Jack Thompson-- eat your heart out!

As video games are becoming more and more popular, there are always those who debate their influence on young kids. Jack Thompson is an attorney who is fixed on the idea that violence in the media (mostly video games) is turning our children against us. After every video game debut, he makes a point of having his opinion heard about why he thinks said video game is a social nuisance. My own opinion on the matter pushes the responsibility of violent children on the parents, the people who raised them and allowed them to play these games. Blaming the media for any social problem is just ignorant (and an easy scapegoat), because if anyone believes that the false reality depicted on television is real, who else's fault is it than their own for being so naive?

It isn't often that we hear these nightmarish stories where kids commit crimes and say they got the idea from Grand Theft Auto (or FEAR, or Halo, or Gears of War, or any other first-person shooter), but they definitely don't go unheard.

Two recent crime sprees were specifically blamed on the influence of GTA:IV by the kids who commited the crimes themselves. A group of 4-5 kids (ages ranging from 14-17) in some little po-dunk town ended up snatching a lady's purse and beating her up, stopping a car at an intersection and pulling the driver out to beat them up, stole the car, and then went on a vandalism spree. They said they were "bored" and got the ideas from GTA:IV. Another story out of India had a kid carjack someone or something, and he said he got the idea from the game TOO.

First of all, none of the kids were old enough to purchase the game themselves. So who DID buy it for them? Their parents. If a parent buys a kid a hammer, and the kid doesn't know that the hammer could cause severe head trauma when applied correctly, who's fault is it that the kid caved in his skull when experimenting with gravity? Yes, it was the kid who caused the trauma, but it was the parent who failed to educate their child that the combination of head + skull does not = happy fun time. A hammer is a hammer, and is used for hitting nails, not skulls. Second, where are the parents when their kids are playing these games? They obvioualy do not take an active role in their child's life, and are allowing society to raise them instead. That in itself is dangerous.

The reason I bring all this up is because another story came out where an 11-year old girl saved her family in a car accident, and she said she knew what to do because of? GTA! My hero! Here's an excerpt, and the full article:

It happened on August 27th around 9pm, as the Norris family of five was heading to Diamond, Illinois to visit relatives. Their 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee swerved off the road, hitting a guardrail and flipping four times before coming to a stop, caving in the roof and smashing out the back window. With her mother hanging upside down and her father pinned against the steering wheel, 11-year-old Audrey Plique climbed out of the back window and helped her parents and two younger siblings escape the car. The motivation for her heroic act, according to her mother Karen Norris? "She just knew, from playing 'Grand Theft Auto.' She saw on there that when a car rolls over, it can blow up. She knew that could happen to us."

Of course we all know that if a car rolls over it won't immediately burst into flames as depicted in all the GTA games (except IV). But even this act of heroism proves that her parents neglected to check the content of the game before allowing their child to play. The girl thought the car would blow up because that's all she knew. If her parents took an active role and explained that a car would not blow up if flipped over, perhaps she wouldn't have had such an immediate response to the incident. Of course, it is not even debatable of what she would have done if properly educated, either way she was a hero.

Eat it, Jack Thompson.