slappyMCslappy

QGR

The guy is a fuck tard.

Kovitlac

y2julio

Seriously? Screw my baby-making-fluid, I don't want cancer!

Back on topic. Yeah yeah, someone is evil = he plays videogames. We know how it works, we know the drill. JT makes a comment about it, we all enrage, he is happy and so are we.
Did that just rhyme?

Ziren

e_tank

Whatever.

stuminus3

Termisk8er

plus, in terms of fps. Counter-strike is one of the least violent fps i've ever played. If counter-strike is violent, so is paintballing.

to be honest, my mother driving is more violent then any game i've ever seen

Termisk8er

Sintariot

Everytime a new media comes out someone is always trying to pin the worlds problems on it. Next thing you know it's going to be that the war on Iraq was caused by Sadam's addiction to the GTA

Tekiecid

Rowd

This is insane, as was the killer. As is the case with most murderous rampages, a crazy insane person is involved; not a video game, not a gun accessories website, not the 2nd ammendment, not bullet manufacturers, not the school's emergency plan, not Bush.

There is only one person who is at fault for this, and they took care of themselves, showing a clear lack of normal cognitive function to begin with.

Maybe we should think about the best defense against crazy people, rather than trying to blame someone for what they do?

Someone else do it though, I'm an unmotivated Manchild who plays videogames and lives in an over gorified fantasy realm to escape the horrers of reality, and I'm over it.

DevCo

hobob

heavenlyeire

Jack Thompson is a Miami attorney who has appeared on roughly 250 national and international television programs about the hazardous sale of violent video games. He has appeared on 60 Minutes twice, the Today Show eight times, and before state legislatures testifying as to this public safety hazard. He was recently profiled on ABC's Nightline, and he is the author of the internationally distributed Tyndale House book Out of Harm's Way about this problem. The publisher deleted from this book the chapter presenting a fictionalized account of a student who jumps onto the stage of a school auditorium and opens fire with a shotgun. The publisher said it was "too disturbing" and would alarm the public (emphasis added).
"

kephirra

primateforever

Now I realize that I'm probably not "typical" for my age group, but to generalize as you did that "the old generation will never understand gaming" is as incorrect a statement as saying 'all school-shooters trained on "murder simulators"'. It simply isn't so.

The "old generation" were, in fact, the true early adopters.

VeeKaChu

Now that I think of it I played Counter-sStrike in college, along with many other people on campus. How the hell did I survive? How did I not kill anyone. Wow, I must be the exception I guess.

Congrats again Jack you really nailed it and that is what is really the important part of this whole tradegy. I will be praying for the next grusome, scary, disgusting tradegy for you to have you moment to shine again.

Hand_O_Death

baked ham

Gonzodamus

I have noticed that the only people in my circle of friends that play Counter-Strike are the ones that are more likely to bring a gun to college and kill everybody.
Just like how all my friends who play Portal deal with quantum physics, and Final Fantasy players deal with swords and ancient mysticism, and Devil May Cry people study demonology for a living, and Call of Duty players are hardcore soldiers.
It's another article about the same people in the media making the same lack of progress at persecuting video games for violence in reality. As long as the gaming community can accurately defend itself, no big deal.

Let's just hope another Hitler doesn't come along and plan an insurrection using World of Warcraft. That'll just ruin it for all of us - unless it works, maybe.

Eienhander

VBerg

godot

Think that this war is a noble adventure, and our troops are heroes who are willing to make this sacrifice for the good of mankind? Think again! The troops have donated most to the campaigns of Ron Paul and Barrack Obama (both decidedly ANTI-WAR)! In addition, over 50% of the troops who have been killed are either Reservists or National Guardsmen, both of whom should NEVER have been there in the first place.

The last eight years have been some of the darkest in American History, and the damage done to our reputation, economy, system of laws, etc. might never be repaired. If Bush had played a FPS, it would have been the closest he ever got to combat in his life.

bornonce

acrana

Gonzodamus

King Seafoam

BodyOfTheMany

Benstein

ktseymour

With that logic: Children == Murderers. Honestly, videogames are responsible for everything nowadays.

Marion517

Nest

I don't personally beleive in a god or anything of that nature, but I'm not sure there's a case to be made with what you're saying. Wars or murders that are justified by religion typically have alterior motives. A land grab is a land grab.

In this way, religion and games are similar. Christianity does not teach war; it teaches tolerance. Still idiots and psychopaths do disturbing things in the name of religion.

Gonzodamus

All the shootings outside of education establishments have nothing to do with video games.

That's how it works folks.

Antiflow

djcoffee

Sorry, New York Times, try again.

Voteforme2020

Let's not go there? Why not? Jack wants to make a case about how video games kill people. Why can't I make a case about how many people have been murdered, raped and pillaged in the name of his god?

dead_red_eyes

I'd be pretty surprised, actually, if a "popular", party-going guy is going to end up the lone gunman in some horrible tragedy. Not that I think intellectuals are any more likely, mind you, but it's pretty apparent that everyone who commits these horrible mass-shootings is a loner or lives a life of exclusion. Even when more than one has committed an act like this (i.e. Columbine or the D.C. sniper), there has been a definite, detached "us against the world" or "I was bullied and excluded" attitude, with a lot of the Ayn Rand philosophy and Darwinism used as an excuse (particularly in the Finland case, or I think it was Finland, the YouTube guy).

Strangelove

ggodo

subterfunk

MetaKz

meltyman

Is that a bad thing? I didn't party in college, and I haven't shot anyone.

Actaeus

That's not to say that I can't tell what's spin and what isn't. The important thing is to read multiple sources and use critical thinking to detect bullshit. People don't seem to do that.

Gonzodamus

pluckylump

godot

ggodo

Pickens

ThoseRaptureBlues

Jack Thompson is just a douchebag and I can't believe America lets Fox News operate with their blatant disinformation, but I guess it works in the governments favour to have this kind of journalism.

KirbyMorph

CaptLtrl

OmegaX123

garytek

Mally

garytek

dead_red_eyes

r0Be

king0v10GU

Deaths caused by video games = 0

Deaths caused by religion = COUNTLESS

Go stick that up your ass Jack.

dead_red_eyes

Strangelove

Exactly.

Mr Fortitude

From people that I've talked to in the armed services and interviews I've heard, I know how emotionally shut off they are about killing. The WWII days are over, the enemy is no longer the evil Nazi empire. The enemy in war can now be a twelve year old civilian with an AK47. Our soldiers go into the field knowing this and must be trained to shut off emotionally or die.

If it can be argued that something that happened to this guy caused him to do this, and I'm not saying it can, I think I know where the blame can be placed.

Gonzodamus

teerexx

GPman

Confusing association with causation: This is similar to the post-hoc fallacy in that it assumes cause and effect for two variables simply because they are correlated, although the relationship here is not strictly that of one variable following the other in time. This fallacy is often used to give a statistical correlation a causal interpretation. For example, during the 1990’s both religious attendance and illegal drug use have been on the rise. It would be a fallacy to conclude that therefore, religious attendance causes illegal drug use. It is also possible that drug use leads to an increase in religious attendance, or that both drug use and religious attendance are increased by a third variable, such as an increase in societal unrest. It is also possible that both variables are independent of one another, and it is mere coincidence that they are both increasing at the same time. A corollary to this is the invocation of this logical fallacy to argue that an association does not represent causation, rather it is more accurate to say that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it can. Also, multiple independent correlations can point reliably to a causation, and is a reasonable line of argument.

Gonzodamus

That's honestly the first thing that popped into my head. They, especially now, are teaching tactics of room-to-room combat and such.

PapaBear434

Gonzodamus

Didn't you see the word likely in there? Did you? Huh? You know how to read right?

dead_red_eyes

HykCraft

Please just let them heal. Pray for those you don't even know that they find some kind of answer to this event. Like I said, I still haven't gotten in contact with everyone I knew who went there but I do know a good fellow high school classmen was actually in the room when the gunmen started firing...and I'm glad she was able to get away unscathed.

ShtickYoMaMa

tshack

This maniac hid behind the screen, waited for everyone to show up, and then stepped out and opened fire. And if it's all to blame on video games, I think I see the correlation now.

I mean, sure, the freak killed seven or so people. That's bad enough. But now I realize he was a damn CAMPER. Now that's just unforgivable.

/I'll take one ticket to hell, nonstop. Window seat if possible, please.

PapaBear434

Digitalguardian

otarumx

We don't care about solving the problem, we care about assessing blame. That's why videogames are the easy target here, and anyone who want to cry bloody murder over Counter Strike should be ashamed of themselves because they are clearly trashing something they know nothing about.

stranger

Tei

maiky-nisute

WolfGod

Sure they were all over 40, but they are all also rational, reasonably intelligent people regarding most things. To hear them all knee jerk so uniformly (even when nothing from any news outlet had mentioned anything about videogames being a part of the shooter's life), really painted a picture to me of how conservative, non-gamers view the medium.

They don't need Jack Thompson to tell them games are bad, they think so already, and even without any kind of proof some people will pick the easy target.

The world is a much less scary place when you can easily define the cause for your fears, whether that definition has any basis in reality or not. It's just easier to scapegoat something that you don't understand than bother learning the facts about what really only care about condemning.

It's like people needing religion as a means to explain the inexplicable, to allay our fear of the unknown. Violence of this nature is so foreign to so many that they need to blame something equally a stranger to them so as to make sense of it. Me, I call that delusional behavior, but I also think that most people of means desire to exist in a constant state of delusion, particularly as they get older, and especially when they have kids to worry about.

What my experience regarding this tragedy has taught me is that blaming videogames for causing violence is nothing more than a psychological panacea for uninformed parents who'd rather judge something than spend the time required to understand it.

It just makes them sleep easier at night, which is all they really want anyway. It has nothing to do with solving the vastly more complex societal problems that actually do lead to violence like this, and serves the much less daunting task of making it easier for stupid people to feel like they can remain safely so.

That's the secret tragedy here. My heart brakes for those who lost loved ones at the hand of violence of any kind... but blaming social violence on videogames is akin to the Nazi's blaming Jews for their own, self inflicted economic hardship prior to WWII. Anyway, when was the last time a witch hunt solved anything?

(Sorry for the grandstanding)

stranger

As I said in the first Jacko article, this didn't have anything to do with video games and it still doesn't. It's a shame that attention lovers like JT and sensationalist headlines have to cloud the truth that it was just a terrible tragedy with loss of life connected.

Ninja-Z

Could it be that the games, or rather, the behavior in pursuing/engaging in these games, only exacerbates a trait already present in the shooters? I don't hate these people. They're not jerks or assholes, though it would seem as such at first sight. The shooters are deeply disturbed individuals, and I feel sorry for them where they're at a point in their lives where they just can't continue. I'm sorry for the victims too, and really just sorry for the society we live in--a society that not only wears at the individuals to the degree where they take violent action, where they can obtain the means to perform such an atrocity, and that our media almost encourages such behavior, selling the tragedy instead of searching for a cure. :/

cyruspowers

VeeKaChu

Violence is undoubtably an integral part of American society. Examining our culture from an outside perspective, it's clear that we glorify violence nowadays in the same way as our 50s culture glamorized smoking. Generations later, in retrospect, we clearly witness how pervasive smoking once was, regardless of its detrimental aspects that, at the time, were unknown.

The similarities between violence and smoking doesn't necessarily extend beyond their prominence in our culture, though. The detrimental effects of glorifying violence in fictional mediums are speculative at best, and correlating acts such as these school shootings does little more than focus on a single aspect of a disturbed student's life in a society where exposure to violence is as regular as exposure to sunlight.

Do we blame skin cancer on spending time outside, or instead do we suggest that people who willingly go outside prepare with the proper protection? What's far more important than bearing witness to these acts and placing blame on a single medium among many that expose these unstable individuals to violence is a preemptive focus on differentiating between fantasy and reality early on in children's lives.

If 'training' is instead the focus of scrutiny, then it's important to evaluate the nature of videogames and the acts they emulate. With respect to Counter-Strike, the game revolves around the simple notion of pointing and clicking. The degree of 'training' received from such a simple mechanism is less than some movies rated as low as PG by the MPAA that give an understanding of appropriate posture when firing a weapon. The notion of pointing and shooting is simple enough to derive for, I feel comfortable saying, any college student, regardless of their Counter-Strike experience.

The amount of technical knowledge and/or motivation gained from having played Counter-Strike is negligible at best.

Heliophage

psychotic killers are SoOoooOOoOOOo inconsiderate.

relax_guy

moremeds

WillW

Playing a violent game is not the cause of becoming violent. A violent person may enjoy playing a violent game, but the game doesn't make him any more or less crazy than he already was. This kid was out of his gourd, and something he played three years earlier didn't make him that way.

Islandkiwi

Candlejack

TheRubin

StopTheOncoming

KM91

SuperMekman

Stop covering these idiots making these ridiculous claims, please.

mva5580

I knew this would happen...I was just wondering when...my condolences to those involved...

JGab

robnubis

Milkham

catapult37

Gospel X

Was there a death in the family or something?

PsycheDiver

mx5

crazyjdivola

Dreadfish

GG

Cell9song

Pombar

And not to change the subject but why is it that JT in that video in the other news post still talks about the VT shooter playing CS, when friends and family said he never played games.

It's a sad thing that this happened yes, but the truth is we should be surprised how little this happens instead of being surprised how much it happens. Look at the figures for depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and so on...

[www.nimh.nih.gov]

MantisDragon

"Other details of his life emerged Friday, including short-lived stints as a prison guard and service in the military. Kazmierczak enlisted in the Army in September 2001, but was discharged in February 2002 for an "unspecified" reason, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said."

Okay. To get kicked out of the army the days, you have to be REALLY messed up. Also, the Army trains our children to use guns! They're a murder simulator!

superberg

Neer'mo

This situation is only going to get worse. The worst thing that could probably happen? Government-enforced restrictions should they decide that video games are the cause of such horrible events and the ESRB and parents alone cannot manage the situation. That would probably lead to restrictions on other forms of media as well.

Neer'mo

Next you'll tell me people smoked weed in the 60s!

crazyscreenwriter

Justcrim

kevinyung89

How old is he again, like 10? Talk about immature...

Zenax

ON another note, CSS is now ultraviolent? yeah I can see the similarities to A Clockwork Orange, fucking idiots.

Flawless101

You have a point there. We tend to focus on something so trivial. Of course, nothing is trivial about a school shooting, but as for the cause? Why not focus on why he didnt take his medication? How was he able to purchase a shotgun and sneak it into the school? These are the real issues with this shooting, not whether or not the guy played video games or not.

And then, yes, there are even worse things happening around the world. So, I know JT is a moron and stuff, but I dont have to post on this cursing him out or anything. Big deal. He wont get ligislation to restrict or ban video games, he wont convince America that these ae evil. Hell, eventually, America is going to be run by the people who grew up playing "violent" video games that teach you to reload by pressing square. We ought to focus on more serious news.

TheSonicGamer

ManjiKengo

"NYPost reporter crazy for extreme slander"

Neer'mo

oh poop. :O

oh well I try and not listen to Jack T and fox news so thats double for JT on Fox News

niall077

ManjiKengo

Maiken

Alright, I'm done. See yas.

ThoseRaptureBlues

Too bad, huh?

YUYU

Ignatius

robnubis

Wyld

Draconis

Both are shit, I prefer the NYT because of their columnists for arts, technology and sports but will skip opinion and politics. The Post is Toilet Paper material, after recycling of course... too harsh on your posterior fresh from the kiosk.

Funny how you could manage to snatch like 40 copies of the Post on the subway but only like 3-4 of the Times laying around abandoned.

zoesch

1Truthsayer

Blackjack1353

Kyle81

niall077

i'll bet just about 95% of male in US play video games at one point or another...so every single violence can be blamed on video games...

and also driving, drinking, and smoking kills more people than "video game" violence but you don't hear "We need to ban!" from some media group...

related to mortality rate in US....old age is #1 killer...STOP AGAING, DAMMIT!!!

icepick314

FP Bleentastic has cake

This is the same paper that is broadcasting a federal witness' whereabouts and calling him a rat after bringing down one of NY largest mob families.
Way to go!

heretrix

Toasticus

Sniper_Zegai

InsolenceAndHeresy

You sick Fuck.

blacksamurai87

Blackjack1353

DOC409

artistpavel

Cartman86

ManjiKengo

But yes, the reason Thompson will never be seen as having a legitimate point is that all his arguments are based on the same, flawed, post-hoc fallacy. Maybe he would've been better off as a NYPost writer than a lawyer, huh.

Pombar

cooler_dood

Jesus Christ

No.. no sir... I can barely ride my bike. My stealthiness is about as good as the incredible hulk passing undetected through Smurftown. And my aim with a gun... well, I have no idea about that, but if it's anything like my aim with throwing paper balls into the wastebin from my bed, it's not looking so hot either.

MelodyKitn

pylon_trooper

munim

Kavatar

tamago007

mordennight

No wai!

TRT-X

Pombar