Idiots!

Another rant!

So I heard about this guy by the name of Jack Thompson who is waging a war on videogames. Once upon a time--back in my truly geeky days--I got regularly angered by this stuff. Now it's rare that I care enough to take notice...but this guy grabbed my attention. He basically pulled a little publicity stunt, promising to donate $10,000 to charity if any developer would make his idea for a videogame a reality--an idea that he surely believes is a deliciously ironic social commentary. I'm not going to outline his idea, basically because I'm too lazy at the moment (if you really want to see it there's an article here: http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000103062744/ ), but suffice to say that it's a load of crap designed to make the point that videogames are corrupting our youth and turning them into mindless, violent psychopaths.

Man oh man does that piss me off.

I spent a good chunk of my life with my eyes glued to a TV screen and my hands glued to a controller--later the TV screen was replaced by a computer monitor and the controller by a keyboard and mouse, but the concept remained the same. I was one of the most avid gamers you were likely to meet, and my tastes definitely leaned toward the violent side of the spectrum. Fighting games and first-person shooters were my obsession, my escape from the real world that I found rather boring. And even after years and years of exposure to this supposedly corruptive influence, I can't quite recall one single time I killed anyone in cold blood--for that matter, I can't recall one single time I was tempted. And you know what? I don't think any of my similarly geeky friends ever lashed out in random acts of violence, either. No matter how many times we maimed and killed each other in-game, we never started attacking each other outside the virtual world.

Now, children, why do you think that is? Do you think there might be...*gasp*...some other reason the youth of America can't control their violent urges? Could we, perhaps, place the blame elsewhere? On the parents, perhaps? Yes, I think that might just be the answer. Maybe if we stop looking for excuses and hold people responsible for their own actions we'd make some progress. Maybe if we just sterilized the people who can't manage to instill basic human values in their children we'd wind up with a lot fewer fucked up people in our society. Oh, I'm sorry, now I'm starting to get angry. Must be my Quake II days coming back to haunt me...or I guess it could just be frustration with the idiots that people actually trust because they're in a position to spread their ideas.

Let me just make a basic statement right now--no stable person is going to hurt real people because they did it in a videogame. And if you're unstable enough that playing a game is going to set you off...something else would set you off before too long anyway. We had violence before we had videogames, didn't we? For that matter, I believe we had violence before we had television. Or radio. Or even the printing press. Speaking of the press, if you're wondering where people get the inspiration to kill, take a look at the nightly news. If you remember Columbine, you might also remember the media frenzy that followed it (for that matter, you might remember that they tried to blame that massacre on videogames as well--I think they decided the culprit there was Doom). And if you think really hard, you might remember that there were several other school shootings not long thereafter that also got massive publicity. Notice a trend here? Maybe real violence might just be more of an inspiration for further mayhem than fake violence. It's not a hard distinction to make. Actually I'd say it's a pretty hard distinction not to make. Even small children can understand that what they see on TV isn't real. If they don't understand it at first a responsible parent can help them understand. And would you look at that, we're back to the parents again.

It'd be really nice if we stopped looking for scapegoats and re-embraced the idea that a man is responsible for his own actions (I suppose I should add that so is a woman--sorry girls but your lack of a Y chromosome doesn't mean you can place responsibility elsewhere). Wake me up when personal accountability comes back into style...