Every day or so some political figure is ready to make a fool of themselves and mock the intelligence of their audience by claiming something outrageous about videogames. Most of these figures and their statements are not brought to the public's attention but sometimes someone important enough does or says something and we get to write about it while making fun of his or her ignorance.
Today the newly elected
mayor of London, the capital city of the United Kingdom, chose to point towards videogames as one of the causes for rising knife related crimes in the city. He did so in an article for a newspaper and stated that "We must show young people that knives are not cool, and for that we need positive role models" while pointing out that he wished to "counteract the damaging influences drug-addled celebrities and violent video games and the lure of the life in the gang by providing opportunities".
In January 2007 the same Boris Johnson wrote a post for his website which he titled "The writing is on the wall - computer games rot the brain." In the text he claimed that videogames were "narcotics for children" and urged people to "garrotte the Game Boy and paralyse the PlayStation."
What Mister Johnson is oblivious to is the fact that videogames rarely feature knives as glamorous or effective weapons. If a video gamer really were led to violence he would not settle for a knife, he would probably go for a high caliber gun, the kind shooters find easier to deal with. Also, the mayor does not realize that his using terms like "garrotte" and "paralyse" can also be counted as an example of glorifying violence.
So if you're a gamer and live in London be on the look-out for Mr. Johnson and maybe explain to him a thing or two about videogames to make sure that he does not expend his
political capital without knowing the subject he is talking about.
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