The Collegian

Issue date: 10/10/06 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Collegian

Every generation needs a whipping boy. A popular form of entertainment that they can use to blame for all the problems in the world rather than confronting the real source of these problems.

Past scapegoats include comic books, heavy metal, motorcycles, swing dancing, and even the printing press. Today, society's equivalent of Goldstein from 1984 is video games. Specifically, the extremely popular Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, which has become the target of zealous lawyers, lazy parents, and politicians trying to get votes from Red Staters who claim that the game encourages murder, theft, drug dealing, pimping, and other crimes.

An example of this 21st century witch hunt is occurring in New Mexico in the case of Cody Posey, a 16-year-old who is charged with murdering his family two years ago. Although Posey was the subject of abuse from his father, lawyers representing relatives of the slain family members are suing the creators of GTA for a staggering $600 million. They are literally claiming that the game taught Posey how to kill people and that he would have never murdered his parents and stepsister if he did not own that videogame.

This absurd lawsuit must be thrown out of court. There has yet to be irrefutable proof that violent forms of entertainment such as video games are responsible for turning people into vicious killers. Often, the people alleged to have been brainwashed by videogames are already mentally disturbed. In the case of Posey, he was abused by his father, which has been shown to physically and mentally damage a child far more than any video game can.

As much as it has yet to be proven that video games can cause perfectly normal individuals to think that murder is acceptable, there is also little proof that merely playing video games gives you the skills necessary to use weapons. Although it is true that some military agencies now use specialized video games for training purposes, commercial video games are on the same line with movies and comic books in terms of training people to accurately use a gun. In the case of the GTA series, the game requires merely pushing two buttons and moving an analog stick. The old Nintendo game Duck Hunt, which uses a motion sensing controller shaped like a gun, is more likely to teach you how to use a gun than GTA.

Fortunately, video games will not be society's scapegoat forever. Like music and movies and comic books, the mass backlash will eventually die down and a different form of entertainment will be the subject of moral panic. Until then, there will be more ridiculous lawsuits that accuse games like GTA of being the sole source of the ills of society.

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