Tom Brokaw Calls Videogames "Cancerous"

[FanboyInDisguise]

Personally, I think games (and movies, TV...media in general) desensitizes us to a certain degree. We've all seen Locusts get sawn in half (In all it's blood spattering splendor) or someone place a well sized piece of lead through another persons head. And again drawing on Saving Private Ryan, we've also seen people's faces reduced to craters, seen someone getting stabbed very slowly and what happens when a high explosive goes off when a person is still carrying it.

Yes, it does desensitize us, but all it really does is make us not flinch as much (If at all...) when we see it. It doesn't make it seem like an appealing concept for real-life actions. Indeed some games are more of an outlet without reprecussions for those with such urgings, which let's face it, happens to all of us at one point. Who hasn't felt better after the aformentioned chainsawing? People play GTA to do everything you've secretly wanted to do all your life, and now you can without serving 25 to life. The difference between the 99.9% of gamers that live normal lives and the .1 that go to malls in Omaha or places of learning like Virginia and Columbine, is a sort of switch in the mind that says "Ok, I can to X Y and Z in GTA, but if I do that here I'll end up dead or in jail for life." I suppose that switch simply isn't present in those select individuals, and such their violence is more a product of mental instability than the games they play...

 

[Anton P. Nym]

One thing to remember about these massacre people is that they do know that what they're planning is wrong. That's why they do it.

These people (or, at least, the ones I've read up on) already feel marginalised, ignored by society for whatever reason. In their suicidal state, they twig to the idea that they should go out with a big splash; get all the attention they craved but never got, with no consequences because they'll be dead when its over. (They're already committing suicide... threats of eternal damnation won't act as a deterrent.) So, from that standpoint, it's not the games that matter; it's the press coverage of prior massacres that triggers the act. They've been shown repeatedly that if you do "X", you get attention. So they do "X" and get the food-pellet, er, reward. This isn't some abtruse theory; three recent shooters (Omaha, Virginia Tech, Montreal) have stated so explicitly, in their own words, in the material so enablingly published by the press.

If nobody ever heard about shooters of this type, if we didn't broadcast their faces and names all over the 6-o'clock news, there'd be no incentive to do this and they'd kill themselves in some other spectacular (<-- word chosen carefully) way like a high-dive off an office building into rush-hour traffic. Hopefully one with fewer colateral casualties.

-- Steve

 

[Andy Chalk]

Nobody shoots up a place "because of" a game, anymore than they commit suicide because of Ozzy Osbourne or go insane because of Dungeons & Dragons or develop loose morals and perversions because of Elvis. I don't think you could even refer to it as a symptom, anymore than you could do the same for someone who watches tv or movies or reads books or listens to music.

I really think Brokaw just spoke before he really thought about it. He may say he "thinks" games are cancerous, but I would bet he hasn't thought much about it at all. It's the sort of utterly clueless remark that can only be lumped in with the nonsense that spews forth from guys like Roger Ebert (and I wasn't at all surprised when his name came up): Not necessarily malicious, but hopelessly and adamantly uninformed.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

My main point of view on media violence is the history of it, if it?s as bad as they say we should not be here the same can be said for guns the issue is not the item being dissed but the fact humans have freedoms and free will because of this crazy people can do more localized damage more often than not.

Then entertainment news (mainstream hard news died years ago) sinks its teeth into it not letting it go spreading the poisonous thought more so when others break down they will copy cat because it feels right.
Really though who?s to blame? In the end it?s not the media or the news or the games or even the guns it?s the fact that humans can be random and very unpredictable when they break down mentally. Society has always been lead by what the elite think they know thus why for centuries "media" and new media in particular have been the blame for all of its woes even though censuring and banning them lead to even more unrest amongst the populace.

Society has to mature to a point that it sees that the problem will never go away that the only way to lower it is to place counselors in every school and business and give them enough power to take people off the job or out of the class and send them for a full evaluation, even then common sense will state a pissed person is pissed but at least for some they will be marked and banned from guns. This of course brings in thoughts of the thought police but? is bringing mental health into the mainstream more so than ever that bad of an idea? While it may not directly condemn a sane person it can at least create a deeper portfolio of a person and their ability to commit crimes and endanger others.
Society needs to be more preemptive on mental health issues at least in terms of gun rights perhaps not so much on ?villainy? as long as it?s lawful but being a thing made by human whims is it better than the old snobby ?we? do not like it aristocratic approach that dismiss the great unwashed for being ignorant and naive.


?ZOMG! Word 07 can translate zippy speak!


PS About Brokow it seems he tried hard to not sound like a douche on this issue but failed, the lil bit at the end is the tail tale sign of covering up what he said starting off, it?s obvious he?s defending media ?entertainment? news?s right to portray the world their own way despite fact/ evidence/ moral/ ect.
I still can trust Dan Rather because he gave the acts and let people decide and even went against the network, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson are some of the old guard I can respect and so was Peter Jennings, Brokow however has become another old hack.
Although?.. I am sure age will screw them up to where they will say stupid stuff too!

 

[Copter400]

Violence existed *well* before any form of media did. Nobody ever considers that. "The Iliad" has some of the most graphic depictions of violence in literary form, but no-one is clamoring to remove that from High School lit class.

And let's not forget the Bible in a hurry.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Violence existed *well* before any form of media did. Nobody ever considers that. "The Iliad" has some of the most graphic depictions of violence in literary form, but no-one is clamoring to remove that from High School lit class.

And let's not forget the Bible in a hurry.

Its greatest defense becoems its greatest weakness its used as a guide and a lot of the old testament stuff is tant amount to good old fashion crusading and crushing any and all in your way.

Also one could say the Bible is a history book of 2nd hand story's, its stuck somewhere between fiction,history and religion because of tis dubious genre its not simple fiction made to "titillate" man like 90% of fiction tries to do, still tho violence is part of humanity and blaming it on ill logical sources seem to go hand in hand.

 

[werepossum]

I still can trust Dan Rather because he gave the acts and let people decide and even went against the network, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson are some of the old guard I can respect and so was Peter Jennings, Brokow however has become another old hack.
Although?.. I am sure age will screw them up to where they will say stupid stuff too!

You can still trust Dan Rather? The man who "broke" a political story two weeks before a presidential election using documents so clearly forged that he was canned for it, whose "impeccable source" is a man known chiefly for his history of mental illness, whose "document experts" didn't know you cannot substantiate copies of documents but only originals (although they now claim they never authenticated the documents), who attended a Democrat fundraiser but when caught claimed he didn't know it was a fundraiser, who howls at the moon... Well, maybe not that last. But dude, Rather's a seriously unbelieveable man. Has been since Viet Nam.

It's funny that Broclaw can claim playing video games contributes to making one a murderer, yet knowing the media will make famous an otherwise stone cold loser has no effect.

 

[Koselara]

Blaming school shootings on video games makes it clear he hasn't bothered to research the shooters; dismissing what happened as the person simply being "crazy" also misses the target. The best explanation I've ever seen, evidence and all, is How To Create A School Shooter [http://www.republicoft.com/2007/04/20/how-to-create-a-school-shooter/]. As he pointed out, these tragedies will continue until we fix the source, which means looking into what mental illness the gunman realistically had (depression? delusions?) and in most cases finding out what caused it.

My life in junior high was basically what he described -- and computer games were part of what saved me from continuing down the dark path. At first, I hid from reality in the non-linear games (like Ultimas or Interactive Fiction) I loved, which usually had the player as the main character. Eventually I started wanting to be like my alter-ego: the kind of person that did what she could to make things better even when it was really hard, unlike the adults that had silently watched my daily torture. As I worked at becoming who I wished to be, my rage at the world changed into a strong drive to do what I could in everyday life to aid or protect others and improve society. That's sure not a lesson or a change I would have made from watching the evening news and sitcoms...

 

[dnv2]

I don't really know who the guy is to start with, but we get the same kind of egotistic people over here spouting the same kind of rubbbish.

I love how these reports always link back to FPS games when really using a real gun is nothing like clicking your mouse on a target and watching them fall down. The only games I can say really come close to shooting a real gun are lightgun games.

Even then they are so far removed from the workings of a real gun that you could hardly blame games for a guy going crazy with a real pistol. Somewhere along the line that kid had to learn to load, possibly maintain and fire that gun. He certainly didn't learn that from counter strike.

 

[dan_the_manatee]

I know this is a video game forum, but I'm slightly more alaremd at Brokaw's other target - blogs.

"We didn't have any ongoing dialog in our communities or on the air about the corrosive effect of violence."
and then...
""It was not what he, what people saw of him on the air that will drive them, it's what they read in blog sites," and cue cancer comments.

Does he not realise that the better, more popular blogs are the disucssion of this material, by sensible rational people? Like this thread, really. This rant just strikes me as old man shaking stick and blaming pesky modern kids with their videotoys and interwebs; he'll strike a nerve with a lot of people though because a lot of people want to blame tragedies like Virginia Tech on anything apart from individuals and a high gun owenership.

It seems obvious that one man perpetrated that disaster, and he did it because he wanted to - not becuase Led Zepplin was playing backwards, not because he'd watched too much Kubrick, not from reading peoples' blogs on Myspace and probably not from playing Viva Pinata and losing his Buzzlegum.

 

[Arbre]

Jack Thompson causes brain tumours. Fact.

 

[gameloftguy]

One would think that the prevalence of violence in movies and TV predates the advent of violence in video games by decades. One would think that people have watched TV and movies far longer than they have played video games. One would think that Tom is trying to deflect criticism of violence in the media to one specific genre rather than looking at the media he represents as a cause of these disturbances.

 

[MrKeroChan]

but look who Brokaw calls the "greatest generation"...basicly this guy doesn't think about what he says or simply isn't intellectually honest with his facts.

 

[sergeantz]

I don't know how many Michael Moore fans are in the building (probably not many), but back before he was well known, he did a documentary called Bowling for Columbine. It posed that the strongest link to violence of this sort was the media, specifically the news. Sensationalist scaremongers.