Is it just me, or has the recent media exploded with cases of children being hurt, killed or killing with the blame being placed (it seems most of the time inaccurately) on videogames?
I'm not joking when I tell you that in the last week I've seen at least 15 stories that are all RECENT about a kid killing himself, or someone murdering their parents, or shooting up a bunch of people at school, and every time the media turns to the camera and says with a completely straight face "videogames are damaging the minds of children" or how the violence in them is "the sort of thing they would shudder to have adults view on a regular basis"
Personally I'm getting fucking fed up. The things these videogames show are not damaging the minds of children directly, most of these crimes if videogames even ARE a factor that lead to the crime, I seriously doubt it's due to some insidious conspiracy by game developers, publishers and reviewers to warp the mind of children into chaotic killing machines. Yet we keep being told how horrible videogames are for our minds, and how the things depicted aren't fit even for ADULTS to cope with.
I can't stand it . . . I can't even stand to watch the news when they're NOT talking about videogames being so bad because when they're not talking about that they're telling us to be terrified because 40+ murders, robberies and rapes took place near our house, a school burned down killing everyone inside and there's a group of terrorists with a row of nuclear missiles lined up and aimed at our house right now.
Tell me . . . how is it the fault of videogames when the people reading the paper, listening to the radio and watching TV news are being bombarded with so much negative information about what is GOING to kill us?
If a child commits suicide, it's not the fault of videogames . . . it's the fault of THE CHILD . . . the child is the one that did the act. If they were brought to it by videogames, I'd ask what their mental state was leading up to that act . . . were they extremely depressed? wrought with grief over a freshly buried loved one? perhaps they had a natural tendancy toward suicidal thoughts . . .
or maybe they had been raped by someone they knew . . . all these things are easily events that could lead a person to suicide. And yet, if they are found out to be an avid gamer, suddenly it has to be about how damaging videogames are to the mind.
I say it's enough . . . videogames should be considered an AFTERTHOUGHT as to cause. No one ever claims that books like Stephen King's "Needful Things" where a man who bears a striking resemblance to SATAN decieves an entire town into murder and depravity is the cause of suicides or murders, or how terrible it is for a person to have DARED to read an Anne Rice novel because after all, those Vampire Chronicles lead people kill . . .
yet videogames, which usually are so heavily censored aren't NEARLY as explicit as things like the Vampire Chronicles or ANY Stephen King book.
Don't believe me? read Needful things . . . it contains a child of age 9 or so having dreams of being forcefully masturbated by his favorite teacher . . . it has another man viciously slaughtering a dog and smearing the dogs blood all over someone's freshly laundered sheets then stringing up the corpse in the window.
Now tell me . . . 800 pages of that kind of image is REALLY worse then someone watching cloned space marines shoot each other with bright colored lasers?
sure the more visceral games are more visually hard to stand, but they're no worse then anything I've ever seen in a movie . . . and I PURPOSEFULLY seek out the more violent ones just so I can hopefully someday understand what everyone keeps saying is so bad.
Honestly I would think the depictions of faith in videogames would be more of a front and center issue, with most of the depictions of Christianity or any of the Judeo-Christian derrivatives being largely shown as blind faith groups following orders from scheming black hearted villains.
I'm going to stop now before I break my keyboard from typing so hard. Please . . . someone, prove me wrong . . . I so desperately want this world to NOT be focused on videogames being THE bad guy . . .
I'm not joking when I tell you that in the last week I've seen at least 15 stories that are all RECENT about a kid killing himself, or someone murdering their parents, or shooting up a bunch of people at school, and every time the media turns to the camera and says with a completely straight face "videogames are damaging the minds of children" or how the violence in them is "the sort of thing they would shudder to have adults view on a regular basis"
Personally I'm getting fucking fed up. The things these videogames show are not damaging the minds of children directly, most of these crimes if videogames even ARE a factor that lead to the crime, I seriously doubt it's due to some insidious conspiracy by game developers, publishers and reviewers to warp the mind of children into chaotic killing machines. Yet we keep being told how horrible videogames are for our minds, and how the things depicted aren't fit even for ADULTS to cope with.
I can't stand it . . . I can't even stand to watch the news when they're NOT talking about videogames being so bad because when they're not talking about that they're telling us to be terrified because 40+ murders, robberies and rapes took place near our house, a school burned down killing everyone inside and there's a group of terrorists with a row of nuclear missiles lined up and aimed at our house right now.
Tell me . . . how is it the fault of videogames when the people reading the paper, listening to the radio and watching TV news are being bombarded with so much negative information about what is GOING to kill us?
If a child commits suicide, it's not the fault of videogames . . . it's the fault of THE CHILD . . . the child is the one that did the act. If they were brought to it by videogames, I'd ask what their mental state was leading up to that act . . . were they extremely depressed? wrought with grief over a freshly buried loved one? perhaps they had a natural tendancy toward suicidal thoughts . . .
or maybe they had been raped by someone they knew . . . all these things are easily events that could lead a person to suicide. And yet, if they are found out to be an avid gamer, suddenly it has to be about how damaging videogames are to the mind.
I say it's enough . . . videogames should be considered an AFTERTHOUGHT as to cause. No one ever claims that books like Stephen King's "Needful Things" where a man who bears a striking resemblance to SATAN decieves an entire town into murder and depravity is the cause of suicides or murders, or how terrible it is for a person to have DARED to read an Anne Rice novel because after all, those Vampire Chronicles lead people kill . . .
yet videogames, which usually are so heavily censored aren't NEARLY as explicit as things like the Vampire Chronicles or ANY Stephen King book.
Don't believe me? read Needful things . . . it contains a child of age 9 or so having dreams of being forcefully masturbated by his favorite teacher . . . it has another man viciously slaughtering a dog and smearing the dogs blood all over someone's freshly laundered sheets then stringing up the corpse in the window.
Now tell me . . . 800 pages of that kind of image is REALLY worse then someone watching cloned space marines shoot each other with bright colored lasers?
sure the more visceral games are more visually hard to stand, but they're no worse then anything I've ever seen in a movie . . . and I PURPOSEFULLY seek out the more violent ones just so I can hopefully someday understand what everyone keeps saying is so bad.
Honestly I would think the depictions of faith in videogames would be more of a front and center issue, with most of the depictions of Christianity or any of the Judeo-Christian derrivatives being largely shown as blind faith groups following orders from scheming black hearted villains.
I'm going to stop now before I break my keyboard from typing so hard. Please . . . someone, prove me wrong . . . I so desperately want this world to NOT be focused on videogames being THE bad guy . . .
