Disclaimer (?) : I know this is a really touchy subject, so I am not going to put any opinion in here. I also realize this is old, and a lot of you have probably already heard this, or seen it before. I just posted it because i wanted to see people's reaction towards this. ''On the heels of Jack Thompson’s rush to blame video games in the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, Dr. Phil has chimed in with support for this theory. Speaking on Larry King Live tonight, Dr. Phil had this to say on the issue, “The problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you - that if these people 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, add in a dose of rage, the suggestability is just too high. And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.†At the time of this writing, the identity of the shooter (or possibly shooters) has not been released. So Dr. Phil’s suggestions are not based on credible, or any, specific information about this particular shooting. At least he lumped in movies while throwing out baseless and pre-mature conclusions. We are just hearing the beginning of what will certainly be many people placing the blame for this tragedy on video games and the mass media culture.'' Link Discuss
Eh, he needs to make money somehow. But Virgina Tech and video games weren't really correlated. Now take Colombine, and then you might find a few connections.
How about dumb ass parents not teaching their kids the difference between reality and fiction. Was the same with violent music and such. Parents just need to learn how to raise their kids instead of relying on society to do it for them.
i still tink its sooo lol that they blamed the vtech shootings on counter strike saying that it was a realistic representation of killing people
To be fair, he DID imply that all us normal people aren't really subject to fits of violent rage because of the way our society is going....and he didn't just blame video games either. The part of this quotation of his that I noticed the most was "You take that and mix it with a psychopath, sociopath, , or someone suffering from a mental illness, and the suggestibility is just too high" In other words, people who are either mentally unstable or have difficulties telling the difference between reality and non-reality. Of course, that's not to say he's jumping the gun slightly by saying what he did; one could pose the question is really whether or not these 'mentally ill' would have committed crimes like this without the 'glamorized violence'. To play Devil's advocate for a moment...he DOES have a point, one way or another. Violence IS inextricably linked with much of our culture. Maybe it's human nature; after all, human beings are often inherently violent at their core. At least he included movies and other forms of media in his generalized statement, and did not simply say "It's all cuz of them new fangled vidjamagames".