Some stories, my friends, are too good to pass up. Even though I have gifts to wrap, friends to call and last minute gifting to deal with, this had to be shared with the good people of Destructoid. I think it's supposed to anger me, but instead I can't seem to stop shaking my head is disbelief at the pure idiocy of the whole thing.

Recently in Beijing, a 17 year old boy had a fight with a classmate and lost. A few days later, he decided to retaliate against the classmate and did so by dumping a bottle of gasoline on him and setting him aflame. The victim ended up with 55% of his body covered in burns. When asked about why he did it, the boy said that he had transformed into a Fire Mage from World of Warcraft in order to get the job done.

This is terrible and sad and insane somehow all at the same time. My first impression is that the kid is nuts, but if you think about it, the media is in a position where I could go shoot someone in he face and say I thought I was Lara Croft and it would be believable (not to mention, it places games in an ideal situation to take the blame.) If you don't think there are kids out there twisted enough to do something terrible and use games as a scapegoat, you're wrong.

We may be ramping up into a trend that could seriously damage our industry and give people with an anti-game stance more ammo than ever. I feel a little helpless in the face of it, but I can only hope to see people judging these situations as objectively as possible. While I'm wishing for impossible things, I'd also like a sequel to Rhythm Tengoku and a pet that's somehow a hybrid of Chad Concelmo and a unicorn.

[Via Wired -- Thanks Jonathan]