And the "Atilla the Hun award for Misdirection" goes to...
Given the choice between thumping or shooting a few pixels in a videogame and doing the same thing to the Yoof around here, I know which I prefer (not that some of them couldn't do with a clip 'round the ear, mind).
How exactly is some mouse potato supposed to be a threat in the Real World when every day the Government is telling us we're a nation of obese lardbutts with the physical prowess of the average housebrick?
It fracks me off when some moron with nothing better to do starts bleating to all and sundry that anyone who plays violent videogames (i.e. me!) is a very real Menace To Society and should be locked away for the Good Of Humanity. So a new study shows an increase in the number of people who spend a lot of time on the Internet who have gotten irritated by someone in the real world. Whoop-de-do. What about the increase in the number of crimes commited by young people who spend most of their time hanging out on the streets getting pi**ed on cheap booze? Or the decrease in the number of policemen and women on the streets to catch them at it?
I could be arrested for carrying an open bottle of low alcohol lager on the local beach (happen I should be dumass enough to do it) but come nightfall - with the arrival of the boy racers with their groupies and hangers-on - and suddenly the council's zero tolerance zone seems to disappear. Hmm, single overweight adult walking on the shingle or 17-year-old driving a tricked-out Hot Hatch bankrolled by the British benefits system - remind me, which is the bigger threat to other people?
But of course the Powers That Be will take this survey and add it to all their other statistics that show we cannot be trusted to surf the 'Net without Big Brother watching our every move. Then they will remove all the violent games and outlaw possession of them - I mean, EVERYBODY knows that, if the government makes something illegal, it solves the problem overnight. Just look at the effect the post-Dunblane gun laws have had on gun crime, or the way the new Extreme Porn laws have stopped rapes and assaults, or the "crackdown" on uninsured and unlicenced drivers has cut the number of illegal drivers on the roads...
One final thought - has the author(s) of this report ever spent time in a British supermarket? It's not the 'Net users who worry me - it's the teenage mom (or owrse still, the mid-life crisis Mom who dresses like a teenager but without the benefits of youth) with her kids (one pushing the cart full of groceries, the others IN the cart) or the OAPs wandering aimlessly from aisle to aisle, looking one way while pushing their huge cart 'full' of a couple of apples, a bit of meat and a dozen tomatos somewhere completely different. Hell, even the staff pushing those great big cages of restock are safer than most of the general public in those places!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
