Regarding the Jacksonville shooting

So it was only a matter of time before the politicians and the morally outraged attempted to somehow link what happened in the Jacksonville shooting with video games in an effort to stand on their soapbox to preach their political and moral politics. “Oh dear god help us all, the “simulated depravity” of video games is chipping away at our children’s souls!” So I ask all of the people who are now blaming video games for this latest shooting: What is the moral difference of between the make-believe of a simulated reality in a video game and a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers? It’s literally playing pretend, only difference it is a bunch of pixels on the screen. Some people especially the media and politicians who are unfamiliar with the video game medium treat video games as if they were some sort of infallible truth:

That if you shoot someone in a video game, then you are also capable of shooting someone in real life, forgetting that any sane person/gamer knows that games are fantasy not reality. People have been murdering and killing each other since the days of Cain and Abel, they did not need video games then and they certainly would not need them now. Considering just how big the video game industry is if games had any direct correlation with violence then we would be living in a hellish post-apocalyptic word. Between 1994 and 2010 the number of violent crimes among American youth fell by more than half while the sales of violent video games more than doubled. Video game violence causing real-world violence, no matter how much you talk about it, repeat it and claim that there is a link it won’t make the fact that there is no link more or less true.

The mental gymnastics did not work with rock music in the 50’s. It also did not work for metal music in the 80’s and it most certainly won’t work with video games. Everybody wants to blame something be it guns, race or video games. And don’t give me this garbage about entertainment media and video games glorifying gun violence, when the right to own a gun is enshrined in the American constitution. The media only seems to portray gaming as the reason behind bloodthirsty attacks, whereby gamers are a bunch of anti-social psychopaths ready to go postal at any moment. For those of you who remember the Columbine shootings, I leave you with a wise message, from a very unlikely source:

Marilyn Manson. Manson was interviewed in a documentary called Bowling For Columbine, where he had a few very interesting things to say on how the media reports on the entertainment industry. In the video it was noted that America dropped more bombs in Kosovo on the day of the Columbine shooting than ever before in that entire war. However, it went unnoticed as Marilyn Manson was too busy being blamed, alongside other media. The clip ends off with Manson being asked what he would say to the kids at Columbine, if they were in front of him. His words were as follows, “I wouldn’t say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say, and that’s what no-one did.” Even though the Jacksonville shooting and the Columbine shootings are two different incidents, which aren’t related, I feel that what Manson has to say is still important, and very relevant even 16 years after the Bowling for Columbine documentary was released.

The mental gymnastics did not work with rock music in the 50’s. It also did not work for metal music in the 80’s and it most certainly won’t work with video games. Everybody wants to blame something be it guns, race or video games. How about we just blame murders on murderers? Instead of indoctrinating the general public into believing that video games are responsible for these acts of violence. Why not instead look at why this is a constantly repeating cycle and how we can stop this from happening in the future. It almost feels like we are back in the 90’s again, blaming videogames for the crimes of some fucked up individual. Video games do not cause real world violence, and it seems easier to blame video games than provide an actual potential solution apparently…