In Australia, knife fights are all the rage among the kids. A youth worker has decided not to blame the rise in knife crime on anything tangible, like poor upbringing and a lack of discipline, but has decided to blame something unrelated, because that's a lot more trendy. Henceforth, videogames now cause knife fights.
"Normally they'd have a fight and people might ring around them, and it would be one-on-one, and when one [child fell] to the ground it would be over," says Les Twentyman, waxing nostalgic about youth combat. "But today that is not the case because of the amount of violent entertainment that these young people are absorbing. They lose sight of reality and become desensitized."
Amusingly enough, Australia is the country that bans most of the violent games that are released. So really, if we're going to play the "make up tenuous links to pass the buck" game, why don't we instead claim that it's because games get banned that there are knife fights? You can't doubt that there is a correlation. Because Left 4 Dead 2 got banned, people fight with knives. Logic for the win!
Games Turning AU Kids Into Knife Wielders [GamePolitics]
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Contest:
11:00 AM on 02.17.2010
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Black Guy: "I see you've played knifey-spooney before."
Oh and the 'Maybe kids play video games to practice their knife fighting. Who knows?', that's just priceless. So playing Red Steel and waggling my Wiimote means I'm practicing my knife skills? If I was a kid I'd just grab a kitchen knife.
Actually, simple counter-argument : mature games are mature games. I'd blame the Saw movies for torture among kids, but wait, they don't listen to those because their parents don't let them. But their parents let them play GTA? So it's automatically GTA's fault that kids are fucked. It's not the parents fault for being fucktards who can't raise kids? Yeah.
I hope you were just trolling, because your post was pathetic.
CONFIRMED
Soon, they'll never want to see a knife again.
Which is, like, ya know, way cooler.
I blame the fact that Christmas comes in summer for them. That has to be it.
Damn vidyagames
Indeed, there's more chances of Mick Dundee teaching kids knife skills, in his two films, than any game. On top of that, knives are simple to obtain, use and man has thousands of years worth of experience using them, and other edged tools. Does there really need to be much teaching for such a chance to cause havoc? I think not.
Ban knives, and kids will just resort to sharpened flintstones instead. Therefore, knives or games aren't the cause, but something far deeper in Oz.
That is all that ever needs to be said.
Oh wait, I meant Olive Garden.
while the issue aint exactly one that is very cut and dry, my take on it is less to do with media, and more to do with the younger folk trying to "out-crazy" each other as a twisted survival mechanism
shit a brick - i just became a pretentious philosophy nerd!
hmm wonder if anyone will get that reference.
I live in the same city as him. It's not shit-out crazy. But if young, drug-addicted, violent, abused homeless kids are *all* he deals with, he *might* not be the most objective source on this.
TL;DR? He's talking out of his arse.
/agree
it's either that or they'll all think they can now teleport while running with knives
Oh wait F1r35t0rM has already worked that out.
I mean, I know *nostalgic look* when I was younger and another child told me he like megadrive better than snes, I had my knoife out before he could even mention why. Then I stole his wallet.
Oh wait no I didn't.
"WHO WANTS TO KNIFE-FIGHT WITH ME IN THE AUDIENCE!"