Year by year, more parallels are drawn between violence in the media and real crimes committed in the “real world”. Research in this area is remarkably difficult to carry out as studies can only be made once an actual crime has taken place. Putting teenagers into a room to watch Friday the 13th and then watching how many replicate the killings is not a valid option, for obvious reasons.
Blaming the media is simply the easy way out. People blame the media because they want an easy option, an easy target and the category of the media which suffers the most under this blame are Video Games. Case in point: Mere hours after the horrifying shootings at Virginia Tech, Jack Thompson (yes, that guy) had gone public saying that the shooter (note, Seung-Hui Cho had not actually been identified at this point as the shooter) had trained on the game Counter-Strike. Thompson said “drills you and gives you scenarios on how to kill them [and] gets you to kill them with your heart rate lower.” So there it is. Counter-Strike trains people to kill.
Hang on a sec. Thousands of people play Counter-Strike every day. Does that mean ALL of them are going to become killers? Oh no… I’ve played Counter-Strike! Urge to kill….
Give it up Thompson. All the evidence found proves you wrong. NO video games at all were found in Cho’s belongings. I think you should just give it a rest Jack, you’re quite obviously growing paranoid. People crack, they break under pressure. If someone just walks in and commits some form of crime, maybe there are other, less easily blamed causes. Besides, I’ve played games far more violent than Counter-Strike.
That’s right. I’m a gamer. Have been for the better part of my life. Have I killed anyone. No. Have I even committed a crime of any description. No. Almost every game I’ve played has involved me killing people. Games like: Devil May Cry, Killzone, Counter-Strike, Gears of war, Spartan Total Warrior, Battlefield 2, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas. And that’s not even half of them. Yet I’m not a psychopathic maniac. By Thompson’s beliefs I probably should be.
The answer does not lie with the games being played, the movies watched or the music listened to. It lies with the person playing, watching or listening. Surely if someone cannot discern between what’s real and what’s not then they have a serious psychological or medical problem. Millions of people are exposed to violence in the media on a daily basis. Because just one or two dozen commit heinous crimes does not mean it is the media’s fault.
Blaming the media is an easy answer to a complicated problem. The fact that a person has a criminal record, is seeing a psychiatrist or is abusing drugs seems to slip through the cracks and forgotten in the rush for an easy solution which ensure our mistakes go unnoticed. Here’s some advice.
If a friend or person you know is having trouble, or starts acting strange, talk to them. It might just save their life.
