Also I noticed there are no Current Events or News channels. Not really sure this belongs in the channels I put them in.

^ I think you've got it. Except maybe * lies.

Yes, DEFINITELY *lies. I was going to say * wtf instead of worldaffairs in the submission I was about to put up, but otherwise, you got it.

I found it via RPS:

"The shooting has thrown everyone - even more than any terrible killing in a high school - because Steven Kazmierczak doesn’t fit into any of the easy stereotypes for those who might usually perform such a crime. From the scraps of information we have, it seems he had recently stopped taking psych meds, and taking into account his actions, would indicate paranoid schizophrenia. Obviously this is speculation. But intriguingly, it’s speculation based on facts, rather than randomly attributing a cause de jour in order to propogate someone’s personal agenda.

The opening question (once we get past the entertaining moment of the anchor accidentally sharing everyone’s wishes):

“What does it tell you about this guy, the suspect, that he’s twenty-seven years old - he’d already graduated - not an 18 year-old, a 17, 18, 19 year-old student currently enrolled?”

Thompson’s reply:

“Well, we find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started, for example, playing violent video games you can, er, more likely copycat the behaviours in the games.”

The rest of his speech is the usual nonsense and undemonstrable claims about a connection between previous high school shootings and video games, but it’s this first sentence that merits the most attention.

Thompson’s a lawyer, so I’m not going to say he’s lying. But I will say what he says makes no sense in any possible way. Even if there were these “brain scan studies”, how exactly would a functional MRI demonstrate the likelihood of a “copycat” shooting? Is there an animated picture of a little pixel gunman firing a weapon on the scans? It’s gibberish. It’s the sort of woo-woo nonsense you expect to hear from someone trying to explain how their crystals prevent cats from being afraid of ghosts. “Harvard you say?! Gosh, that sounds scientific!” It’s embarrassing.

The most frustrating thing about this man’s escapades is it obfuscates what might be a very serious subject. What if violent videogames could have a negative correlative effect on young people? This is something we would surely like to know, and see studied rationally. People like Thompson (who encourages far greater feelings of violence in me than any “training simulator” like, er, Counter-Strike: Half-Life ever has) stifle this discussion through their sensationalist bullshit.

To conclude, I’d like to transcribe his last sentence.

“One of the things personally disturbing for me dist, including the fact that we have a community now of survivors and victims’ families all across the country like at Perduco who go through the trauma of these type events with the families who are, uh, most immediately hit in this way most recently because they themselves have endured these type situations is the, um… err, the… uh, fact that, you’ve got, um, uhhh, uh, I wrote a, I’m sorry I lost my train of thought, because, uh, but, uh, I wrote a book called Out Of Harm’s Way for a Chicago publisher in which, the, the only chapter they deleted was a fictionalised of, of one of these incidents in which I I said that a kid should walk onto a stage in an audatorium and open fire with a shotgun and they dist they deleted it because it was too disturbing.”

“Campus shooting expert” indeed."

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by Krupo.

This guy makes me so angry. How can you get admitted to the bar and yet still be so stupid???

>> ^Krupo:
This guy makes me so angry. How can you get admitted to the bar and yet still be so stupid???

Actually there have been several attempts to disbar him, or at least threats. He's got quite the history of teeing people off, often former supporters.

I've actually gone through a series of psychological journals looking at studies on this, along with some meta-studies, and the answer isn't very clear, as there are often contradictory studies. The general consensus seems to be, violent video games increase aggression in the short term. The long term affects aren't clear (longitudinal studies take a lot more time and effort than sticking a kid in a room and having him play counter strike for 2 hours). The key word here is aggression, and not violence. I'm fairly certain I remember reading a study saying the aggression levels were comparable to other competitive activities. Those that are already aggressive seemed to react more strongly to violent video games, meaning they were much more aggressive than other children.

My personal view on the matter is that these people play violent video games because it feeds their compulsion. That doesn't mean I think all people who play violent video games do it for that reason. I think it's just one symptom and there are generally a lot of other signs. Of course so far there has been no indication this person played video games, or that he "disturbed" before the event. The only clue to a reason why so far has been that he stopped taking his medication. And depending on exactly what it is and what its for, that can be enough. As far as the guy responsible for Virginia tech Cho, played counter strike in high school, I don't think there were any indications he played after that. He also wrote violent stories and quoted Shakespeare passages. So I'd say by the Thompson line of reasoning writing and Shakespeare cause people to be violent as well. I think people like Thompson are just looking for something easy to place the blame on. Something more identifiable as a target rather than something more abstract such as mental illness or societal forces.

Uwe Boll and Jack Thompson could be considered as the most evil people in the world of video games...

Uwe Boll destroy video game reputation with bad movies while Jack thompson blames video games for any violence in the world...

Citing Jack Thompson's logic, my video gaming experience means am on par with Pol Pot on the genocide scale.

Many in the older generation cannot distinguish fictional violence from real world violence. They don't understand that team deathmatch is just an update of cowboys and Indians, w/o the racism.

"arh, um, ahh, i lost my train of thought", not much of a thinker is he!

has he seen Bowling for Columbine? there's a point to it's name.

Is this guy for real? Videogames are responsible? Unbelievable. Stupidity.