Once Again the Internet and Video Games Blamed for Violence

You can jump on Call of Duty: MW3 at just about any hour and find well over 100,000 people playing, clearly – if you follow CNN and scared mother logic – millions of crazed killers are training and on the verge of snapping and bringing their video game violence to real life.  Add to the fact that COD is but one of countless violent video games available to play and we’ve got a pretty serious situation on our hands.

via CNN

Most troubling of all is Breivik’s obsession with the multiplayer role-playing World of Warcraft, a violent online game that he played “full-time” between 2006 and 2007. Indeed, one of the few times that he smiled this week was when the image of his World of Warcraft character was displayed in court.

Perhaps, stay with me for a minute here, he smiled because they displayed a video game character in a court room.  For absolutely no reason at all.  As if the avatar Breivik played behind has any bearing on what he did or played any part in the build up.  But, clearly it is “most troubling of all..” because it’s no biggie at all that he shot 77 kids in cold blood.

Beyond that though I’d love to know how a game with combat that is based around magic and melee weapons like swords and mallets somehow taught him to use firearms.  Oh, wait.  He actually used COD for his hardcore training.  Surely some of the survivor accounts include having seen him do 360 no scopes off of balconies. When he called in his UAV and AC-130 from his incredible killstreak things must have really gotten messy.

It couldn’t of possibly been in the shooting club that he learned how to use rifles and handguns to shoot at targets. Of course not, he obviously learned to shoot by playing COD!

I will lay some credence to the idea that COD prepared him for the event as being called a “faggot” endlessly on Xbox Live by twelve year olds will light the fire for when you go outside and ACTUALLY shoot said twelve year olds.

The situation reminds me of this great Penn and Teller Bulshit episode about computer games and violence:

I’m sorry but Call of Duty, while fun, is just about as useful in learning how to shoot an actual weapon as Farmville is in helping you become a successful farmer.