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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
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.
...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.
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.
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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."
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.
as Ars Technica points out.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?