Last night I stumbled over yet another one of those articles that makes me go "d'oh" and then proceed to *headdesk* (explained as "Unification of ones forehead with a computer desk as a means to vent frustration, often forceful.")
"An 18 year old boy robbed and killed a 54 yeard old taxidriver in Bangkok, Thailand this weekend. He claims he was inspired by the popular computer game Grand Theft Auto 4, reports Reuters. - He said he wanted to find out wether it is as easy to rob a taxi in real life as it is in the game.
The 18 year old risks being sentenced to death."
Yes yes, I'm sure it's a tragedy, but no matter how deep I dig I can't seem to find any sympathy for this boy. You have to have a rather twisted view on reality, or be exceptionally receptive against the art of suggestion, if a mere video game can prompt you to try and steal a cab. He claims the killing was "accidental", but he did stab him with a knife when the taxidriver tried to express that he didn't fancy getting his car stolen. "Well, gee, I did stab him, but I didn't know knife stab wounds could kill a man!" It's morons like this guy that gives us gamers a bad name! Yes, I have played GTA4, or at least tried it.
But more importantly, I grew up playing Duke Nukem 3D and Doom, which was pretty hard core stuff back then: guns, blood, gore and boobs. (Yes, I was a wierd girl, sitting at home as a 11 year old trying to complete Duke Nukem). I progressed to Quake and Half-Life, which basically was more of the same: Walk around, pick up guns and ammo, shoot everything that moves or even thinks about moving. Just about every game I've ever played to any extent involves kililng: CS, Starcraft, Warcraft, Red Alert, Tiberian Sun. And I turned out ok? Right? Eventually I grew out a bit .. well, not out of games, but a bit bored, maybe. Besides, new games are horribly expensive, and I've spent the past 3 years playing just one - WoW.
...
The only difference I can see between the games I've mentioned, and GTA4, is that the latter is placed in a somewhat realistic environment. But still, what on earth are you thinking if stealing a car seems like a fun thing to try. I'm going to steal what a mate of mine said last night: Video games doesn't increase violence, it just adds creativity. It gives people ideas.
4 comments:
Good one...And yes, games only add creativity to the diseased mind. I wrote a rather long post about it earlier, it started as an angry rant, but my inner librarian took over and made me do research, hehe.
But stories like the one you quoted does give us reasons to worry. With the decline in society and morale in general, do we need to stimulate the increasing mass of troubled children and young adults?
Good question. And one which I'm far to lazy to contemplate right now.
Inner librarians FTW!
If you were to follow the logic Violent video games = violence, one could conclude that we actually were better off with violent video games since the murder rate probably was a lot higher a couple of centuries ago.
And stop stealing my ideas!
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