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Ayup. I was thinking about posting this originally as a news story, but Kei and I (and others) felt that perhaps this avenue would be a little more appropriate.
A'ight, so who's familiar with stage magicians Penn & Teller? How about their tv show "Bulls--t!"? Essentially, they take a topic or organization or something that's big on people's minds . . . and then, well, they call "bulls--t" on it. They've picked apart PETA, conspiracy theorists, even Boy Scouts (specifically for not allowing homosexuals/atheists join); they've also hit more controversial things like the War on Drugs, gun control, and even Creationism and such. In general, they're foul-mouthed about it, unflinching in their presentation, and for the most part funny as all hell as they tell it like they see it. They're not perfect, but they get their points across nicely.
Well, they tackled violent video games. They took a 9 year old kid who plays video games and put an AR-15 in his hands to see if he'd become a psychopath; they look into the apparent correlations between teen gaming and teen violence; they even interviewed Jack "The Disbarmentor" Thompson. It's funny, it's vulgar, and at the end, it's even pretty poignant. If you have half an hour to kill at all this week, take a watch.
That said, there's gonna be a lot of cussing and a lot of video game guns and gibblets. If either of those bother you, I'd recommend not watching the following linked videos:
http://kotaku.com/5313559/watch-penn--tellers-video-game-bullshit-episode
I'm still floored by the very last couple minutes of this episode . . .
As in previous posts, it's been stated that violence has escalated due to anime. I would just like to say that there's always been a debate about violence-inducing television or video games. It's always going to be out there. We could argue this point with people making Death Notes and then trying to remake Naruto moves. But, the anime or video game is not at fault it's the person. 'Guns don't kill people. People kill people.'
So we could really argue it both ways. Yes, the anime is what spurred the people into thinking such things were 'good' ideas; but, then again people also have common sense, though they very rarely use it. It's still there. Anime really isn't to blame--it's just easy to blame.
So, any other thoughts, post 'em in the comments.
-ink.black.sky
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