumping the guy who was carrying 2 guns and a lot of ammo" -- are that Video Games Saved Lives.
Seriously. It's not "Oh, let's just rush in and hope for the best" -- it's called a Line-of-Sight pull. Duck around a corner and let the guy with the ranged attack cancel out his tactical advantage by coming to you at which point you're in a much better position to jump him. Wolfenstein, Half-Life, World of Warcraft... LoS pulling is standard operating procedure when dealing with an enemy that's giving you bad odds.
If more people knew how to do an LoS pull, these disasters wouldn't get nearly so out of hand.
You know, Dr Phil is common joke in Europe.
He's excellent sample of generic level of education in US.
You can be a retard and still manage to be called a Dr.
I'm not sure if anyone in US takes him seriously, but here you'd take Conan O'Brien more seriously than Phil.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Details from VT gunman's suicide note revealed, blames actions on "rich kids" and "debauchery" but makes no mention of Anna Nicole Smith, Don Imus or violent video games
Turned into a whole string of "I blame..." responses.
Usually art imitates life, but sometimes life imitates art. A few threads later After Columbine, Tom Delay blamed the shootings on science classes teaching evolution. Surely, we've learned from past idiots, right? Well... a day after the VT massacre, it appears not showed up, with a link pointing to a Crooks and Liars article in which Tom Delay blamed the Columbine attack on the teaching of evolution, and some other contemptible ghoul of a fundie whackjob blamed the VT shooting on the teaching of evolution.
Just when we'd thought we'd blamed it on everything, some fucking fundie freak has to play a game of one-upmanship.
Look, if we didn't have all of these colleges congregating people into tiny buildings there would be no way for this guy to kill so many people. Colleges and education are clearly to blame. We must put a stop to such nonsense so our youth are safe.
No wait, its pioneers who are to blame. Those darn pioneers brought gunpowder to America and opened a huge can of worms. Thats who is to blame.
No, its the media...the media covered it, so they are to blame.
Wait, no, its gun sales...if we had no guns this wouldn't happen.
Wait, its this stupid MF'er who shot people who is to blame. If gun laws weren't so strict someone would have shot him before he took out more people. You know...I think thats it. If you disarm the people, you leave them defenseless. 1 person is capable of going on a rampage because we all aren't required to carry guns.
Why do people like Dr. Phil feel the need to bash gaming even when there's absolutely no evidence to support their claim?
I like Tom's Hardware reviewers comment: Look at how many millions of people play games yet haven't shot-up their local school.
You might as well blame driving cars for it, or drinking coffee, or any other thing mostly everyone has done at least once.
I bet most perpitrators of gun crime has watched Dr. Phil at least once, therefore that MUST be it.
Just because it's sarcasm doesn't mean it's not flamebait. Likely to incite a flamewar == flamebait; a post can be both funny and flamebait
Also, moderators shouldn't have to check your post history before moderating your comments -- first, it's too much to ask, and second, comments are contextural.
I wouldn't have modded your post flamebait, but I've no points today. Then again, it seems that your complaint is about someone 'flaming' you via moderation -- so the flamebait moderation would be valid. How's that for a tautology?
All that aside, bitching about being downmodded is pointless, even if you have a valid concern. It's a meta-comment, and thus should be modded OT pretty quickly (as should this one); if you're concerned about mod abuse, follow the procedures in the faq.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So the easy crackpot would think: He's gonna be violent and have guns. I'm 37 and I've never even been in a fist fight. I don't own any pistols or rifles (shotgun I have was only for self defense when I drove through the Yukon in Canada by myself...didn't want to be bear-bait).
In other news, KISS announce a new world tour to capitalize on their fortune of being a popular youth activity. (Sales of no-doze, viagra and depends likely to increase)
His words spoke of being like Jesus, not like being a Level 70 WoW hunter. I think the blame falls squarely on religion, and the guilt/self-loathing that entails. Maybe we can combine the blame and point it to religion *and* the Left Behind gaming franchises.
You can try blaming religeon all you want, but I wouldn't recommend you do it to their faces. You will not meet a more dangerous bunch of humans than humans in the through of a 'god' inspired frenzy. I don't just mean islamists either, there have been more than a few bombers who worshiped the pincushion appendages guy, still are in fact.
Under such a condition, the most normal, loving person can become a killer. All it takes is a leader they trust completelly for moral/life guidance to declare that some unworthy person or group of people is about to kill/attack/otherwise harm them or take away their way of life, and it's out with the pitchforks and firebrands. It's happened often enough.
Want to test it out? Stick a bunch of islamist fundamentalists, fundamentalist christians and fundamentalist jews in a big field with guns in the middle, and watch what happens. I bet it won't be reasonable debate.
I just had to follow that link and read this comment by Limbaugh. After having read the comment I'm now very concerned for the safety of Mr. Limbaugh. Clearly he would never make such a sensible and rational comment. Obviously he's been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by some kind of pod-person duplicate. An investigation should be started immeadiately!
Meanwhile, animal rights activist blame Pokemon for animal hoarding and dog fights.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
VA Tech shooting grapples gamers.
Politicians and grand standers will jump right up and blame us, sitting and taking it is a luxury we don't have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This just in....the masses didn't want it. - George Carlin
Seriously...a major underlying problem in society.
I'm here to kick a$$ and chew bubble gum...and I'm all out of bubble gum!
Everyone's quick to point fingers at guns, games and everything else.. though he proved in court that he was mentally unstable.
a ster
I guess this guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_dis
Watched too many Charlie Chapman movies involving dynamite.
It doesn't matter if there aren't violent games, cartoons, movies or guns.. Crazy people will find some way to make themselves famous. How many serial killers have there been in history? How many tyrants? There are going to be lunatics no matter where you go, and until you chain each person down.. put them in a padded room then feed them with a straw, you'll have violence.
Guns make it easier.. and honestly, they're a bit too easy to get a hold of. I think that they should at least be as hard to get as pharmaceutical drugs. I own over 20 of them, and I still feel there should be extra measures taken.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
The Texas Chainsaw massacre was also a real event. Later it was the subject of popular movies and other well-sold stories. Should there be a video game built around this? Sure! Why not? Play the part of the fleeing student. Play the part of a SWAT officer. Play the part of the crazed assailant. Why should anyone miss the opportunity to make millions from real-life events. Do we ALWAYS have to cry about wasted life and all that? If we were really concerned, why aren't we complaining as loud about the world being pulled into a war started by the U.S. over claims that were proven to be false to begin with?
I am utterly convinced that there's nothing in our culture in the past, present or forseeable future that will turn any large group of people into maniacal killers. There will ALWAYS be the odd-balls out there who are, for whatever reason, unable to contain their impulses to do harm to others. If only there was a way to screen those people... perhaps there might be. Perhaps even videogames themselves could be the very filter we need. Imagine hooking up people to a simulation and letting them play for a while to see what they do. You know, like one of those personality tests but in a 3D virtual world.
(Yes, too many other implications after that... like what if insurance companies were able to obtain profiles from this type of exercise and all that. So even if there were some way to screen these people out, would we want to? Should we?)
No. I think the over-all impact these people have on society is statistically negligible. Statistically, we die way more on the freeways and we sure as hell aren't banning games about driving and racing and we're certainly not doing much in the way of making the roads safer. (We are making cars more expensive though.)
People are too distracted with these relatively petty incidents to see the bigger picture. Yes. Those directly affected should be able to mourn, complain and seek retribution and all that. But this is no cause for the whole world to take a side on the issue or use this incident to make an issue. It's an incident. It's not an issue. I think too many people are jumping too far on their "Jump to conclusion mats."
read it if you can. this is something that will make so many on slashdot's blood boil. how dare he. Heck i can understand why the submitter to slashdot would submit every other article from kotaku but this one. Stuff like this should not see the light of day. The ideas he presents is so outrageous and ignorant.
Compare this to the response of a progressive like Ny Gov Eliot Spitzer . This my friends is why i support progressives. Hillary 08!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Fred Phelps and his crew of assholes are planning to protest at the funeral of one of the slain students. How much do people want to bet he finally gets shot this time?
Sorry, I missed that, but no need to be a condescending jackass.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm thinking I must have missed something along the way. I have not seen a news report that said Cho was a gamer and played 'violent' video games.. So how can these video games, that as far as I can tell he didn't even play, supposed to have caused the rampage of this lunatic ?
taking away the means for the public to defend themselves doesn't solve the problem of some wacko wanting to hurt people for no apparent reason.
far...out
Next an instant background check is made, however, only the purchaser's criminal record is checked. In the U.S., due to privacy laws, their mental competancy, (or lack thereof) is not checked. We are basically relying on the purchaser to understand their mental state, and to tell the truth about it. Talk about crazy!!!
It's a totally bullshit that game was the cause of massacre. Why not talk about gun control? Why not talk about how he may have been treated? What was police doing during the two hours? Well, truth hurts, people. Violent games and Marilyn Manson are the easiest target to shift the blame, and I'm quite sick of it.
...Cho didn't play videogames... Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he should have played a few to vent his rage.In my younger years, we were not so protected. We had toy guns. We played violent games. And, perhaps, we learned something about violence - when it was appropriate and when not. As best I recall, only one guy - in the Texas tower - went nuts with a gun on campus.
Now, there are so many attempts to insulate young men from violence in any form ( including complaints about a statue of a war veteran who has a gun! ), and yet the number of violent acts in the last decade or so rises - Oklahoma City, Va law school, Va Tech, Columbine, etc. I think that there may be a correlation.
So go ahead, play violent games! The bloodier, the better! I'll feel safer around you if you've vented a little adrenaline that way.
It was funny, and in no way blames koreans for this tragedy
"I already know Koreans who have been harassed and intimidated as a result of what occurred."
I ahve my doubts. This wasn't a government back action, it wasn't supported by a violent religous sect under protection by korea.
This will not lead into an anti korean movement.
In the off chance that you are not lying, you nede to stop being aruond such small mined and stupid people.
I will not sympythize with the koreans just because they are korean, no one is doing them harm.
Giod, could you be more racist?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think there's much more of a hard-wired biological component to this tragedy than most of the main stream media realizes. This guy obviously had serious mental issues that no amount of hand-holding and therapy sessions could fix. Looking for some sort of external stimulus for his behavior misses the point completely.
Nobody likes to think that some people are just screwed from the get-go, that their wiring is defective. We all want to think that we do things or say things to help mentally ill people cope. But often that's no more effective than trying to sweet-talk a tumor into remission.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
hang around here long enough, you'll learn to ignore this idiot...
You must be new here.
I watched online an interview by NBC of one of this guys suitemates (shared a common area among three rooms).
The NBC guy first of all asked a few times if he had ever seen the killer playing Counterstrike. After one or two questions like that the suitemate answered, no, all he ever saw him doing was typing in Word.
Then the NBC guy shifted gears, and proceeded to ask if there was not some secret underculture of Counterstrike/violet video game playing at the school in general (after all, it must have been the violent game-playing culture around him!). The suitemate said not really, that some people liked games and some didn't but there was not really a culture around it... that he and his friends mostly liked to talk about sports.
The richest part came near the end of the video, when the NBC guy started a question with "Not to ask a leading question but..." when that's all he had been doing with his videogame probe through the whole interview. This NBC guy was obviously after something juicy with video games, but got nowhere at all.
It was the most flagrantly biased interview I have ever seen, far more interrogation than interview.
Also the guy seemed to be in total disbelief taht the suitemates were accepting of someone living there that didn't really talk to them. I guess he must have gotten really good roomate picks in college because most of us have had to deal with awkward roomate issues, and wouldn't force someone to be social against their will (as the reporter was declaring he would have done, like making a roomate go out with him to bars or whatever).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
gamers tend to be less violent, and harder to train to be violent.
Maybe what this guy needed was some gaming and a big fat doobie?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Slaughtering people and standing up for yourself are two different things. What this incident has reminded me is that some people are shunned because on some level we know that they are more then awkward, they are dangerous.
Quack, quack.
My company, http://www.campusassassins.com/ has seen a drop in game creation since this event. I hope the effect is only localized, and not the subject of a broader policy.
One of his suitemates was interviewed by Chris Matthews of MSNBC. Matthews was blatantly trying to get at the video game angle, asking the suitemate if he ever saw Cho playing video games, but the suitemate said emphatically "No". He never saw Cho do anything on his computer except type stuff on MS Word documents.
MAYBE WE SHOULD BAN MS WORD INSTEAD.
What I found striking was that the suitemate said there was never anything aggressive about Cho ever. He never got excited or angry, and even when they tried talking to him, Cho never reacted with disdain or disgust... he was simply emotionless. He said he never saw him do anything violent ever, and he only saw him either in his room or watching tv (wrestling and SpikeTV).
MAYBE WE SHOULD BAN WRESTLING AND SPIKE TV.
Who's going to release it first? This is going to be huge!
Declaring that the cause of the shooting is violence in video games, less than 24 hours after the shooting occurs, without actually knowing or observing any of the facts, is horrible scientific process. It's less scientifically robust than Creationism, for God's Sake.
It's not like these people didn't go to college. They understand (or ought to) the philosophy of science -- the "scientific method."
Do they just forget about it entirely when it's convenient? Maybe they both know that their target audience doesn't know beans about scientific method.
Dr. Phil, especially, makes a mockery of his field ... no legitimate psychological researcher would pretentiously claim to know the cause of a shooting immediately after it happened. They would wait to observe the facts and conduct research before making conclusions.
I hate these guys.
I was expecting it to be a major boon for gun control, but it does not seem to be playing out that way. Many people involved actually wish they could have put a stop to it and the media is playing both sides this time around. I have hardly hear word one about games on this one.
Not to sound off topic but I will tell you why.....It's the media (Not 100% of it)
After the VA shootings the next day I swear on fark.com their were 5 news flashes in a row of bomb threats or other threats to school shootings. Why? Because kids see this on TV and think "Wow I could be all over the TV if I do this"
Kids do these kind of things because of others. It's monkey see monkey do. They think they have to 1 up someone else's work and try and top them. They picture them selfs as some kind of hero or some kind of cool guy. Most of the time it's people who just crave attention.
The reason I say it's not 100% the media is because we can't put all the blame on one source. Sure we need to hear about what goes on in the world but I tell you this....Once this happens Anna Nichole Smith has become a thing of the past for the media.
What do you slashdotters think? Do you agree?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I have never moderated a single comment down. There are way to many inappropriate downmods. I spend 4 or all 5 of my points moving those comments back up.
I see vindictive downmods which are clearly being done because of some past grudge and I see pointless downmods.
The faq can say whatever it wants- you post on certain issues and you are going to be down/upmodded by people with an agenda on that issue not because of something the Faq says.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Would you quit clicking the FAQ link every time he refers to it and doing a cursory search for whatever word he's using? It's fucking annoying. Why don't you just READ the FAQ? Then you'll understand it, and maybe you'll shut the fuck up.
Why doesn't someone come out with a video game where Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson are the targets. Your job is to get them to shut up and leave the gamers alone.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
As a victim of bullying as a child (up til about 16 when I beat the hell out of a bully who pushed me down a short flight of stairs and there was no more til I graduated) I understand *EVERY SINGLE TIME* one of these people breaks and kills a lot of people.
You have years of tormenting- never stopped by authority figures- perhaps even tacitly supported by some of them.
And you have a gun and you can put a stop to all of it.
Fortunately, I didn't go down that road but bullies are way too tolerated by school authorities. I think some of them were former bullies themselves and get their kicks off seeing the "wimps" picked on.
But gaming- the best that might teach is accuracy and quick target selection. I think the basic problem is that the concept of going on a killing spree is out there now. You can't put it back in pandora's box.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Just to point out, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not in itself a real event any more than the Blair Witch crap was. It was, however, based in part on the strange and disturbing case of Ed Gein. More than one Hollywood thriller stole pieces from this man's life.
:-)
And no, they didn't have video games back then.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
If he played CounterStrike, he'd no doubt be using hacks like all the other kiddies. After realizing how !133+ he was in real life, he would have turned the gun on himself without killing a single other person.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Wow...a gamer much?
"Preppy school kids"? How about (underpaid) professors, and students at random; he said he has a thing against "rich kids," but he didn't pick out anyone in particular like the Columbine killings were. In fact, VT is a state school, with relatively affordable tuition (Cho was a full time student, and his parents are far from wealthy), and the chances that the deceased were "preppy school kids" is unlikely.
Your comparison to Iraq is silly, has nothing to do with the parent, and looks like something some heartless flock with a purely political mindset would say.
Last; I find it amazing you called the parent a "troller" given your disgusting comment.
Damned mod points expired earlier, so I'll just reply. Yours has to be one of the most insightful posts about guns in all the many I've read in the past few days.
If I ever hear the phrase "the safety's on" (after they've pointed it at me) one more time, I'm killing the dumbass who says it.
There has to be a mechanism for getting those idiots' firearms licence revoked - and if there isn't then there should be. Anyone that stupid and irresponsible should not be trusted with a knife and fork, let alone a gun.
look a guy holding two pistols, wearing a tan vest and playing with knives?
He's channelling Laura Croft.......
seriously though this was a sad act and using it to do anything but show the need for good mental health care
dilutes this incredible loss;
whether its the anti-gamers or anti-assault rifle camps, they should at least
allow those mourning to do so in peace.
If anything, organized society and religon appear to be the crux of this guys confusion, lets start by taking them off
the market.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Quite a few pundits have proclaimed that the victims were at fault in not trying to disarm the shooter, and instead being to passive and submissive. Others have claimed that all of the victims should have been packing heat.
If we were to follow this line of reasoning, we should heavily promote violent gaming so that potential victims would default to violent and foolhardy actions such as rushing heavily armed gunmen.
I suggest we blame the lack of video games in his life, and say that if he'd only had video games to relieve his stress perhaps he wouldn't have snapped.
I'm not really a gamer, but the idea of turning the tables on the assholes who were more interested in pointing a finger as part of their political agenda than in learning about reality amuses me.
The guy was also on dangerious mind altering drugs, why dont we blame that??
wtf.
he was sexually abused, on anti-depression mind altering drugs!!
tens of millions of people play video games in this country alone, we dont all go on rampages
a FAAAAAAAAAAR larger % of people on anti-depressants blitz out and go nuts than gamers
the guy drinks water too! should we say that everyone who drinks water goes nuts on gun rampages?
FACT: EVER SINGLE MURDERER and CRIMINAL IN THE HISTORY OF MAN HAS DRANK WATER!!!
when will we learn!!
As I understood from some of the news reports, Cho was already "on the radar" as a disturbed person as early as 2005. In fact, I believe the report said he was considered mentally (*) ill according to one of his psychologists.
What I've been wondering is: how come that someone who has "blipped" on the radar at least several times as a very disturbed person can still legally buy a gun? Now I know that a persistent person will be able to get a gun no matter what, but can we *please* make it a bit harder than going into a store and paying with your CC?
see a Text Widget
And therein will be your answer. Apparently he had mental health issues since childhood. So what did the parents do to make sure he was given every opportunity to develop in to a healthy, happy human being? Did they socialize him with other children and encourage him to play with others and explore? Did they teach him to trust others, and to come to them or other adult figures with any problems? Did they show him affection and make sure he was loved and supported unconditionally? When they realized he was seriously troubled, did they seek out the best psychiatric help they could afford for him, and ask family/friends to show emotional support? I am Asian-American and I would be willing to guess those answers would be, no. I would be willing to guess their household was a cold, emotion-less place that taught him to suppress his feelings, get good grades, and that complete and utter isolation was normal. I'm sorry, but that style of raising kids has got to stop. It's not okay to simply work and shelter/feed your offspring anymore. Not when the media is willing to posthumasly turn your son into a celebrity after all those years of suppressed emotions finally boil over because there was never a healthy outlet provided.
We hear stories that run along these lines "Smith, who was a user of cannabis, rampaged through the building mercilessly blah blah" or, "Doe, who is reported to have been very much into violent video games, murdered 17 bystanders at yadda yadda", as if these things had any great bearing. Fact is, playing violent video games is a symptom and not a cause. Taking recreational drugs is a symptom and not a cause. They could probably dredge up something on what he had in his movie or music collection, what kind of books he read, what kind of food he ate. All of these things reflect a person's personality, they do not make it.
It's little consolation to know that video games were not a part of the Virginia shootings but at least it shows that it takes, at the very basic level, a madman to pull the trigger on 32 people. This is not the action of a sane individual, and neither was Columbine. What riles me about the whole deal is that they suspected he was unhinged and did nothing about it other than advising him to get therapy. I know hindsight is 20-20, but really if you suspect someone of being nuts you make damn sure they get checked out - they won't do it themselves because in their own minds they're not the one that's crazy: everyone else is. And you can clearly see that from his tape.
Yea, because that's how your average mugger rolls, he doesn't wait for the guy with the big gun to go away, he fricking caps the bastard! Because the other guys got a gun, man!
Seriously, what situation are you talking about here? Is someone trying to assassinate you? I'm trying to think of a situation which would include me gunning for an armed bystander, and it's not coming to me. Either I'm carrying a longer gun as well, in which case it's obvious I'm also armed, so no advantage for a pistol, or I'm point blank on the guy, which would probably have alerted him somewhat if he's living somewhere so dangerous he has to carry a gun everywhere. I'm sure as hell not going to try and shoot him from any kind of range with a fricking pistol! That works in cowboy movies, but in the real world you're going to have to be close to kill someone with a pistol with anything other than a lucky shot.
If someone is willing to take on a whole group of unarmed people, he probably doesn't give a damn if any of them are armed, any more than a rabid dog would. He's screwed up in the head, screwed up people do screwed up things. And even here, in gun-friendly America, we all know damn well that no one in that crowd is carrying a gun (well, unless we're in Texas, NYC, or LA), and a criminal will attack with that knowledge. But not if they see a gun.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
You can't point the finger at one aspect of society and blame all the world's problems on that alone. Hell I get borderline homicidal from driving among imbeciles, but I can't blame Ford for my aggression problems. We live in a stressful, bullshit world and every day it gets a little bit crazier. People eventually crack. They decide they don't want to play by the rules and go wacko like this guy did. I don't know of many people who can go through a whole day without the slightest streak of anger coursing through their veins, unless they're on a 3 day MDMA party. Lacking drugs, we're faced with asshole drivers, arrogant pedestrians, ignorant cashiers, uncooperative coworkers, racial tension, sexual tension, classism, bill collectors, politicians, allergies... yadda yadda!
And that's just for a normal person's life. Throw in situational problems, mental disorders, dramatic personal events... some people bear enough weight that it crushes them until all that's left are the violent instincts of the human animal.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
They only shut the fuck up about games when it looked like the NRA was going to be eaten alive. The usual political limelight points moved outside their topic sphere. Whoop de shit.
Whenever something tragic occurs, he victims, victims' families, and politicians, always look for something to blame.
In the case of the VT shootings, the shooter is dead, so now there is no one to blame. So, inevitably, people look for something that they can take their anger our on: Video games, guns, culture, TV, etc.....anything that can even be remotely violent. Victims are ALWAYS looking to blame their misfortune on something. With VT, the shooter is dead, so now the victims are searching for something else, and now they have hit upon "violent" video games, as the target of their grief, because the individual who committed the shootings is dead. Victims and the rest of society need to understand that just because a tragedy has happened, and the only person who can be truly blamed is dead, that they are wrong to go searching for something similar to blame their hardships on. The perpetrator, Cho, is dead, but blaming things in his place are not even the least bit justified.
Society has a problem with always finding someone or something to blame for every tragedy, or negative event, that happens, rather that coming to terms with the fact that sometimes, the only person who can be held accountable and blamed, is no longer able to be blamed because they are dead. Since they feel the need to blame something, they replace it with something that is still "alive" or available.
I feel sorry for their losses, and am glad the perpetrator punished himself with the only fit penalty for murder, but they are wrong to go out and blame everyday things as the root cause of their tragedy. That asshole butcher, Cho, is dead. Get used to it. He is the only one who can be blamed. Period. Not Spike TV, not gangsta rap (as lame and retarded and it is), not Duke Nukem 3D, or guns, or video games, or the Media.
I'm glad the worthless bastard shot himself. Otherwise, some pussy liberal would say that he is entitled to keep his life, despite having shot to death 32 unarmed and non-threatening students, and that putting him to death would be a violation of his civil rights because it would be cruel. I don't care how smart, intelligent, loved, or generous someone is: If you willfully kill an innocent person, you forfeit all of your rights to your own life.
People like Cho serve as an excellent justification for torture.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
What movies? What about war? What about all the people Christians tortured and murdered through the ages? I'm pretty sure incidents like this are caused by bedtime stories of Jack brutally attacking and killing giants.
It's obvious clippy is to blame!
This is all a bait and switch to get troops into korea. ( smoothing out tin-foil hat ) Can't you all see they hate our freedom.
I hate seeing this but it always happens. Everyone points to something first because they cant accept the fact that to understand a situation they have to do research. People just want an easy one line answer to everything! Life isn't black and white, there is a full spectrum that we must keep in mind. People are lazy. With juggling work or school or family or whatever thinking is last on the list apparently. In this case they guy was mentally messed up and had a crappy life up to that point. Also everyone that points a finger on this or that, gaming, guns, terrorists etc just doesn't want to accept that at the end of the day the only thing left to blame is ourselves! Responsibility is seriously lacking in this country. Social responsibility. Family responsibility. When we bring a life into this world it's our responsibility to make sure that person does something good with themselves and doesn't kill people. rant over.
Balderdash!
Thankfully we don't have that problem here.
Come on now, you're blaming an entire belief system for this tragedy?
This guy did nothing recognizable as Christian, regardless of what he said. Yes, there are despicable people who call themselves "Christian." In fact scripture itself tells us to expect them. Although, let's be VERY clear, it is not a "future telling" set of documents!
Judeo-Christian prophecy is quite different and apart from mere "fortune telling." It is at the heart of the faith tradition, a challenging of society to be something better than it is. There are many, many, many, MANY Christians and people of other faiths doing good work, prophetic work, for real justice in the world. Ghandi was a prophet. Dr. King was a prophet.
I can't speak for other religions (though I suspect their followers would agree with me), but Christian faith is not at all guilt-ridden and does not promote self-loathing. Yes, many people teach it that way and that's tragic. But a good faith community will lift one up, not put one down. I've been in good communities and bad ones. I tend to stay with the good ones.
The core teaching of Christianity is quite simple: God cares about human beings, who are inherently good. It is our responsibility to use our gifts and talents to make the world a better place for everyone.
Now what's threatening in that?
Cho...was that the guy's name? I couldn't recall...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You frame your statements so as to imply that people's propensities to violence are independent of the violent media they are exposed to. I.e., the way you put it, a person who was already violent before they were exposed to violent media will afterwards act more violently.
This simply begs the question, because it assumes that the violent media in question played no role in making this person violent.
Are you adequate?
Brain kills internet cells.
Oh Lord. Only on slashdot would character assassination be labled insightful.
The man's biography isn't that hard to find. (and in europe no less)
BTW For those too lazy to look, but apparently not to bash, UNT is a real place.
A guy I know used to be homeless on the streets of L.A. several decades ago. The only possession he carried with him everywhere was his AR-15. He was very careful never to carry ammunition when he was in the city (which would have been illegal, I believe; he was regularly stopped by police about it), but I don't think anybody ever gave him any trouble. ;-)
I definitely don't think that would fly today though.
I think you will find that Travis Bickle showed similar tendencies in the film Taxi Driver. And that came out how many years before the game Doom?
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
It is true that parents and society will always point to the things that are different from their own childhoods as causes for violence, obesity, poor academics, and a host of other woes. It is also true that those parents will always fight to interfere with those activities, be it by denying it at the home level, or by writing to those congress men and women to whom they are constituents. This is their right, and even if in their masses they manage to get laws passed, we (usually) can depend on the supreme court to defend free speech and our rights. So KISS and Marilyn Manson keep rocking, shows like The Shield still get broadcast time, and violent video games are still legal to sell.
However, there is an insidious culture that is coming to be common practice in our society. It comes from having half of the world's population of lawyers in one country. We now live in a day and age where a woman can spill coffee on herself and successfully sue for millions of dollars. Just imagine if, instead of not playing any video games as seems to be the case, Cho played Counter-Strike. Think of the huge class-action lawsuit that would most likely follow. It's easy to contemplate, because it would be expected. Today we no longer await one trial on any large publicly known crime, but two: the criminal trial and the civil.
With people like Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson blaming video games, and getting as much media time as they do, how likely in the future will it be for video game makers to get a fair civil trial? That those two did so without even bothering to check facts, and the media's willingness to report such until proven otherwise, reflects a growing trend of belief that violent video games are strongly connected to young people that commit these types of armed massacres.
The pro-video game groups are making a large point out of this because they are fighting a losing battle to change the minds of Americans regarding these issues.
When will we see the first VA Tech Shooting level mods? Start your level editors!
In her 11th grade AP English class, she tried to talk to Seung. The kid just turned away and ignored her, as he had ignored everyone else. People reached out - Seung drew himself away.
"Instead of banning violent video games, we should ban bad parents."
Just in the nick of time too.
---
"It's been 36 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Taco, you're an [insert appropriate 'comment' here]
He was clearly mentally ill. If anything its our failure of the mental health system in this country that should be blamed.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I blame fark.com, no sane person would read or post at that shithole.
"Many people who go on murdering rampages play violent video games, therefore we should ban violent video games." (Note: even that assertion is unproven.)
What about...
"Many people who go on murdering rampages were brought up Christian, therefore we should ban Christianity." (Note: even though Christianity proclaims non-violence, it has been one of the most violent and corrupt religions in history.)
"Many people who go on murdering rampages were watching television and movies, therefore we should ban television and movies." (And I suspect Mr. Ed and Teletubbies as dangerous as Lethal Weapon 13; at least the former always want to make me scream.)
So, let's make a deal: I'm OK with banning violent games if at the same time, we ban Christianity, movies, and television. While I don't think the violent game ban will have much effect, banning Christianity, movies, and television will likely be a big improvement for society. What about it?
You are always going to have crazy people, and yes they will perhaps obsess over violence in films, games, TV, or news footage from various wars. There is no way you can ban all of the possible different violent influences that may effect someone. What you can do though is minimise peoples access to firearms. The problem is firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people in a short space of time.
If you really feel like you need to defend your home with some kind of weapon, a Tazer gun seems like a good compromise. Certainly someone might go crazy with a Tazer gun, but he/she would soon be bundled to the ground without too much damage being done. If you feel you need a gun to fight against any future repressive US governments, I suggest that you instead stop voting for them in the first place. Besides which, if you do end up with a repressive government in the future, sympathetic countries will smuggle in Ak47s, RPGs, Semtex and all sorts of deadly goodies to help you in your fight for freedom, but you don't need them right now.
The local news always leads off with a sensational report on some horrible crime in the area, and the national news always reports on the latest suicide bombing in Iraq and the steady stream of dead and maimed soldiers. We Americans have made it clear that we see large scale, organized violence (i.e., war) or the threat of same to be our preferred solution to nearly every problem we face in the world. When, invariably, we kill innocent people, our generals shrug their shoulders and "regret" the "collateral damage". They always blame it on the other side, claiming "they made us do it".
And then everybody is stunned, shocked and surprised when an individual in the US does the same thing on a much smaller scale. The VPI shooting was basically a slow-motion suicide bombing. As horrible as it was, the same thing happens almost daily in Iraq, killing about the same number of people. And why? Because some guy has serious psychological problems, a sociopathic personality and an almost complete lack of empathy for other human beings. The only difference is that one of them was elected to office, and because of the power we continue to let him have, many more people have died and continue to die as a result than died in Blacksburg a few days ago.
A lot of the blame being placed on video games comes back to Albert Bandura's 1961 Bobo doll experiment. In the experiment, Bandura showed that children would imitate violent acts if they witnessed them, but would not act violently beforehand. It's a widely quoted experiment and Bandura is a very highly respected psychologist who's made huge contributions to the field.
In the experiment, young kids were put in a room with a variety of toys. The control group were left to play with whatever they wanted. The experimental group had an adult walk in on them and punch a bobo doll after a period of time. The kids in the experimental group also went and punched the doll after they'd seen the adult do it, while the control kids didn't.
However, there are some major problems with taking that experiment and applying it to life.
1) The children did not know what a bobo doll was beforehand. If you've ever tried one of these things, they're essentially inflatable punching bags, weighted at the bottom. They bob around amusingly if you hit them. If the kids didn't know they'd bobble amusingly, why would they hit them?
2) The kids were young (3-6 years old), but old enough to know the bobo dolls were not alive. They were probably too young to feel much sympathy anyway, but they would have known the dolls weren't being hurt. It wasn't real violence.
3) The kids were too young to feel much sympathy. Young kids have to be told to be gentle because they don't understand that others can be hurt. Just because a young kid will imitate violence, it doesn't mean that an older kid will.
The experiment is widely used as "proof" that kids are influenced to act violently by media. It's very poor evidence. A follow-up study showed that kids who watched a video of a model punching the doll were less likely to imitate the behaviour than kids who saw it in person. There's no emotional component to playing a game or hitting a doll, other than desire for fun and excitement. Real violence, however, requires an element of anger or fear... or genuine mental illness.
What it the experiment really showed was simply that children learn by seeing other people do things, and that they are more influenced by adults of the same sex. Nothing more, nothing less.
I don't give games and movies a complete pass however. I once let some kids I was babysitting watch Batman (1989 movie) only to have the brother try to beat up his sister and jump off the back of the couch all afternoon. It was a pain in the ass. I'll never let a hyperactive 8-year-old boy watch an action movie again.
The games industry didn't kill anyone. The music industry didn't kill anyone. The gun manufacturers didn't kill anyone.
You wanna know who killed these people? Some crazy loner named Cho. End of fucking list.
I'm so damned fucking tired of people wanting to take away my stuff because someone else is fucked in the head. Hear me, Dr. Phil? Damned Fucking tired.
Hear about that quintuple murder of kids 10 and under in Quincy, Illinois this week? With gasoline? Where's the fucking gun, facist pigs? Where's the fucking gun?
Know what yesterday was? It's the twelfth anniversary of the "Oklahoma City Bombing", which I like to refer to as the "Murrah Building Massacre". Where's the fucking gun? That's right, there's no gun. It was fertilizer mixed with either diesel or fuel oil. Where's the fucking gun? Where's Dr. Phil and the Democrats wanting to take fertilizer and motor fuels away?
Don't give me this "only criminals have use for guns" bullshit. You're more likely to die from falling than from homicide with a gun in the US. Falling. Sixty million people in the United States own guns, for a total of around 200 million units. Sixty fucking million. How about some handrail laws, dipshit press-whoring politicians? You'll save more lives with handrails, and banning rock climbing, and banning old people from walking across tiled floors. Why not take those freedoms away, too? Fucking facist pigs!
The problem is not with the choice of weapon. The problem is the mentally broken piece of shit being allowed to access large groups of unarmed people. The police stopped an early victim's boyfriend on the highway and was busy questioning him while this malfunctioning piece of meat Cho was delivering a video manifesto and figuring out where to kill more people.
Do you know how to handle a double homicide on a college campus? You lock the entire fucking campus down and send in a Tactical Unit (SWAT) to clear every building. You don't wait around for thirty more people to die then blame everyone but the killer and the authorities.
Somebody fucked up. It wasn't Valve, Microsoft, Id, Sony, Nintendo, EA, or Sega. It wasn't Judas Priest, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Motorhead, or Ice T. It was Cho, and probably the school, the cops, the counselors he saw, the mental hospital he went to that let him go, and every mental health professional and court that deemed him to be dangerous yet didn't report it to the authorities responsible for the gun control laws already in place. The guy bought his Glock 19 pistol about five weeks ago. He was determined to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself in 2005 and had an imaginary girlfriend. He'd been repeatedly accused of stalking by more than one alleged victim.
The killer passed a background check that's already in place, even though there are numerous reason he should not have. Why is it that games, guns, music, or anything else are to blame? How will new laws which won't be implemented properly do what current improperly implemented laws couldn't if they were implemented properly?
The only way to stop people from killing one another is to stop the people who would do it from doing it. You don't need a gun to kill a person or even to kill hundreds. All you need is, apparently, the authorities to ignore years of dangerous mental problems.
If he had played Counter-strike once in a while it might have helped him mellow out instead of building up that much rage over such a long time.
For all he knows, maybe one student HAD a gun and was shot before they could use it. Maybe there was a student who owned a gun but was shot with his/her own gun in a domestic squabble and couldn't show up for class. Why the FUCK is the solution adding more guns to the equation? Why not add something non-violent?
We don't need more guns, we need more trap doors.
If only the Virginia tech classrooms were equipped with trap doors, we could have had a non-violent solution to the problem. When Cho started firing, he would have been whisked away down a trap door.
Columbine trap door-free zone, New York City pizza shop trap door-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria trap door-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania trap door-free zone and now Virginia Tech trap door-free zone.
Don't tell me that sounds silly and everyone having a gun doesn't sounds equally silly.
-- Boycott Shell
I've heard these used...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
"What I've been wondering is: how come that someone who has "blipped" on the radar at least several times as a very disturbed person can still legally buy a gun? Now I know that a persistent person will be able to get a gun no matter what, but can we *please* make it a bit harder than going into a store and paying with your CC?"
Because even "mentally ill" people have rights.* Scene at the gun store:"I'm sorry sir your medical record (!!privacy alert!!) shows you were depressed in 2005. I can't sell you a gun". The government already follows us with enough information as it is. Now your medical records will be used against you.
*If you've been keeping up with the story. The reason the VT administration gave for doing what they did, is that doctors would have had to violate patient-doctor confidentiality laws to give them the needed information.
Jack Thompson is a complete idiot. He sent a letter to Bill Gates blaming Microsoft for training Cho on Counterstrike. http:news.teamxbox.com/xbox/13296/Jack-Thompson-Bl ames-Bill-Gates-for-VT-Shooting/ Thompson actually thinks that Microsoft made CS. The guy's an idiot. Microsoft only published Counterstrike on the Xbox through Microsoft Game Studios. Thompson has no idea what he's talking about.
No, no, no! You clearly do not understand the situation in countries that have strict laws on weapons, here (in the Netherlands) people just do not have easy access to weapons. If people like Harris and Cho crack like to did in the States, they won't go on a shooting spree, they'd throw themselves off a building or under a train.
I still jump on people in fights and eat mushrooms. The strange thing though is that I don't get bigger with the mushrooms, other people do. I can also hurl fireballs but they don't do anything.
I think the Nintendo guys need to come forward and explain why they mislead youth in their game.
Something witty goes here.
Really...religion is more dangerous than any gun, or pistol, or any death ray gun that we'll ever create. Whip on over to http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/harm.html to see what religion does. Out of the millions of gamers, statistically how many are the cause of deaths, and now religion??? Yeah, the "Fundy's" win by a long shot! Excuse the tasteless pun.
So before video games, what did they blame what the crazy people did on?
Just like peaceable muslims shouldn't have to bear guilt for 911. Making the decision to kill people is a personal choice, and it's not right to hold the remaining majority accountable for the actions of one, or a few. A witch hunt just brings false closure to the real problem and soothes resentments. It does nothing to help or solve the real problem of individual people that aren't wired like everyone else.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
The way I see it, and what official agencies keep telling us, is that there are three things that keep reoccurring among school shootings.
a)A history of bullying or rejection
b)Mental health problems
c)Guns (duh)
What is not on that list is video games, the media, the "culture of fear".. etc. The whole problem is basically down to improving availability and standards of care for people with mental health problems, reduce bullying in schools, and actually implement some gun restrictions. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" yea sure, but it is a whole lot easier for people to kill people with a gun than it is with a knife. It should be rather obvious... Gun control isn't THE solution, but it would help bring down the body count...
As for the positive correlation between violent media and violent behavior ( yes, it is real ) I'd like to see some peer-reviewed papers on distinguishing cause and effect. It doesn't surprise me that there is a correlation between violence and violent media, but it doesn't directly follow that media is the cause and violent personalities the effect. After all, if people didn't appreciate violence such media would not be very successful, would it?
Just for the record, I do have some uneasiness about playing BF2 under the current circumstances. The US fighting the "MECs" (a fake Arab coalition) is a little too real for me.
For some reason I've always felt a little bit uncomfortable with WWII games and I'm not 100% sure why. Maybe it's from hearing my grandfather's accounts of the war or maybe it's because of my tour of duty in Germany in '85. I had several embarrassed-looking young men tell me out of the blue how they wouldn't have followed Hitler, and for some reason that generational guilt really resonated with me.
Either way, feeling emotion about negative images simply makes us human. Much of the time, that's the purpose the artist intended. Burning books, banning art and calling video game players monsters makes us ham-handed, paternalistic enslavers of the mind. I urge you to try to find the difference here. I'm not saying my playing or not playing of the games makes me a better or worse person, just that I care and that makes a difference to me. If you decide not to care, for whatever reason, that makes a difference to me, too. But at least I understand you have a right to be an uncaring asshole.
This is a bit late, but in case anyone's still reading...
The first mainstream videogame-related story I read about this stated that his computer was loaded with Counterstrike and Starcraft. This was just after the news was continually repeating that he was Korean.
When I heard the videogame bit, milk came through my nose. It's a stereotype, but it's a damn funny one if you've ever spent any time on Battlenet.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Is drive Cho nuts, thats another matter entirely
I feel really sorry for the familys, Cho's included.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The generational gap is more than just a cliche to toss into a discussion on fashion. The inability or unwillingness of some adults to understand the positions of youth, and some youths' refusal to try to empathize with their elders, leads to mutual distrust, stereotyping, and operation without a true, fair sense for the other party.
Computers and video games are, even as they become more accessible, still mostly the domain of youth, especially amongst the most avid power users. Not caring to, or refusing to understand the complexities of a new generation's own distinct preferences (whether they be computers, or music, or political ideas), or appreciation for the older generation's, leads to fights and accusations. Parents are "out of touch;" children's hobbies are too rowdy and violent and loud. Both sides, no matter what moral high ground they scramble to, reap what they sow in it.
But guess who hold the money, the TV networks, the jobs, the votes for the similar-minded elected officials? The adults, of course. So they will always use their position to press down upon the youth. The youth will yell at the adults and press forward, but be pushed back by adults in riot gear. Which, in turn, inspires more rebellion for the hell of it...
This neverending cycle is the source of the oft-touted ideas that rock music or video games or hip-hop or computers or whatever the youth prefer at the time will be the downfall of society. So far, we're still up and running (though in what shape is debateable) -- and the Beatle kids assault Rammstein fans, and pinball players look down on those who blaze through the classically fearsome Doom and Quake.
Video games, trenchcoats, dark music...what will we current Slashdotters be claiming is worse than just harmless release, thirty years from now?
("We're all living in Amerika...")
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
Is anyone else unnerved by the constant comparisons to the Columbine shootings? Not to say that Virginia Tech isn't a school, or that this wasn't a shooting, but we are talking about university students, not high schoolers or postgraduates who didn't go on to college (like the Columbine shooters). These people are adults, vastly more independent than primary school students. Shouldn't we be looking at this as a different kind of event?
The video game connection is one example of how terribly wrong we can be when we start filling in the Virginia Tech story with bits of the Columbine story. How are we ever going to get to the truth about this story if everyone - even the media - are off pursuing a different one?
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Only if I disregard myself. I make myself feel better by being a jackass, which is of ultimate importance when I'm having to explain something that a five year old would have gotten. Which happens on a regular basis around here.
For example, it never ceases to amaze me that nerds who know three programming languages will utterly misuse a word and then have the gall to argue with you about it. They don't know any words not used by Tolkien or if they think they're really smart, Herbert. Or a word that showed up in their D&D book once or twice like "melee".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Now see, here is an example. I make myself feel better. I don't make myself feel better than them. (I already feel that way, if you must know. But only because I make an effort, and they don't, not because I know more than they do, or are ostensibly smarter which is not an ultimate measure of one's worth as a person although it does help.) Your lack of reading comprehension suggests that you are complaining because you get this kind of treatment on a regular basis and don't know why.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not going to bother addressing this in full, since it's a crock (look who is doing the complaining in this thread); and I'm guessing that it's a projection, judging by your response to any criticism of yourself.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai