UnpleasantlySexy

You should all feel special, for this week (and perhaps this week only), I am HEAPING blog love onto you. Heap! Heap!

I am sitting in Seattle's Best Coffee right now, very reluctantly listening to contemporary rock over their stereo system. I am here to keep Julia company while she does homework, and as such, I blog. This post is gonna be long, because I have little else to do.

Prepare thyself.

Enough time has passed, I hope, that I can bring up a somewhat selfish point about the Virginia Tech shootings without sounding insensitive. While the whole thing is an absolute tragedy, I want to talk about a peripheral issue: video games.

At this point in time, nearly everyone under 40 either owns or has had considerable exposure to video games in their lives. I have three console game systems and a Game Boy at home myself. Even my parents (both sets) own video game consoles. I have grown up with video games, starting around age 5 with an Atari 2600. I say this not to discount the severity of this incident, but to raise a point about it. One of the first news articles I read about the VA shootings announced that the killer played a lot of video games at home.

I have no desire to fight, kill, maim, or otherwise hurt another human being, but I sure do love fraggin' fools in Halo 2. My dad plays WWII first-person shooters, and my stepmom loves puzzle games. My mom has really gotten into the Nintendo Wii, and my stepdad would play Tetris until his eyeballs disintegrated if my mom didn't stop him every once in a while. I'm not concerned in the least about the possibility that one of them is going to *SNAP* and decide to stuff somebody into a wood-chipper.

If you have not heard of him, there is an opportunistic lawyer/lobbyist/weasel named Jack Thompson, and he has been raising a huge public ruckus for the past few years, claiming that video games not only promote and glorify actual violence, but that they are capable of reprogramming a normal, socially adjusted person into a killing machine. Thompson has positioned himself as a sort of consumer advocate, particularly defending conservative Christian ideals, yet none of his claims are based on any actual research.

Thompson has said that violent video games are "murder simulators" that enable kids to plan out real-life violence. He has since laid blame for the Virginia shootings on the kid's video game hobby/habit. He has also been suing distributors - Best Buy, Gamestop, Electronics Boutique - for negligence in providing these games to minors. Um...last time I checked, minors didn't have jobs, so it's probably mommy and daddy's money they're spending - let's hold the right people accountable, Jack.

A couple of Thompson quotes:

“If some whacked-out adult wants to spend his time playing Grand Theft Auto, one has to wonder why he doesn’t get a life, but when it comes to kids, it has a demonstrable impact on their behavior and the development of the frontal lobes of their brain."

“Murder simulators are not constitutionally protected speech. They’re not even speech. They’re dangerous physical appliances that teach a kid how to kill efficiently and to love it.”

He also said that the vibration function of some game controllers operate under the same principle as a Skinner box, subliminally reinforcing violent behavior - the controller "gives you a pleasurable buzz back into your hands with each kill."

And here I thought it added to the realism of a [mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO] slide tackle in my soccer games.

You know, I don't have any problem if you think a game is inappropriate for your children or even if you feel that it is inappropriate for you. Don't buy it. Don't let your children play it. Teach your kids the difference between fantasy and reality. And certainly don't make blanket accusations about video games (and video gamers!) - my favorite video game is a prostitute-free and gunplay-free hockey game, and while I can get pretty riled up during a game, I don't think that it has any [mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO] negative effect on me.

Additionally, it HAS been scientifically proven that squad-based military tactics games have dramatically improved teamwork and complex problem-solving skills not only for kids, but for adults as well.

What really gets me about all this [mUSt kiLL JanEt REnO] is that Jack Thompson has all but lost his credibility with the courts, Congress, and the media - but his impact has been so great that we assume there's some truth to it. As I said, the first NEWS story I read about the Virginia shootings announced that the shooter played a lot of video games. Well, dern it, that MUST be it! Mario and Luigi are training kids to be snipers.

This kid had a LOT of serious problems, and a remarkably different perception of the world than most folks. He needed help, and felt that he could not get it. There are a ka-jillion other people like him out in the world, however, and it only takes a little bit to push 'em across that line. I don't think that the abolishment of video games is the answer to all the problems of mankind.

I'm gonna start my own campaign, and blame everything on onions, because I hate onions. Onions will be the downfall of humanity, and they must be destroyed.

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