My Hundredth Post
Part of me wanted to put this in a different order, so it wasn’t quite this heavy, but as it means a lot to me, and this is so important, well, here it is.
A couple of days ago (again, sorry for the delays on this stuff), some kids did something absolutely horrible. They killed a homeless man, after having beaten him ruthlessly. Rocks, bricks, and even the man’s own BBQ grill were thrown at him. They then took a pipe and a baseball bat (that was there for his protection) and beat him to death. Afterwards, one of the boys smeared his own feces on the body, and cut the man’s face to make sure he was dead.
The story was covered by CNN, and I saw it on Penny Arcade. Well, today the…umm..step mother of the boy wrote Gabe about her experience with him.
The boy claimed that the experience was like the rush one gets from video games. Ok. That’s just ass. Plain and simple. He knew full and well what he was doing, and provided a convenient scapegoat. This child had something seriously wrong with him. Take the fall, dammit. Don’t blame anyone else. So, there’s one gripe.
The other is with the institutions that are set up to protect children against violence. Now, I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be there. They should. Just as there are messed up kids, there are even more completely fucked parents that should never have kids to begin with. But dammit, examine the entire situation instead of just blindly taking someone’s word. In anything, especially something this serious. Peoples lives are ruined by these accusations; those of the children, and those of the parent’s.
What the hell is going on with kids today? Was it really this bad when we were growing up and we just didn’t hear about it? I can’t see blaming the media as much as is done now. And perhaps a lack of cohesive family where influences are shared rather than simply attempted to be given in passing. But, then you end up with situations like this one, where it isn’t the parents. The parents were trying.
Well, to attempt to lighten it up, perhaps it was the evil gene. Recessive until this generation.
Hey Joe… check out something a little closer to home… Which was apparently a “prank that got out of hand.”
http://www.kirotv.com/news/11066895/detail.html
Well, if we’re gonna go close to home, and things getting out of hand, this happened when we were in high school, just down the street from my house.
Steve Camero
Unrelated to the story above, but, well. Yeah.
The boy claimed that the experience was like the rush one gets from video games. Ok. That’s just ass. Plain and simple. He knew full and well what he was doing, and provided a convenient scapegoat. This child had something seriously wrong with him. Take the fall, damnit. Don’t blame anyone else. So, there’s one gripe.
Research has clearly shown that violent video games physically re-wires a person’s brain. It’s different for each person, but repeated exposure to violent scenes in video games creates a numbing effect to killing.
Even the US Army knows it. That’s why they put out their video game. They understand that shooting at a round target and shooting at a target with a face on it stifles a person’s inherit revulsion to killing. Check out the F.A.Q. on the games homepage.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse, or that the kid should get away with it, but there clearly is an influence on children’s minds that must be accounted for.
Why do Americans seem to be more influencable by video games than practically anywhere else in the world though? Video games aren’t a US only product who only affects Americans. American in a general basis just seem to react more violently than the rest of the world.