MAN PLAYS WII, BITES MOTHER THEN GOES ON RAMPAGE/Feign shock...feign horror....
Police: Wii Rage Triggers Bizarre Crime Spree
Really? That was the headline?
Or course it was, because it's way more shocking to knee jerk the incident and blame the Wii for sake of NOT having any other substantial news to report on this.
Straight from the article:
The police report didn't go into detail about what happened during the Wii game or what game he was playing.
Damn you video game industry! First we have Wii tennis elbow and now we have Wii rampage? As if it wasn't bad enough that countless Americans broke their TV with your thoughtless exclusion of a better warning to use the wrist strap on the controller, you're now causing "rage"? Shame on you Nintendo...shame on you...
Yeah...I think you see the ridiculousness of this story.
Normally when incidents like this happen it's been solely blamed on the game they were playing. Here though we're taking an interesting turn in our scapegoating on the video game industry: forget the game, let's blame the system itself. That's right...when we can no longer blame the game itself, let's directly attack the platform (trust me, I do believe that there are parties always just trying to attack the industry in any way possible but usually they take it out on the game).
The step in this direction is interesting. With California as an example feeling states/the government should be able to step in an control the games you're getting (with the end goal of controlling what can be made - don't try to convince me otherwise) and wanting more regulation of the industry, they must be thrilled to see something like this happen. Clearly we're going to start stepping in the direction that controlling violent games is enough.
I can see the conversations now:
"Well, we've gotten rid of those pesky "violent games".
"But senator, there's still crime in the world, kids are still doing bad things..."
"That's right, kids are still overweight and some of them are still doing poorly in school!"
"It must be the video games...we thought it was because of the violence, but it's got to be the entire industry!"
It's not a stretch to think this. If they can attack violent video games on bad research and no real evidence of of their effects on the "under 18 crowd" I wouldn't at all be surprised if they started to campaign about the negative effects of video games in general. You can see the stirrings already...
Back to what got me started on this rant... The article though is a flimsy piece of sensational bullshit. You have no evidence at all that the Wii triggered his rage... Did he forget to take his meds? Does he have a history of violence? The headline says "Wii"...focuses on it...not about the fact that the guy lost it and hurt people. Your focus is placed wrong. You need more facts before you throw crap out there for the world to read because sometimes the world isn't responsible enough to question the crap you wrote. He "reportedly" got mad while playing the Wii... "reportedly"...but you know that's what people are going to take away from this. Wii Rage.
Please think about this. There are some real serious issues here beyond the fact the guy was playing the Wii if he felt the need to bite his mother in the ankles and felt it was okay to hit random people with his car. I'm sorry, but mentally healthy people just don't do this no matter how badly they failed at playing the Wii.
Wii Rage. Wow. I might just have "Journalist Rage" though if I see more articles like this.
You can read the original article here:
