14 DAY TRIAL // Jack Thompson had to say that the massacre taking place at Virginia Tech happened because of video games. He can't help it. It's like a compulsory thing I guess. Anyway, we shall see what other people have to say about this and why it appears that Thompson and his fellow believers (that games are to blame for everything bad happening in this world), are just waiting for something like this to happen, in order to apply their theories.
First of all, here's what Thompson had to say: "These are real lives. These are real people that are in the ground now because of this game. I have no doubt about it." Boring, as usual. This time he referred to Counter Strike, not GTA. Now, if by any chance you found that it's best to listen to grownups talking about this kind of thing, and not some news editor punk, have a look at what Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association had to say: "It's so sad. These massacre chasers - they're worse than ambulance chasers - they're waiting for these things to happen so they can jump on their soapbox."
And while Thompson refers to gamers as "knuckleheads," saying that playing video games is "mental masturbation" (this guy is twisted!), others seem to be joining his team (more or less), trying to fit video games somewhere in between, but again, unsuccessfully:
"The problem is we are programming these people as a society," said Dr. Phil McGraw. "You cannot tell me - common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorized on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high. And we're going to have to start dealing with that."
Then again, you can't blame them for hating video games - when they were born, all they had were tricycles and books. And Sternheimer points this out beautifully, mentioning a similar tragedy, occurring in 1966, when they didn't even have "Pong": "... before this week's Virginia Tech massacre, the most deadly school shooting in history took place at the University of Texas in Austin? in 1966. Not even "Pong" had been invented at that time."
It's just life Jack, there's nothing you can do about it. If it's not video games, it's film. If it's not film, then it's rock music. What if none of these had existed? What would Thompson blame then, bad weather?