Gunfinger - General - Violence in Video Games

It seems like everyone who's ever done anything has written a blog about this. So let's get it over with.

On first sight, a person will probably go "you're just a teenager, you're going through your rebellious stage". I'll turn 21 in a month, thank you very much. I'm not blind, of course violence in video games has increased, and at the sake of sounding cliche and hackneyed, times are changing. That's not something I want to dwell on, because I'm willing to bet there will be a time where the government kills members of society instead of the other way around. Everyone who has ever read "1984" can tell you that. And we're not paranoid. Prescription drug costs are getting higher, politicians send everyone but their own children off to war, politicians are starting more wars, times are changing, but people aren't. That's the danger America is facing when you want to talk about violence.

I asked a friend who was at more danger of becoming a danger to himself and others: A kid who was exposed to Grand Theft Auto for 2 years of his life, a kid who has never picked up so much as a Gameboy Pocket and was physically, sexually and emotionally abused by his parents, or a kid who had to live as an orphan on the streets his entire life. Sadly, he couldn't answer. Chances are, neither could his parents, and neither could Jack Thompson.

Put a person in the right situation and they'll never know what to do. I had the same method of reasoning when I held a MySpace "seminar" at my Alma Mater in the bandroom on the last day of the recently concluded school year. If MySpace is so horrible that a child from Wren High School can post a bomb threat, every parent will bar their children from the site (which is something that actually happened here in South Carolina..we're messed up people anyway), cinderblocks must not be that safe either. Of course, I wasn't condoning blowing up schools or throwing cinderblocks or 2x4's at anyone's head, but it kind of speaks on behalf of our entire society.

The Grand Theft Auto games are more or less parodies of Italian Mafias and urban American thug gangs. And watching Rockstar repeatedly create game after game after game depicting these organizations is pitiful. What's worse, the blame goes straight to GTA when a kid goes and shoots up a school. Miraculously then, is the fact that little Billly in Floydada, Texas can watch coverage day after day after day about kids shooting other kids, bombs being droped on Iraq and Afghanistan, go to the movies and watch the latest Speilberg war documentary, and lord forbid, be exposed to Michael Moore (the first time someone's ever made fun of him in a blog intelligently. Amazing, isn't it?).

Think of it as such: If we lived in a utopian Aristoliean society (I suggest you go and read "One Man in the Universe by Aristotle to catch the following reference), where no one acts under the compulsion of anyone but the guy who told another to shoot himself in the face, Rockstar would probably spend their time trying to out-sell EA Sports and John Madden instead of freely, and for the most part, without restraint constantly mocking what's actually happening in the real world.

Here's a piece of advice for America: Don't ignore what's going on around you. Yes, Grand Theft Auto is a game that should be played by responsible people who can draw the line between reality and fiction. But if you want to get rid of a game that defies the line of ethics, perhaps Tom Clancy shouldn't be allowed to write books, because believe it or not, Domingo Chavez has killed a few people, and so has Jack Ryan (I read a lot of Clancy novels. They're pretty good if you can actually realize Rainbow Six was the ONLY game based on a book actually created by Clancy). Soldiers in Iraq kill people, and terrorist in Iraq kills soliders, yet day after day it's published in our faces in a nearly ad-lib format.

(Number between 6 and 23) soldiers were killed in (name an Iraqi, Afghanistan or otherwise unpronouncable city) today by a (choose one: roadside bomb, car bomb, suicide bomber). This brings the total number of troops to (any number above 400) in (Iraq).

That's the truth. And if people can't realize manifesting and realizing what the truth really is, and not half of it (a concept taken from "The Free man and the Soldier), people will continue to die prematurely, not knowing what it was that really killed them.

I'd like to thank the following people for giving me the courage, and the references to write this rant:
Steven Spielberg
Tom Hanks
Aristotle
Tom Clancy
Col. George Bernard Shaw
Plato