Yesterday I gave my first speech in the speech class I'm taking. The topic I decided to use was about video games being used as a scapegoat in cases of youth violence. Anyone with half a brain can look back historically and see that video games are being targeted now, just as rock and roll was in the sixties and comic books in the forties. I take this very seriously because, as a I gamer, I don't like being told that one of my favorite pastimes is a depraved activity that can lead to horrendous violence. Especially not by a bunch of old square politicians and journalists who don't know the first thing about what the thing they're pinning the blame on. (These are the same kind of idiots who freak out when someone plants some pretty lights around town.)
As if on cue, I get home from class to discover this story. Of course, the obligatory connection to video games is made, and this time by one of the murderers. I've felt for some time that the media's obsession with video games is actually giving some of these kids an easy excuse for their actions.
Now Penny Arcade has posted this. It's lengthy, but very much worth reading.
This whole thing pisses me off so much. I need to go play a video game to calm down.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I need to go play a video game to calm down.
Just so everyone is on the same page, when you say "play" you mean "murder," and when you say "video game" you mean "homeless man," right?
If anything, I'd just eat some mushrooms and jump on the homeless guy's head. I'd leave him alone as soon as his coins popped out.
But if you jump on his head he disappears...is that not a type of murder!?
"The topic I decided to use was about video games being used as a scapegoat in cases of youth violence."
So....what kinda grades you getting in that speech class, buddy?
"Could video games cause your child to flip out and kill someone? Some experts think think so! More on your news at 11." I mean thats sort of the standard format, and local news almost exclusively focuses on crime and nothing else these days. The media has probably over half of America living in some false fear that violent crime based on anything is just right around the corner. Stuff like this will always get more screen time because people are stupid.
I did a paper on this topic for one of my English papers and the teacher basically agreed that bad parenting is the issue...not video games. None of these kids have any morals these days.
I have a blog now: jeannieo.blogspot.com.
I agree that it's bad parenting, and I also think that the media blaming violent kids on video games is a total load. My mom says that when she was growing up in rural Kentucky, they were around guns and dynamite (from the coal mines) all the time and the kids didn't pick up guns and shoot each other. Their parents would have beat the tar out of them!
Jeannette
Post a Comment