And another crazy technology hater falls out of the wood work to join others in the stupid position that video games are the end of society.
Bill O’Reilly, political talk show host for Fox News recently blasted the PS3 and video games for destroying society on his podcast, Radio Factor. This whack job had the following to say about the influence of video games on society:
American society is changing for the worse because of the machines… In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol… now you don’t have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine…
Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don’t deal with reality - ever. So they don’t know what day it is; they don’t know temperature it is; they don’t know what their neighbor looks like. They don’t know anything… because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they’ve created their own reality…
He then went on to add his two cents about the PS3 launch:
The newest thing is the PlayStation 3. Now this is a machine that allows you to play games in hi-def and all this other stuff… It’s the newest state of the art system from Sony…. It has a video game console, plays DVDs, connects you to the Internet, and tells you how handsome you are. Its six-hundred bucks. Now people lined up for hours to get this thing. Hours!
O'Reilly even bashed the iPod, even though the hypocrite has his very own podcast which can be downloaded into an iPod:
I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life - the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America… did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? …I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.
The only thing in the entire podcast that made any possible sense was the fact that video games can be an addiction for some which was talked about by Bois Olson from the National Institute on Media and the Family. Gaming addiction is real and it has even led to deaths in some extreme cases, but truthfully gaming addicts aren’t a huge problem like Bill seemed to think:
The problem with this stuff is that some people can deal with it constructively… but other people get addicted to it, just like opium, just like drugs and alcohol… So this is a big, big problem. It’s going to change every single thing in this country.
The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing? Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that…. Now you have the “knows” and the “know-nots”, because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines….. you’re not going to know anything…. You’re gonna fail.
The truth is this, Bill; Computer geeks are the people building the future of this world. They work for places like NASA, Microsoft, etc. They are what make it possible for you to appear on TV each day and have your stupid podcast available to download on people’s iPods. Don’t bash the very people that make it possible for your dumb show to appear on TV everyday, Bill.
And Bill, you support the troops, but you didn’t stop to think about how troops are training on video game battle simulators? How can something that better prepares a solider for battle be a bad thing?
As for the Jihadists not having video games and killing real people, well I’m sorry Americans are killing video game enemies instead of real people. I didn’t realize that was a bad thing. Maybe we should send a few thousand PS3s overseas to the enemy, and call them "Jihad simulators" so they’ll become addicted to "training" on the systems and stop killing people too, but wait... that would make video games useful and you don’t believe the machines can be useful to better the world.
In the end like many things that Bill O’Reilly runs his idiot mouth about, he’s failed to do his research on the subject and probably failed to even think before he opened his mouth.
Oh, and Bill, we have proof you once cared enough about video games to allow a report on Nintendo on your old show, Inside Edition.
[Via Game Politics]
Contest:
5:21 AM on 11.21.2006
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Then, the younger generation takes over. Sure, we have to put up w/ troglodytes like this; people who absolutely refuse to evolve in any meaningful way, but eventually we won't have to anymore.
That's all that keeps me going some days.
I also prefer machines and online chars above arrogant corporate twirps like mr Bill. Call me geek, but i cant stand the moral stink.
O'Reilly has lost it.
uch, these guys are annoying.
ok, they think they have all the proof that videogames kill, but it's the people who play them.
those who die from them weren't good in their head, it's not the game's fault in anny way.
Yes it is as far as you got Bill.....
THE MACHINES ARE COMING!! DESTROY THEM BEFORE THEY DESTROY US!!!
So he thinks games are bad for society. FINE. I don't want him using any of the benefits of computers or cell phones. They're just as much machines as videogames are. The bottom line is BILL O'REILLY shouldn't make fun of things he doesn't understand.
In 30 years he'll be dead and we will still be playing.
O'Reilly fails. Nice hair :)
Also, Faith- O'Reilly only uses the Jihad thing as an extreme example of how our social reality is not static and if we don't keep our shit together as a country, we are going to pay for it one way or the other.
I welcome responses, but none of you seem to understand the arguments O'Reilly makes. All you seem to hear is "I'm old and dumb and video games suck."
Bill O Reilly speaks to the closed off American who doesn't know that the world is changing around them and doesn't care. He talks to the American that is desperately trying to hold on to their static middle American suburbian world not accepting that the 50s are gone and society has ivolved. His viewer doesn't care what happens to their child at school because, what ever happens to their children is not their fault Noooo it is video games, or rap music. Mr O Reily's audience only cares about getting their weekly dose of excuses he delievers to release them from having any responsibilty in or over their life. So poverty on the rise because your politicians aren't doing their job, don't worry that isn't your problem children today are lazy scum. America has become an enemy to the world, don't worry about it everybody else is wrong God loves us and only Us. Your child has become distant and disrespectfull, hey that is the videogames fault not yours.
Bill O Reily tells his viewers what to think about their surroundings, he tells them the tempreture, he gives them their information on how their neighborhoods and lives look. He is their escape from all the dirty complexities of American life. The idea of some other entertainment medium doing that scares the crap out of him so he demonizes it. Billy O Reilly knows that every week people are looking towards him for a scapegoat to leave what ever problem they have behind, and he provides each time. So who better to point out a group of escapist then Bill O Reily he knows from first hand experience.
He has no proof nor basis for any of these commments, yet he makes them and passes it down to his sheepish viewer as if they are fact. Let me tell you something, you don't afford an IPOD sitting on your ass and doing nothing. IPods are used by people to get through their long ride to a boring job they have to endure to pay the cable bill, to watch his idiotic show. Why didn't he say, stop watching television, why didn't he talk about the price of cable going up? Because he knows where his bread and butter comes from. He took a jab as he always does, at the little guy, he took a jab at the consumer with no voice to fight back. Boondocks summed it up the best, if you care about violence and the well being of your children so much, then why do you go after videogame companies instead of Gun makers? The asnwer is obvious, go after some screwny guys making fake characters with imaginary weapons; or go after very real men with wads of cash and wearhouses full of live ammo and artillery? It is not hard to argue Bill O Reily there is just no point because his fans and himself will just laugh it off and call the nay says weak or lazy or both.
I mean look how well the drug war is going, yeah that has been a total victory. Once we told people to "JUST SAY NO" and busted the drug houses it all stopped at once! I mean it totally got rid of the need for drugs. No insteand we just saw the rise of pharmaceutical companies making legal drugs to exploit the same people who would have just used crack cocaine to escape, now popping prozac instead. You can't blame societies ills on their vices without some sort of explaination. Yet that is what he is doing in a nut shell.
Kids don't go outside not cause it is dangerous, but because they are hooked on the PS3. Kids are obsessed with material goods, not because their parents aren't at home, working millions of hours just to afford a humble home for them, but because of PS3. America's way of life is going down the tubes no cause we aren't handling the problems of, income disparities in society, racism, poverty, horrible health care, and a vanishing social security, but because of PLAYSTATION FREAKING 3. You see how asinine that sounds, while he brushes away actually problems in america he attacks the IPOD and the PS3 for its ills, and the younger generations need to escape reality and those problems. On another note I would like to see the demographic of the people that watch his show, bet its the same age group he didn't attack.
Last America was born and held up by its technological innovations, The Car, The Television, The Computer, and Yes the home videogame console, not to forget countless others from industrial Revolution in America. He spits in the face of the very technology that keeps this country going and strong. While never looking at any of the social problems tearing it down. Bill O Reily is just a modern day FlimFlam artist, using his "mircale" cures to treat very real societal illnesses. We usually chase charlatan's like this out of town with pitch forks and torches, I am just waiting for the angry mob to arrive.
But I think you're still missing the point zsavior:
Firstly, obviously O'Reilly is making opinions seem like fact and not blaming TV; that's his job. But it doesn't make him necessarily wrong.
Secondly, addressing one aspect of a problem (i.e. video games) and ignoring the proximate or ultimate causation or results (i.e. parenting, politics, economics, etc.) are not mutally exclusive notions. Therefore, you aren't arguing his points at all, you are only arguing against the notion (mind you, an inference you made that state in the first sentence of the above soliloquy) that O'Reilly is blaming all the world's ills on video games.
As a side note, why should we go after video game companies OR gun makers?
Which is more responsible for distorting reality and contributing to a dysfunctional social climate? Fox News or Grand Theft Auto.
How many actual (as opposed to pixelated virtual) humans killed by the O'Reilly supported "war" in Iraq? 3,000 Americans and a couple hundred thousand Iraqis.
Number killed by videogames: 1 television (by wiimote), 1 laptop (also by wiimote), and zero humans.
And then the final irony is that the same "support our troops" talking heads like O'Reilly who crap on videogames won't call out the US Army for using America's Army as a recruiting tool.
Do guys like O'Reilly even know up from down anymore?
And does O'Reilly even know what his own company produces?
Fox Interactive
http://games.ign.com/objects/025/025027.html
See any blood-and-guts titles on that list? A few.
In addition, Rupert Murdoch's holdings include everything from porn to weapons sales. What a sad, sick joke.
WTF?!
Everything works in a circle, folks. One day we'll be the Bill O'Reillys.
Say what you will about Fox, Murdoch and O'Reilly as hypocrites, but the points still stand. More importantly, you're missing the point, nearly entirely. The issue is not a changing "social climate", school shootings, some Luddite need to return to a "Leave it to Beaver" lifestyle or the war in Iraq, it's simply that video games are ultimately giving kids less incentive to work (i.e. studying, setting long-term goals) to ultimately become constructive (i.e. have a useful skill-set and get a good job and help our economy) members of society.
I love this shit.
America likes to lecture.
Like a lot.
Lecture their children. Lecture the rest of the world.
Videogames are not malevolent or soul-sucking. It's just another activity. And children inclined to be lazy or violent will find an expression of that whether videogames are present or not. Give a child nothing but a stick and they'll fashion it into some kind of weapon if that is their mindset.
About 43,000.
Number of people killed by videogames?
3.
5.
10, if you stretch it.
Of course, the real number is zero.
Number of people killed by wolves, bears, or sharks?
0.
Number of people killed by volcanoes?
0.
The media is a joke.
If you follow the corporate press, you'll be lead to believe that America is under siege from pedophiles, sharks, videogame assassins, and gangstas.
43,000 killed each year, but no "sane" America would give up their automobile, nor would the corporate press focus on that number because most television, radio, magazines, and newspapers garner a majority of their ad revenue from car or car-related businesses.
This whole videogame argument is silly.
Making a blanket statement that America as a whole is anti-intellectual is just plain ridiculous as well. Did you go to college? If you did, then you would know that there are plenty of students there that are trying to acquire the knowledge to better themselves and make a decent living. That doesn't seem anti-intellectual to me. Not only that, they go to college despite the fact that most of their parent/grandparents did not.
On another note, its not just O'Reilly that supports the Iraq war, plenty of other Americans support the war too. You shouldn't believe that media you were so quick to condemn for not focusing on automobile related deaths because its bad business for them.
You have exactly the same odds of being mauled by a shark/wolf/bear/cougar/gangsta rapper mutant hybrid in your tub as being killed by a Violent Videogamer.
I'd buy.
Sam Fisher could be back at the north pole... and take out a few elf guards before breeching the toy-ridden compound.
Will he take out Santa?
Or help him deliver all the gifts?
That's entirely up to YOU!
plus a minigame where you have to pee your name in the snow.
"did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them?"
-Has anyone ever seen bill O's version of a "conversation"? It's him interrupting a person he just asked a question.
Here's my favorite:
"They don’t know anything… because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they’ve created their own reality…"
-Sound like anyone we know, BILL? maybe over at FOX "NUBZ"?
I can excuse a cranky old man, but cranky old, and stupid?
My vote for Douche puddle of the week.