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Student Arrested For Posting Zombie-Killing AR Game Clip Filmed at His High School (yahoo.com)
18-year-old high school student Sean Small was arrested in Indiana on Tuesday and charged with a misdemeanor for posting a videogame clip to social media. An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo Lifestyle:
The clip in question is Sean playing The Walking Dead: Our World, which is an augmented reality game that animates characters into a real-world setting. In this case, players kill zombies. Along with Sean's video he wrote, "Finally something better than Pokemon Go," which is also an augmented reality game....
Sean, who is a member of the Indiana National Guard, pleaded not guilty to an intimidation charge. He was released on $1,000, and his school expulsion hearing is set for next week. The video featured other students walking through the halls as Sean allegedly attempted to kill the zombies the game placed among them.
Realistic footage of shootings in the high school's hallways apparently alarmed the off-duty sheriff's deputy hired to work at the high school -- who then filed the misdemeanor intimidation charge with the county prosecutor.
Sean, who is a member of the Indiana National Guard, pleaded not guilty to an intimidation charge. He was released on $1,000, and his school expulsion hearing is set for next week. The video featured other students walking through the halls as Sean allegedly attempted to kill the zombies the game placed among them.
Realistic footage of shootings in the high school's hallways apparently alarmed the off-duty sheriff's deputy hired to work at the high school -- who then filed the misdemeanor intimidation charge with the county prosecutor.
There seems to be a grey area between fiction, and really harmful content. However the line between free speech, and being uncomfortable about something is very hard to draw.
I'm not sure how to objectively draw a boundary. However if the game is setup to allow real life footage to be amended with zombie shooting, this would have happened sooner or later.
How this finally plays out is actually important for the future boundaries of free speech.
And effective gun control is a must to remove the fear of shootings.
That's all.
From the summary, it doesn't sound to me, as though he thought he was pushing any boundaries. He was just playing a game, and thought he'd share it on social media. It wasn't a depiction of shooting students or civilians, only literal monsters. This genuinely sounds like an overreaction to me.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
Looked at some footage now. It appears The Walking Dead in not even played with fake weapons. Oops.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I expect this to get worse as AR becomes more commonplace. Imagine if it were a laser-tag AR game where he was shooting other students!
People love their battle royale games, I expect there to shortly be location-based AR battle royale games; last survivor in your school wins!
I'm honestly surprised that ~20 years after Postal, Pico's World, GTA and Super Columbine Massacre RPG, people still get their panties in a twist about games about killing sprees. Perhaps satire was the only thing that spared those games, anything that's halfway serious gets shouted down even by gamers.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
To play this game you move around with your smartphone and click buttons in the smartphone's screen to destroy pixels which make up zombie images.
Nobody in the school could have been intimidated by a student walking around waving his phone and clicking on it.
This is not even a thought crime. A thought crime would be "I so would like to kill this teacher who makes such difficult exams". Killing zombies in real life (yes, I realize how absurd that was) is no crime, thus phantasies about it are not thought crimes.
Obviously the administrators saw 'AR', 'clip' and 'high school' in the same sentence and freaked out.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
A wrongful arrest is absolutely an infringement of the arrestee's rights.
And this was a video of a game, not a video of a plausible violation of the school's rules on contraband (unless cell phones are contraband there).
Let me get this straight, you think that the guy is rather silly because he posted game footage that also included a public place? What's the real difference between that and a movie about a killing spree in down-town Washington filmed in said location? The actual playing of the game is rather harmless as no guns are wielded, just a (deadly?) phone!
I find it difficult that it is no longer possible for many people and powers that be to distinguish between a make-believe and reality. I am sure that the sheriff's department would be informed had a real incident happened. At least check the facts before arresting people. I think the silliness, if not outright stupidity, is to be found among people overreacting to literally harmless publishings like this.
My conclusion: The terrorists have won!
People are now so terrified of even little things that it is difficult to have fun if it is not entirely PC. Put the terrorist threat into context and look at how many people have died in the traffic in the last few years or from pneumonia or tuberculosis compared to how many people have died in terror attacks in the last 100 years.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
This Aussie is rather silly to think it knows what "cultural context" is going to be shared or not. The US still resists the nanny state mentality. That's the shared cultural context that you don't, or can't, understand.
We don't need more laws to stop incidents like the Parkland shootings, we need officials who will enforce the existing laws instead of letting known-violent offenders do whatever the flip they feel like in some misguided attempt to "shut down the school-to-prison pipeline". They merely replaced it with a school-to-graveyard pipeline.
" playing simulated lethal combat games within school grounds. "
Nothing lethal about it. See, the thing is, zombies are already dead.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
A few guys in my high school did a similar thing with Doom in the 90s. Made a model of the school and some of the students, teachers etc as monsters and you could play a level killing them all. Nobody thought it was threatening. Don't see why this one would be?
Congratulations on supporting a police state?
Something ambiguous that, depending on additional facts, either could be probable cause for a crime or could be innocuous is not itself PC. Those additional facts have to be deduced to find PC. In this case, they weren't there.
I think the problem is, they arrested the guy and a lot of people are saying it's an overreaction, but if they hadn't done anything and he later shot up the school, some of those same people would have said, "Why didn't you do something when you found out he was playing that game?!"
Specifically, there's a tension created by the Republican rhetoric, and there's not a clear way to resolve it. On the one hand, they want to argue that the availability of guns isn't a contributing factor in school shootings, and that the responsibility falls entirely on law enforcement to identify and arrest the shooters. In other words, the problem isn't bad policy or bad guns, but bad people, and those people need to be locked up. On the other hand, they want to claim that they're libertarians who value freedom and personal choice, and that the government should not be involved in your life in any way unless you've committed a clear crime. The shooters often don't commit a clear crime until the actual shooting, even though they may have said or done some disturbing things. And so this sets up a conflict between the freedom to buy guns, and the freedom to think and speak as you choose.
The Republican resolution to these kinds of tensions often take the form of moral panic. They won't budge on gun control, and they don't want social reform or to provide mental health services, so they need to find some source of "evil". They imagine devil worshipers and perverts behind every corner, and look for reasons to blame social media or video games or sex or drugs or minorities. They deny the possibility that there could be problems with our own rules, culture, or way of life, and instead look for an assault from an outside evil, arguing that if that evil were simply removed or prohibited, everything would be fine.
They've already created the expectation that school shootings are caused by violent video games, so a violent AR game played in a school is guaranteed to cause concern. I wouldn't argue that arresting him was the right choice, but it makes sense that the social media post would cause some kind of response and intervention. I think if this had happened while I was in school, before school shootings were so common, it might have resulted in a visit to the principal's office, and maybe a couple of follow-ups with a school counselor to make sure everything was fine. If they want to be careful, maybe some kind of a mental evaluation is in order, or having police check to see whether he's known to have access to weapons.
Schools have [zero tolerance] policies because it relieves them from having to think. Aren't all the grown-ups at a school supposed to be capable of critical thinking?
School administrators are capable of critical thinking. The voters who elect the school board that hires school administrators, not so much.
You did not describe the law. You distorted your description in ways that are friendly to police.
A wrongful arrest is wrongful even if it is not proven so in court. One of many reasons that an arrest may be wrongful is if it performed without probable cause that an offense has been committed.
An ambiguous fact on its own is not PC. "Probable cause exists where the facts and circumstances within the officers' knowledge, and of which they have reasonably trustworthy information, are sufficient in themselves to warrant a belief by a man of reasonable caution that a crime is being committed."
This was a video from a game, and a moment's reflection with even the slightest understanding of the medium would show that the student neither actually threatened anyone or had any intent to intimidate, meaning there was no probable cause the crime for which he was arrested even happened.
If you weren't so busy licking those jackboots you'd probably understand why you come across as supporting a police state.
He filmed people without their consent and posted it online. That alone could break rules and laws, even seen as harassment if people objected and he did it anyway.
There are several problems with this theory. Firstly, in most countries, it is fine to film someone in a public place provided it is not for commercial gain. Secondly, he was not charged with this but with "intimidating behaviour" and lastly he is a kid and the law _should_ allow for a good deal of leeway when dealing with kids who do not always think through the consequences of their actions as much as an adult and may not be aware of some less-well-known laws.
a nra shirt or even a yellow pink squirt gun or a pop tart chewed into shape of a gun will get police called in most public schools ...this is the future you voted for
I think the problem is, they arrested the guy
So far, so good.
and a lot of people are saying
Who cares? Saying things is an absolute right. Arresting people is strongly regulated.
if they hadn't done anything and he later shot up the school, some of those same people would have said, "[blah blah blah]"
Who cares? Yeah, they might say things, they're people. Why do you perceive it is as a problem if their words contradict other words they said before? Who fucking cares? That doesn't impact their right to say it. Compare that to, if you're arresting people and you do it in contradiction of the laws that allow you to do it! That one is illegal.
Just for that, I'm going to buy a bump stock. I don't own a rifle that has a pistol grip, but fuck it, I'll buy a bump stock anyways. I don't use Instagram, but I'll create an account and post a nice selfie of me holding a bump stock.
The intimidation aspect was showing a virtual representation of somebody carrying and using a firearm on school property. The "zombie" element in the video is irrelevant.
No, it is very relevant. Having a virtual representation of someone using a gun on school property to shoot fictional monsters in order to save people is very different to one where you are just shooting the people.