Dr. Phil Taping Videogame Violence Episode

[Andy Chalk]

Dr. Phil Taping Videogame Violence Episode

Dr. Phil [http://www.drphil.com/], purveyor of daytime television self-help advice, is taping an episode focusing on videogame violence today.

The show will feature an as-yet-unnamed "game violence specialist" and will look at the effects of videogame violence on young children. Early reports indicated that Hal Halpin, President of the GamePolitics [http://www.theeca.com/]that he had initially been asked to appear, until "they decided to take the show in a different direction."

Dr. Phil has become known as an anti-videogame activist, claiming in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech killings that "the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose." It was determined soon after the killings that the perpetrator was, in fact, not a gamer.

Taping of the episode takes place today, but no air date has been set.


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[Bongo Bill]

I can't see this going well. But when you make your career out of attributing the full range of human dysfunction down to one atomic cause per person, I can see how there'd really be no other conclusion to draw about video games. Violence is bad - therefore, if something is wrong with you, and there was violence in your life, then obviously the violence caused it! Right?

 

[Andy Chalk]

I don't see Phil as the problem so much as I do the millions of daytime-tv junkies who swallow his nonsense raw and whole. Complex problems require complex solutions, but people are so desperate to believe there's a quick-fix for pretty much anything that Phil and his ilk flourish. I don't see it as especially harmful; the people who will buy what he's almost certainly going to be peddling aren't interested in reasoned debate, much less willing to be swayed by it. It's just so terribly unproductive.

 

[hammarus]

I disagree Malygris. Phil is part of the problem, as is anyone who uses inflammatory subjects for their own personal agendas, whether that be for ratings, notariety, political gain, or just plain old vindictiveness.
Gullible, stupid people will always exist. Loathing them gets you nowhere. I save my true loathing for those that take advantage of them, by making them afraid and scaring them into action in a direction that benefits those doing the pushing.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I blame the shepherd rather than the sheep. Sure, people are stupid, lazy and ignorant, but it takes a guy like Phil to whip them into a seething, frothy mass. The general public should be held accountable for its laziness and love of the easy answer, but guys like Phil are the catalysts who cause the reaction.

 

[FunkyJ]

There's only one thing on a screen that angers me enough to make me violent, and it's Dr Phil.