Posted by Spooner | 17 Comments
“Video Games made me Kill my Parents” Excuse, Rejected!
Saw this article on Techdirt and it just makes me want to /facepalm. Between kids threatening suicide for attention to this dumbass killing his parents and then blaming Halo 3; what is the next generation of gamers coming too?
I’m part of the 2nd wave of gamers so to speak. Born and bred during the age of console gaming, just getting into the scene as PC gaming really took off. This kind of news is both distressing and alien to me. The idea that somebody has the sheer stupidity to blame a video game addiction for pre-meditated murder is so beyond offensive and insane to me that it hurts to think about it. Lucky for us the judge didn’t buy into such pure unadulterated bullshit. Here’s an excerpt of the article:
Teen-aged Daniel Petric shot both his parents, killing his mother and wounding his father, after they took away his copy of Halo 3, a judge has rejected Petric’s claim that it was his video game addiction that inspired the murder (and subsequent attempt to frame his father). It probably didn’t help the teen’s case at all that there was evidence he had planned the murder for weeks, rather than spontaneously acting following the video game confiscation. The judge still does, unfortunately, suggest that the video game warped Petric’s mind, despite little proof that was true.
Wow. Now obviously the scared ignorant masses of cattle are going to jump back on the video games = violence bandwagon; they pretty much have a utopian enclave built on those rickety wheels, but I have to pose the question: Why can’t people see history is repeating itself?
I understand that it’s not commonplace knowledge (which is sad in itself) but when comic books came out, that was the devil. Rock and roll music? Evil and warping young minds! Television!? Heavens no! Video games and the internet are essentially the next phase in entertainment mediums and so they too will come under fire. It just blows my mind that this far down the time line, we’re still being surprised by reruns of the same story.
So what do you think? If you ganked a guy for hours at a time is it alright if he goes off and kills himself or somebody? Better yet, what if mommy pulls the plug on him while he’s raiding? IS gaming justifiable for real life transgressions? (for the record, Halo3 sucked)
What a freaking moron. This retard killed his mother and wounded his father, then panicked when he realized “Oh crap, my plan sucks, they might give me life for this,” and tosses out the age-old “video games made me do it!!!” excuse hoping for an elderly judge who might just think that games are the root of all evil.
Thankfully, this judge was no moron; he, like many others, can see through this ridiculous, pimply faced little whiner who, unfortunately, has a busted brain and no common sense let alone conscious for anything human. His sub-level human problem will be answered by a rough bruising to his cornhole in prison. Enjoy the man love asshole.
This is always one of those super sensitive arguments. It may be hard to ever reach a conclusion on it. As a nearly 30 year old male, this of course seems silly to me to blame the video game, but that’s because at this point in my life I’ve developed a sense of good judgment. I volunteer with a kid, he’s 14, wanted Halo 3 so badly. His mother said no, she asked me what I thought. I never play first person shooters, I just don’t like them, not my play style (and I have bad aim). So I looked it up, read some reviews, checked the ESRB rating, etc. I gave it a vote of “no” to her. Now ESRB ratings are not everything, but I’ve never been a fan of glorified killing, and for a 14 year old who may not have the best judgment or ability to make good decisions (you know we all made some dumb ones up through our early 20s—at least).
But the main reason I voted it down was I was afraid of the player base. People are mean. And on Xbox live, I’m sure that 20 and 30-somethings who are playing this game like it’s oxygen would tear him up a new one over his mic. Tell him he’s a worthless piece of “caca”, to go “frig” himself, and he’s so bad he’d be better off dead, etc. That’s what I didn’t want him exposed to. 14 is hard enough without jerks telling you that you suck at life because you can’t play Halo 3. It’s a game. I have witnessed such dumb things in WoW as well; no interactive environment is 100% safe. I don’t allow him in trade channel because I can’t monitor it and people say stupid things. STUPID things. Sometimes it’s even too much for me how dumb and jerky people can be. Why? I also don’t want him to think it’s funny or acceptable to poke fun at people for their race, religion, or have him constantly exposed to people calling each other gay or worse.
Parents should be smart about what they let their kids play. Maybe it isn’t an influence, maybe it is! We’re not 14 anymore, we have better judgment, but does a 14 year old? 10 year old? 8 year old? I always error on the side of caution, because everyone’s judgment and perspective isn’t the same. I would never drive a car drunk, but others do it all the time. So just because I can separate out poor actions from good ones, doesn’t mean others can. This is why I am hung up on the issue of video game violence, it’s all perspective, they may not even be a good solution, if there even is a problem.
At work, so I have to use nice words, I don’t actually say frig.
I can understand an adiction, any adiction, warping a young mind. It is a shame, but it happens. But to blame the video game, or D&D, or TV, or Harry Potter and wichcraft,that is a cop out that got old years ago.
This is a sad case, the ultimate worst, but the argument is if pschyatry would have detected and helped the problems with this kid.
Mabey it would, mabey not, mabey the parents knew he had other issues, mabey not, but either way, it is the kids fault, not the fault of something he saw that made him act this way
I’m a 31 year old father of 2 with a 3rd on the way.
At 14, I’d say 90% of the “blame” goes on the parents, 10% on the kid. That’s not to say that the parents “got what they deserved” or anything like that, just that the parent-child dynamic plays a HUGE role in a person’s sense of what is right/acceptable/wrong, especially at that age.
To use Spooner’s examples of comics, rock & roll, TV, etc being the old scapegoats… those arguments came at a time in American history where more women were entering the work force and not at home in the traditional June Cleaver role as America entered and emerged from WWII. As social dynamics changed and single-parent households became increasingly common in later decades, those arguments gained a louder voice (in part because of our ability to expose those arguments to a larger audience via the same emerging media like cable TV and the internet that those arguing the ruin of our young minds were championing against).
I’m not advocating that women stop working. I’m not advocating that people stay married if the situation is an unhealthy one. What I’m saying is that parents actually have to raise their children and not let the daycares, schools, TVs, internet, etc. do it for them. This includes monitoring what content the children are exposed to, discussing what is and what isn’t acceptable, discussing what the kid’s peers are doing/saying, and spending what time the parent(s) have with the kids guiding them to be the people they want them to be.
I think that would help a lot. Follow that up with whatever appropriate form of discipline that works within the family dynamic.
Even so, there will still be incidents where a child commits a violent crime. Not everyone is hardwired appropriately, and sometimes even those who are will make bad decisions. When that happens, it will be tragic, but at least the parents/community/society/legal system can take some small measure of solace in the fact that the parents (or whatever primary care-giver is) did everything they could to provide a nurturing environment and to raise the kid right. It won’t un-do the crime and may be even more painful in the short-term (sometimes it hurts more when you do everything right and still fail than it does when you know you screwed up to begin with).
And Elgar is right… when a kid enters his or her teens, it is a trying time. The kid is trying to assert who they are and are being pulled by all kinds of pressures – parents, friends, society, etc. To allow a kid to run free on the internet (including services like X-Box live) is nuts. Would a sensible parent allow their kid to just go out on a Friday night with whoever showed up in the driveway? It is easy to fall into the mindset that the anonymity that the internet affords will protect the kid, but that same anonymity also protects strangers from acting with some common sense. At that transitional time in a kid’s life, sometime words — even those of a stranger — can be just as dangerous as sending your kid off with a stranger.
Whew… that turned into a TLDR rant in a hurry. It just pisses me off when parents don’t act like parents and look to blame someone else when their kid does something wrong.
I saw a woman on MSNBC once try to defend parents saying that it is “unreasonable for people to just tell the parents to do a better job, they are doing the best they can” or something along those lines and “it’s not easy to balance working fulltime and parenting fulltime”
1) of course it’s not easy you moron! parenting is rewarding and amazing but it is indeed hard! if you’re not cut out for the job then get help and better yourself
2) it is NOT unreasonable for people to demand parents do a good job raising their children, that’s the fucking POINT of parenting
So what if his parents did a bad job raising him, that’s no excuse to shoot them.
@Halo 3 Glitches: I think you completely missed the entire point of what was written. I believe he was correcting the statement of “video games made me do it”, and trying to give a different opinion of the entire situation.
Ah the age old outside influence legal defense.
When Dan Brown killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone in SF, he used the now famous “twinkie defense”. I.e. I was depressed, binging on junk food like twinkies, and that made me murder 2 people.
He only got 2 years.
TWO YEARS for murdering the mayor of SF and a councilman. As long as there are shitty defense lawyers looking for anything else to blame but the actual defendant, we’ll always have cases like this.
Dan White, not Dan Brown. Brown wrote Davinci code, rather than killing 2 people because of twinkies and halo 3.
He hanged himself in 1984 I believe. Good riddance. That ‘two years’ bit was madness.
It’s amazing to me that you have to get a license to drive a vehicle or own a gun, but anyone with functioning reproductive organs can be a biological parent.
Not that I think we should have state-approved reproduction or anything like that, just that it’s crazy how little real education and preparation there is for those wanting to be parents. Hell, we’ve seen what happens in the state-ran foster care system… I’m sure a lot of foster parents are great and much better for the kids than the situations they were in, but I know a few foster parents (related to some even), and I can’t believe that anyone with any common sense would hand over kids to some of these people.
Sorry if I helped derail this into a parenting rant.
@Halo 3 Glitches — from my earlier post:
“That’s not to say that the parents “got what they deserved” or anything like that…” — I know, it was a long post, so I’m not faulting you if you missed that line.
Nah Sanjuro this IS at it’s core a parenting rant. People and the media are always very quick to blame the games, blame the movies, blame the music, blame everything but the single individuals responsible.
I don’t believe (as a parent) that parent shave to sacrifice everything and live for their kids 100% of the time, that’s insane and leaves no room for balance; but I feel that if parents even gave the slightest attempt at maybe even getting into video gaming with their kids, watch the TV shows they watch, check the lyrics online of the music they listen to. THEN you’d see some of the changes that need to be made.
Honestly, I play the Nintendo Wii with my daughter for about 30 minutes a night just about every night. I watch whatever shows or movies she wants to watch. I listen to the music she’s into. I’m not sacrificing all my free time by doing these simple and very rewarding things.
I wish Spoon would play Wii with me everynight /sadface
if I ever get this Wifi thing working in my house I;ll give you my friend code and I can Sheo… I can o_o
Maybe he’s on drugs but whatever reasons he has, he have to pay for the death of his Mom. I can’t believe this, he’s completely out of his mind.
good day for you