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[iamyourgoldfish]

31 confirmed dead from the shooting this morning at Virginia Tech.

And it only took Jack Thompson 6 hours to go on Fox News and blame it on videogames.

edit: Hey, looks like the Phelps brigade is getting up on this too.

Keep pushing those agendas, guys!

Comments

[noahtall]

Here's what I don't understand about the videogame theories: from what I know of gammers, they'd be more likely to spend hour after hour in the game rather than go through the trouble of procuring a real gun and going ballistic. Battlefield 2142, World of Warcraft, Counter Strike, all of these sorts of games suck you in and get you to play over and over until you're an expert with a high kill to death ratio or taunted on every server you join for sucking so much. I think news stations and other media latch on to pop-theories like this about all sorts of things because they perpetrate views that media people hook onto about the downward spiral of humanity. It's becoming popular to think that humanity is increasingly evil and ill-natured. Hooray for political correctness and postmodern insanity.

[iamyourgoldfish]

It's not 'videogame theories' as such. Thompson is pretty clearly insane. "Counterstrike will make you kill your parents" has been his schtick for some time now (see Wikipedia; I first heard of him in the context of A Modest Video Game Proposal". He's been unable to make a living as a lawyer since being disbarred in Florida, so he's been subsisting as a talking head for stories like these. Fox News brought him on because they had some airtime to fill, and because, well, they're Fox News and they like fair and balanced views like his. Not that the shootings had anything to do with videogame violence (the story at this point is that the shooter was motivated by problems with his girlfriend), but it fills time when no new information is coming in, and Thompson's a good Christian Republican. It doesn't exactly surprise me that they're allowing him to push an unrelated agenda, but it certainly is disappointing

[fluffykira]

Well of course because even the college age student is incapable of thinking and understanding his actions, and playing with real guns is exactly like it is in video games. Just blame it on his parents. /sarcasm

[electrolite37]

There's nothing like a national tragedy for getting ones agenda on. People may have died, but there are votes to be earned!

God people annoy the shit out of me sometimes.

Except you, for you are made of awesome.

[davewf]

Dude, we should be celebrating. This guy has pushed the envelope! Set a new record not just for school shootings but for mass shootings in general! UPWARD AND ONWARD AMERICA!

Furthermore I find it more than a little duplicitous that when as many unarmed Iraqi civilians are found dead in Baghdad gutters pumped full of standard issue NATO rounds, I'm not prompted to care about it. But when Americans do the dying rather than just the killing, suddenly it's a fucking media carnival.

[magistar2]

I read this article and it made me think of this post.

Apparently, the whole cause of this situation is because people aren't allowed to carry concealed handguns on campus.