Enter the scapegoat!
As soon as the cordite smell clears and the live coverage ends, the Media go looking for their favorite scapegoat. A quick and easy target that they can place the blame for an evil person's actions, because it just isn't sensational enough to blame the shooter.
Why yes, I'm talking about video games. The first target of the hack journalist.
Never mind personal responsibility, animated pixels programmed him to killkillkill!
Forget about the fact that virtually every 20-something has played games, or plays games regularly. The media wants you to believe that games can turn any person into a homicidal maniac, never mind the fact that violent youth crime rates have been steadily falling for 20 years.
Ignore the the voluntary ratings given to games are far more stringent than for any other type of entertainment. (ESRB will rate a game T for teen for showing tobacco use) According to the Media parental responsibility does not exist.
The fact remains, Video Games are a quick and easy target while the concept that evil and crazy people remains a hard sell.
Now, if you don't mind I'm really angry right now so I'm going to go play a game and work off my frustration!
posted by Albertan Technophile at 9/14/2006 10:29:00 AM
5 Comments:
Exellent post. I'm an avid gamer myself, and find it an easy "blame all the world's ills" on it excuse that the media bring up every time some nutbar goes on a rampage. Despite my fondness for games such as Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, Ghost Recon and the hordes of other excellent shooter games, I have not found the need to even own a gun much less kill anybody.
If this happened 40 years ago, the media would decree that we need to get rid of Slinkies and Monopoly games.
50 years ago, a book called "seduction of the innocent" hit the shelves. Among its many nasty attacks on Comic books were accusations of a poedophilic romance between Batman an d Robin, Supermans communist message, and pornographic content.
This happy horseshit isn't new, and it isn't getting any smarter.
Thanks for the compliment!
Here is what I wrote to the Toronto Sun. It pretty much sums up my position:
"Video Game Killer" is it? Another senseless tragedy and once again, what does the media jump on? The video games he played or music he listened to. It amazes me how when tragic events such as those in Montreal transpire the first thing the intellectuals toss aside is science and intellect.
When two factors are brought together and a correlation is found, we call it a matter of statistical significance. At that point we can easily say that A likely will cause B. If it is a 1:1 ratio, it's obvious. At 5:1, it's still fairly solid. When we get to 100:1, there's usually a degree of doubt.
Video gamers number in the hundreds of millions. Some individual violent video games sell in the tens of millions of units each. And yet when events such as those in Montreal occur, the intellectuals of the age suddenly forget about this little thing we call science and somehow develop divine prescience as to find a correlation in a ratio of 1:10,000,000.
While the Sun certainly wasn't blaming videos games by pointing out that he played one, nonetheless we will hear for days to come about his hobbies and musical preferences. Is connecting this senseless act to video games or music a sign of intelligence? No. It is a sign of typical human laziness to find a target of convenient blame. I could link violence in Canada to the likelihood the perpetrator watched hockey. It doesn't necessarily make it so... does it?
Maybe somebody should ask if he watched hockey.
I applaud your letter! Thanks for sharing, and thanks for fighting back.
Agreed. Journalists looking for "answers" often pick the easy target.
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