Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months you would know that the loony tune who massacred all those children in Norway is currently on trial for his crimes.
Thankfully we don’t have to pretend he isn’t a cold blooded killer as he’s happily admitted to the slaughter and is now just wasting the planets time by arguing it was in self defence.
But that’s not why we’re talking about him today, no the reason he’s making gaming news again is that for some reason this time around the mainstream media aren’t actually blaming gaming for his madness.
Generally when someone loses their mind and goes around killing people the first thing that hits the news is that this 18-35 year old male played videogames and therefore that was the cause of his violence.
I’m yet to find an 18-35 year old male who doesn’t play any sort of games myself so I’m not sure it’s a valid indicator but that never stopped Fox, CNN, Time, NYT and the rest blaming our favourite past time.
However this time the vast majority of mainstream news sites are ignoring the fact that he played World of Warcraft and Time has even gone as far as to publicly state that it probably means nothing at all. They also go on to point out that the latest research into violent video games has found no correlation between increased aggression and violent video games, well no more than any contact sport or say a caffeine.
So in essence, yes violent video games do lead to slightly higher levels of aggression but no more so than little Timmy’s PT lesson or that Red Bull he’s swigging while watching Animaniacs.
So the question of this morning is simply, do you think mainstream media has finally caught up to the fact that gaming isn’t evil or is this just a flash in the pan due to the extreme nature of his crimes?
Last Updated: April 18, 2012
