“As we continue to work towards creating school safety programs that protect all children, the President will be meeting with video game industry leaders and members of Congress to discuss violent video game exposure and the correlation to aggression and desensitization in children,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said Wednesday. “This meeting will be the first of many with industry leaders to discuss this important issue.”
So begins the pivot away from gun control towards long debunked scapegoats, as the First Amendment is sacrificed on the altar of the Second.
Even as a conservative type, this is plainly deflection. It is only going to serve to piss gamers off. But it can be a good thing for gamers, You will have the Right pushing an agenda of less violence/causation in games and the Left continuing to push a politically correct agenda in them. The only thing that will happen is that gamers will push back and eject all political ideology out of games in general… As it should be.
Only the fringe on each side pushes against video games and video game makers and players largely ignore both (with Gamergate being a notable exception).
Anecdotally I currently play an online game and am part of a (mostly) very conservative group of guys. None of us ever fuss about any of this stuff and just enjoy playing the game.
Tempest in a tea pot and clearly trying to deflect (as you noted) from a difficult conversation about violence in our society.
Yep. Thanks to video games, people have this idea of SMGs being something used on WWII battlefields, instead of their rightful place in home defence, classrooms and wacky churches.
Seriously though, in talking about a correlation I think they missed out the “lack of a” part. Games are popular basically everywhere and their popularity has increased hugely during the period where violence has dropped steeply in the developed world.
But anyway, way to show the world what standing up to the NRA looks like, Trump.
OK, I’m not going to claim that violence in video games is more responsible for these shootings than the access to guns, or even that it bears any responsibility at all (I really doubt it.) But come on, Trump meeting with some people from the video game industry, saying God knows what to them while they most likely nod their heads and pretend like they give a shit, is a far cry from sacrificing anything on an altar.
He just totally skipped that step of determining any correlations between the two. Instead he jumped straight to talking to the “industry leaders”. What the hell do they know about correlation of violence and games? Nothing. So he’s going to chastise them? Is that the point? Weak ass.
The correlation is between violence and gay marriage. Clearly.
I’d like it if they were openly derisive of Trump, to the point when during the photo-op when Trump is smiling for the camera, all the industry leaders have pulled out their smartphones and tablets and are pretending to be playing games on them.
Kids involved in school shootings all played violent video games! As have kids who are Eagle Scouts, kids who play in the school band, kids who are in 4H, etc.
It’s a gift he was seemingly born to, and he has spent a lot of time honing and perfecting that gift to a fine point. I’d say he’s the top tax money waster president along with a string of other top spots he gets equally because of his gifts and just hard work. Presidents this bad and this clueless don’t just grow on trees, they have to be made, but hard work isn’t enough…you need to be born with the talent to be this gods awful.
As to the OP, yeah, he’s just trying to muddy the waters, inject some chaos into the mix, get folks angry and talking about other things and hoping that this will die down and the public will lose interest in the whole thing. It’s the way he operates…say some ridiculous and outrageous stuff, wait for a bunch of people to do the work to figure out he’s full of shit, shift the discussion goal posts to his new topic, let it roll around for a while, then wait for the next crisis or event where he can do it all again. Rinse repeat. Eventually, we forget about the ridiculous deflection he did last month because the sheer amount of horseshit spewing from his mouth is difficult to keep up with.
I strongly suspect there is a higher percentage of school shooters who played violent video games than Eagle Scouts who do, and no doubt some busybody pol will cite that as proof that we need to get rid of video games. Rather, its that the sort of person who is of the violent mindset to actually shoot up a school, is going to be the sort of person who are particularly drawn to such games. But even if such games were banned they would still be the sort of person who was drawn to violence and is capable of shooting up a school.
My best friend growing up was an Eagle Scout (and is now an Army officer) - I think we probably spent approximately 950,000 hours playing Goldeneye and Mortal Kombat.
I’ve played video games and have never shot anyone IRL. I sure hope Trump takes that into consideration. Any way, as long as we can arm teachers it’s all good. I wonder what will happen first: an armed teacher uses a weapon to prevent violence, or an armed teacher is disarmed by a student/disgruntled janitor/someone else who uses the weapon to cause violence.
Actually, this issue has been studied extensively, and no-one has found any link between video games and real-life violence. I’m sure the industry leaders will come fully prepared to make that point to His Orangeness.
