Yeah, we've all heard it before. Kid takes guns to school, kids shoots everyone, Marilyn Manson gets blamed. What do I think about this? I think it's bullshit.
Take myself for example. I grew up in sunny Rhyl, North Wales. I started life on a farm where death was quite a big part of my life. From an early age I was exposed to sheep being torn apart by dogs, foxes being eviscerated in front of my eyes, lambs I had bottle fed were taken away for salughter and rabbits choking to death in snares. I was also the product of a broken home and at the time my Dad enjoyed alcohol, let's say, a little more than he should have. At age 10 I was bought the Grand Theft Auto for the Playstation and I used to listen to Marilyn Manson, Slipknot and sometimes, for a treat, even Rammstein. By age 13 I had a shot gun certificate, giving me almost indiscriminate access to a gun. I was also the victim of bullying.
No rabbits where harmed in the making of this blog
Jesus Christ, with such exposure to violent computer games and television, access to a gun and my parents divorce hanging over my head, I'm surprised I didn't take a gun to school and blow everyone to pieces. But I didn't. And why? Because I'm not a complete fucking idiot who doesn't know the difference between things I see and hear and real life actions and consequences.
Sure, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the boys responsible for the Columbine Massacre had Marilyn Manson CD's but it's easier to push aside the Hanson and Wilco albums and find an easy source to blame, rather than actually trying to find the root cause.
So why does this kind of thing happen? I firmly believe that music, television, computer games are used as a scapegoat in these situations when real life factors such as bad parenting, poor anti-bullying schemes and especially in America, easy access to guns (I had to have a formal interview with the police as well as several lessons on gun safety) are the main factors behind these tragedies. When I heard that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were allowed to play Resident Evil in their cells, I wasn't especially outraged about their game of choice, I was outraged that these little bastards should have any luxuries whatsoever.
'Super Nanny' Jo Frost, in her program 'Extreme Parental Guidance' conducted some research apparently with'startling' results. I'll summarize what she found but you can watch it
here too, from 32.37-37.55. 20 kids played a football game, 20 kids played a violent war game. After 20 minutes an experiment was done on whether they would be more helpful and empathetic to others. The interviewer would intentionally knock off a cup of pens and see whether the kid would help. In the first experiment he worked with one of the kids who played the football game. He knocked over the cup of pens and the polite little kid offered to help him. Fair enough. In the second interview the little bastard who played the violent computer game DIDN'T HELP. Well, that's proof enough for me.
Except, if you watch the body language of the man conducting the experiment he often quite clearly influences the results. With the first non-violent kid, knocks them over, the interviewer stands up and begins to pick them up and then the polite little kid offers to help. Then we have 3 violent game kids who 'ignore it.' Except they don't ignore it, they are all startled, but the interviewer continues the questions immediately like nothing has happened and doesn't gesture towards his cup of dropped pens at all.
Overall, only 40% of the violent computer game kids helped pick up pens comparted to the 80% of the non-violent kids. Considering they only interviewed 40 kids altogether I'm still not convinced, especially if the subliminal gestures of the interviewer come into play. We only see something like 7 clips of the 40 kids so you can never know what happened in the others, apart from the non-violent kids helped more often than the others, we don't knwo under what circumstances. Also, we'd never know how these ANY of these kids would have acted before playing the game. The numbers may have stayed the same. At the end of day, the interviewer is an advocate for non-violence in computer games so is going to have his own particular bias and would want the 'evidence' to be on his side. The voice-over man then makes a sweeping statement:
'Does playing violent computer games make us less empathetic to others? When Doug and his colleagues do this experiment they always get the same results. YES.' Empathy towards a cup of pens is not the same as empathy to others. If he had knocked a puppy off the desk I think he would have had strikingly different results.
While I don't think violent computer games or heavy metal music are responsible for the tragedies in Columbine or Virginia Tech, I do think it is up the parents to decide what is acceptable for their children to play. If you have a problem with your child being exposed to games like Grand Theft Auto, then don't let them play it. It's become such an accepted thought that these mediums are responsible but they are relatively new concepts. Do you think Jack The Ripper played GTA and thought it was acceptable to murder prostitutes? Do you think Adolf Hitler had been listening to some anti-Jewish, skinhead speed-metal the day he decided thought up The Final Solution? Of course not.
I still think it's bullshit.
