(no subject)
Apr. 21st, 2006 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
korafoxhttp://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/21/foiled.plot.ap/index.html
I am quite grateful that this was averted before people ended up dying...I just fear some of the fallout of this for a group of largely innocent people.
He was an "oddball," student Trenton Berry told ABC. "Everybody picked on him and everything."
Norman also mentioned bullying and said investigators had learned the suspects liked violent video games.
I can very much see Mr. Jack Thompson coming out of wherever he's been hiding the past six months and starting another crusade against violent video games. Not to mention the fact that midterm elections are coming up here, and politicians are likely to latch onto whatever hotbutton issues they can get their hands on to increase their approval with the voters. And since the gaming population is relatively small (and a goodly chunk of us aren't of voting age yet either), it seems like we often get stomped on by fundamentalist/family values groups, with no real representation in the legislation.
But there is still this fact, which every gamer knows to be true: violent video games do not create violent personas. A great interest in violent games may well be an indicator of psychological issues, but the games themselves are not the cause. Video games, violent or no, are an outlet for people's needs--whether those needs are just something to relax with at the end of the day, a bonding exercise between friends, or a way to release aggression. I know myself, I have used that classic PC game DOOM when I just feel so frustrated at life that I need to gib a few things with a rocket launcher. This is healthy; it's finding an appropriate place to release those feelings.
What we need to be worried about are those people for whom video games are not enough--those people who can spend hours playing HALO and Grand Theft Auto and still have overwhelming amounts of aggression. These are the people who will take that aggression into the real world with them, and who are the real dangers in the overlying scheme of things.
*end rant*
I am quite grateful that this was averted before people ended up dying...I just fear some of the fallout of this for a group of largely innocent people.
He was an "oddball," student Trenton Berry told ABC. "Everybody picked on him and everything."
Norman also mentioned bullying and said investigators had learned the suspects liked violent video games.
I can very much see Mr. Jack Thompson coming out of wherever he's been hiding the past six months and starting another crusade against violent video games. Not to mention the fact that midterm elections are coming up here, and politicians are likely to latch onto whatever hotbutton issues they can get their hands on to increase their approval with the voters. And since the gaming population is relatively small (and a goodly chunk of us aren't of voting age yet either), it seems like we often get stomped on by fundamentalist/family values groups, with no real representation in the legislation.
But there is still this fact, which every gamer knows to be true: violent video games do not create violent personas. A great interest in violent games may well be an indicator of psychological issues, but the games themselves are not the cause. Video games, violent or no, are an outlet for people's needs--whether those needs are just something to relax with at the end of the day, a bonding exercise between friends, or a way to release aggression. I know myself, I have used that classic PC game DOOM when I just feel so frustrated at life that I need to gib a few things with a rocket launcher. This is healthy; it's finding an appropriate place to release those feelings.
What we need to be worried about are those people for whom video games are not enough--those people who can spend hours playing HALO and Grand Theft Auto and still have overwhelming amounts of aggression. These are the people who will take that aggression into the real world with them, and who are the real dangers in the overlying scheme of things.
*end rant*
