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Re: [News] Jack Thompson Blames Microsoft for Virginia Incident

  • Subject: Re: [News] Jack Thompson Blames Microsoft for Virginia Incident
  • From: Mark Kent <mark.kent@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:57:27 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • References: <12419193.4j2Tieqb3z@schestowitz.com> <v27jf4-b3m.ln1@spanky.localhost.net> <79tjf4-1oe.ln1@ridcully.ntlworld.com>
  • User-agent: slrn/0.9.7.4 (Linux)
  • Xref: ellandroad.demon.co.uk comp.os.linux.advocacy:515817
spike1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <spike1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Kelsey Bjarnason <kbjarnason@xxxxxxxxxxx> did eloquently scribble:
>> [snips]
> 
>> On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:01:12 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> 
>>> Thompson Targets Microsoft in Latest Crusade
>>> 
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable the harm done at 
>>> | Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that 
>>> | used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill. 
>>> `----
>>> 
>>> http://www.gamealmighty.com/story-individual/story/Thompson_Targets_Microsoft_in_Latest_Crusade/
>>> 
>>> This is harsh. Another news agency wrongly said that CounterStike is a
>>> Microsoft game. I saw that ysterday. Also in the news:
> 
>> Err... umm... no.  It's a game, folks.  If this were enough to compel
>> people to run out and kill, we'd be seeing this sort of thing every day. 
>> Games involving guns, shooting, killing, even fairly realistic ones
>> involving first-person-perspective and "life like" targets are hardly new.
> 
> Can't remember who said it but...
> All those people who blame video games for violence... If video games
> affected behaviour so much I would've spent my teenage years running around
> the streets eating everything in sight, seeing ghosts and popping pills.

Of course, that is precisely what a lot of our teenagers are doing...
The problem with this is that individual games or films or television
programming or books certainly cannot be blamed for causing massacres,
however, a simple study of propaganda and advertising techniques (they
are both words for the same thing, depending on how you want your spin to
work!) shows that a longer-term immersion does affect how people think.
Naturally, there are many other factors involved, but even so, to
imagine that exposure to violent games or films will not affect people
seems naive.  If there is no effect, why would anyone watch them at all?
They watch them because they /like/ them - same for the games, people
play them because they /like/ them.

The problems come when you consider that the majority of people are
not driven to commit such crimes, however, consider the current wave of
violence amongst black teenage males in/around London and Birmingham.
They are part of the very same society as you and I, and yet they live in
a world where most kids are armed with at least a knife, where stabbings
are a daily occurrence, and the term "respek" refers to the dominance
the knife or gun-wielder has on his immediate environment.  Are those
lads affected by violent pop-vidoes, gangsta-rap, violent computer games,
and films?  Clearly they are affected by them.  They copy the movements
and actions of the people in the videos, even the gangsta-rap stars have
computer games out in the wild starring /themselves/ as they shoot and
kill people in graphic detail.

Once upon a time, music had musicians in it.  Now it appears to be more
about having and/or pretending to have street criminals in it.  

I'm not arguing for banning things or anything like that, I'm just
trying to point out that this issue is far from black and white.
Claiming that there is no impact from violent games, films and so on is
clearly not correct, otherwise they would not be popular in the first
place, so deeper consideration is required in order to get to the bottom
of these problems.

-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |

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