Up in the late night

People have been trying to blame video games for violence in real life for ages.  The most well-known proponent of this concept (and possibly most ridiculed) is Jack Thompson, but it seems that a couple of human rights groups are jumping on the “Won’t anyone think of the children???” blame game bandwagon now.

Reported by the BBC today, two Swiss human rights groups have published the results of their analysis.

Twenty games were scrutinised to see if the conflicts they portrayed and what players can do in the virtual theatres of war were subject to the same limits as in the real world.

What

The

Frak??

First of all, they’re video games – “real world” isn’t really a factor.

The testers looked for violations of the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols which cover war should be waged.

(typos as taken from the BBC article)

So, what, there should be a video game International Criminal Court?  War crimes tribunal?  Maybe all 15 year olds should be shipped to Guantanamo Bay?

Given the state of the real world, you’d think human rights groups would have something better to do than start trying to decry virtual war crimes.  The human rights of real people are a little more important than the abuse of a handful of pixels in some kid’s bedrooms.  When you have terrorists running around beheading captured troops, or even just civilians, blowing themselves up, and generally being unpleasant, you’d think that would be worth studying more.

This whole idea that violent video games (or movies, or books for that matter) encourages or is responsible for violent acts in real life is ridiculous.  When Jon Venables and Robert Thompson kidnapped, tortured, and eventually murdered 2 year-old Jamie Bulger in the UK, accusations were flying around that the Child’s Play movies were somehow responsible for this horrific crime, for example.

But the whole concept is nothing more than an attempt to place the blame for violent acts, horrific crimes and abuses, onto something other than the perpetrators.  We want to believe that society is perfect, that people aren’t capable of committing such barbaric actions and war crimes, that something else must be responsible.

This idea that violent video games promote the concept that war crimes, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and abuse are “norms” is a desperate move to shunt the blame from reality to fantasy, to deny personal responsibility and for society to try to keep the illusion going that people who can commit such acts don’t really exist unless programmed to commit those acts.

As long as society wants to deny that feral humans, as I consider them – those who can commit such barbarism that it shocks the conscience of society as a whole, and tries to shift the blame onto games, movies, books, guns, or anything else, it’s simply deluding itself.

This report serves no purpose except to set up yet another “It wasn’t my fault” excuse at The Hague.  War crimes will happen, because in times of war the border between civilization and barbarism is emotionally fluid.  But the people who commit those crimes would have committed them with or without input from computer games, movies, books, guns, or anything else.

The propensity for violence, the lack of morality and honor that justifies atrocities, is already present in such people.  Even if they play video games, that doesn’t mean there’s causation.  The capacity is intrinsic to the criminal, so at best the most you can say is that they use the games as an outlet for that capacity.

If all schoolkids that shot up their school played golf, would golf then be considered to cause school shootings?  No!

The same lack of logic is more commonly seen with J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher In The Rye” … How many assassinations has this book ended up being “linked” with?  If I recall correctly, that mythology even managed to make its way into a couple of movies.  The book wasn’t responsible for the things people claim, and neither are video games, movies, books – or guns themselves.

Such groups would do far better if they worked on reinstating capital punishment in Europe so such feral humans can be dealt with properly, removed from society and put out of their misery.

Video games don’t violate the Geneva Conventions.

People do.

The Taliban didn’t play Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto didn’t teach them them to decapitate prisoners or throw acid in the faces of girls trying to go to school.  Quake didn’t train the IRA to put a car bomb on the street in Omagh, and Red Cell didn’t program Al Qaeda.

As much as “civilized” people wish it were otherwise.

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.