dastardly said:
BrunDeign said:
You know quite frankly, I have to disagree with you guys on this. There are times when video games are to blame. Of course the video game didn't mentally turn him into a murderer. It did however make him addicted to it to the point where he murdered his own mother over the thought that she'd take it away from him. It, quite literally, can be compared to a drug in that regard.
Of course this is only a rare case and seems to be unique to places where addiction in this form is unusually common (like South Korea). The rest of the times video games are involved in murders are because the murderers are psychotic, mentally fractured, or just plain aholes. Like the guys who murdered their "friend" because he somehow cheated at Madden. There's no explaining that.
This murder here though can, sadly, be attributed to too much gaming.
(Emphasis mine.)
These two portions where I've bolded your quote are where I take issue with what you're saying. The video game is not "to blame." It did not act to cause anything, in the same way that cocaine does not leap into the noses of unsuspecting passers-by and make them shoot cops or something.
It did not "make him addicted." He
became addicted to it. You can become addicted to
anything, because addiction is a mental construct surrounding a physical habit. Even drug addiction itself is a mental construct (the
physical and chemical component of the 'addiction' is
withdrawal, but that only comes into play
after the person has become a habitual user).
What's to blame here is an unbalanced kid with emotional issues, which lead to an
addictive personality. If not for games, his addiction would have found another subject, because the addiction is
his, not the game's. This sort of psychological "tick" that leads to addictions like this is present
before it takes any form. It just so happens that this mental problem chose to express itself via the subject of games.
Games themselves, by virtue of content, did not contribute in any way to this situation, other than being enjoyable enough for the kid to allow himself to become addicted. This would be like saying Twinkies cause addiction by being too damned delicious. It's ludicrous. Without them, the person would simply have become addicted to the next-most-delicious thing, because
that's the sort of personality (disorder) they have.
I disagree on addiction in general. There are psycological components to addictions, but I do believe people can be addicted to things without personality flaws. A good example of this would be how pimps and whoremasters will get their girls addicted to drugs as a way of controlling them. All sarcasm about "nobody forced a needle in your arm" aside, in some
cases that's exactly what happens.
That said I do agree with you when it comes to video games to an extent. Simply put I do not believe video games are addictive at all (which does mean I disagree about anything being addictive). Video games are a form of escapism, and in today's world a readily availible one. People don't game because they are addicted to it, they do it because it gets them away from dealing with a world and enviroment that flat out blows chips. Even an obsessive gamer can stop anytime he wants to, it's just that he doesn't want to. He lack of desire to stop is not from addiction but from lack of anything else that he'd rather do instead.
It's like this, if your typical "extreme" gamer of any age was hit by a bolt of destiny, and given their ideal life, it's doubtful that nothing would change and they would remain right there playing video games. Rather they would head off to their awesome, and important job, have sex with their gorgeous girlfriend or wife, and spend their mountains of cash travelling around the world or whatever. If he was an addict this wouldn't be the case. He might still like video games, but he sure as heck wouldn't spend anywhere near as much time playing them.
The thing is that people recognize the world for the hopeless world of ruts that it is in increasing numbers today. It's nice to say that if they put down the video game and did something else they could have a nice life, but for most people that's just not true. Society is competitive, and you figure out if your going to be one of those on top pretty quickly, and there is no point in becoming massively invested in being mediocre at the best. This is incidently what being a "slacker" is all about.
Korea is not a nice country despite what you might hear. Oh sure, there ARE worse places, but consider that this is a part of the world that was decimated by massive wars not too long ago. First it got the joy of dealing with the Xenocidal Japanese, who did all kind of horrible things to the Korean people including medical experiments (which were part of the inspiration for Korean manga like "Island") and then there was that entire "Korean War" thing that we might have heard about. The country isn't especially rich, and has limited technology. It's theater and culture are at best mediocre, I mean I can think of maybe two Korean movies I've seen (in subtitles) that were decent. One of the few things Korea *DOES* have though is probably the world's best internet infrastructure, something that it intentionally invested in. It only follows that if this is one of their defining assets for the moment, that people are going to be heavily involved with The Internet, and of course it's going to also be the escapism of choice. Korean internet obsession is not an addiction but simply making used of one of their better national resources. Korea being in the state it is, I'm not surprised there are far more people hitting the escapism hard there than in most places.
As far as the kid killing his mother goes, that blows chips, but you know what? I don't think it had anything to do with The Internet in paticular. To put things into perspective here in the US before the media covered everything instnatly like it is now, we had this contreversy over this stuff called "Rock and Roll Music". It became an escapism form of choice for kids, and defined generations of Americans. There were constant attempts to ban it because it made kids wild and violent, and had them doing nothing but listening to that "devil music" non-stop. You had fist fights, knife fights, unsafe driving, and everything else all connected to the music. Some kid crashes his car and dies, well he must have done it because of the Rock music about driving fast. Forget the fact that he's a dumb teenager and we all know about teenagers and cars. Kid gets into a fist fight? Blame the music. Kid stabs another kid to death over a girl in a parking lot? blame the music. Kid gets into a fight with his parents and hurts or kills them, blame the music! Teenagers have killed parents befoe, and in general there is usually someone pointing at the latest boogieman.
Oh I have no doubt they had this fight over the internet, but I doubt the way things ended up had anything to do with the gaming itself. Chances are it would have happened anyway, it's just that if the kid wasn't on the Internet the fight over escapism would be over something else. If Korean had a sudden wierd obsession with dubbed 80s Smurf cartoons, and he was watching them non-stop, someone would be saying "the kid strangled his mother because he was addicted to those Smurf cartoons"
I'll also be honest in saying that I have my doubts about this article because of the way everyone speaking seems to be careful to specify violent video games. The word "violent" doesn't quite flow into conversation the way it's being quoted. Seems like it was inserted with the intention of being more sensational than the case already is.
