A scapegoat is born!
Game industry folk everywhere should rejoice, for the media has birthed another scapegoat for society's violence, and so soon games will no longer bear the wrath of the Right.
I speak of course of the blogging movement, that menace that threatens to turn your kids into violent murderers.
This article appeared on MSNBC today: When Murder Hits the Blogosphere. The main focus being around the murder of 14 year old Kara Borden's parents by an 18-year old she met through her blog on MySpace.
Once again, new media and new technology are at fault. Not bad parenting. Of course nothing to do with their self-avowed Chistian faith.
Would the same level of media coverage happen if they'd not met online, but say, in an arcade instead?
Silly me. Of course. Because then it'd be the video games that caused it.
4 comments:
Hate to tell you, but the article had nothing "scapegoatish" in it... it was simply making light of the fact that Blogs are public, accessible, and a window onto the lives of those who write them. Nothing negative in it at all, indeed, it was mentioned that they potentially could have been used for good (ie preventing the tragedy).
Personally, I think GTA San Andreas made them do it. Games are at the root of all evil.
I have to disagree. The title was "When murder hits the blogosphere" which I'd say is definitely implicative in nature.
If they'd met on the phone, they'd not have titled it "murder hits the wires". If they'd met at the mall, they'd not have titled it "Eddie Bauer Bloodbath".
You are correct that the text of the article points more to their blogs being a window into the crime, but I thought the title was leading readers a bit.
Never judge a book by it's cover.
Just because there is a unique view into the criminal and victims via a blog, this is newsworthy.
Note that when a famous criminal's diary or notes or other written evidence of his/her state of mind is discovered, there is coverage of the text in mainstream media - "Diary of a Killer" - but no one is saying (nor is the author in your referenced piece) that the medium is causitive in crime.
I state, further, that GTA San Andreas has addled your mind and you cannot recognize the difference between accusation and conveyance.
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