"Doctor Phils and ass hole"- Howard Stern

Doctor Phil's an ass hole."- Howard Stern *fixed for spelling

@ Snaileb

Yeah we need to get a bunch of people from Dtoid, 1up and IGN and just go boo the shit out of him.

Dr Phil may be a blowhard, but surely he's too smart to book Jack "The Silver Screamer" Thompson.

I'd rather just post facts about Dr. Phil McGraw which are extremely damaging to his character;

After being reprimanded by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists for an "inappropriate dual relationship" with a therapy client in 1988, McGraw was required to take ethics classes in order to continue his private practice in Texas. McGraw admits to giving the client a job at his office (which is not allowed) but denied carrying on a sexual relationship with the 19 year old, who says their relationship was "sexually inappropriate".

bluemeep wins. I laughed out loud.

yeah, this really really sucks. it gets me so angry. what really gets me angry is they always ask uneducated people who don't know shit about video games. why don't they ever interview gamers for a chance, and real/cool ones who don't sit in front of their computers and play WoW all day but ones who have a real insight. ::sigh::

jimmy-

they play Dr. Phil in the UK? I never caught an episode while there. Richard and Judy were too enthralling.

Best talk show in the UK is that Car show. What's it called.

"It's a little ginger beer"

LOL

Guys, halo has surpassed 1 million sales.

That means ONE MILLION KILLING SPREES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the gamer inside me just went on killing spree

Thing is, some rabid psychotic gamer is eventually going to bump off Jack Thompson, proving his point entirely. Much better just to ignore these uninformed plebs and hope they go away. I seriously doubt a fatty in a cheap suit and a walking inferiority complex are going to topple one of the largest entertainment industries on the planet.

bah i wish theyd do some actual research into stuff like this. Im very sure that kids are much, much better at figuring out the differences between games and real life than we give them credit for, particularly with just a little parental (or other relevant) guidance to say, 'its not real, you dont do this in real life'. My brothers been watching and even playing halo since he was about 5/6, im 99% sure violence has not been imprinted on his psyche. Heck, he really wants me to fix the computer so it can play rollercoaster tycoon 2, and with his ds he got zoo tycoon and mario kart. Doesnt really sound like a psychopath just waiting to be ticked off, does it.

Adam Sessler vs. Dr. Phil!

If you actually read what Dr.Phil is saying you'll realize that he isn't saying that videogame violence causes all violence, he is saying that psychopaths who develop in a society that glamorizes violence are bombs waiting to go off. Which is actually a really reasonable point, most people who play violent games are fine, but a small proportion of sick individuals will be inspired to do bad things. The question is what level of govermental control is necessary to prevent these kind of things. Our typical answer is that parents should monitor the media consumed by their children

Sticking out collective heads in the sand as gamers and ignoring potential links between media violence and actual violence is short-sighted (studies do support such links), in this case Dr.Phil is being reasonable, so we shouldn't be too worried yet. Do I think he'll be even handed on Thursday? No. But his past statements were no where near JT levels of insanity.

His language does leave room for interpretation. But I think it is pretty reasonable that certain people shouldn't be exposed to violent media. A few years ago I randomly ended up having a roommate who was incarcerated twice, before his second stint in jail I loaned him my PS2 and GTA. Watching him play made me realize that not all people should have access to this kind of stuff. The enjoyment he took from it seemed perverse. Most of the people on these boards can play hours and hours of violent games (myself included) and never harm a fly, what Dr.Phil is saying is that a small subset of the population is messed up, and for them the lines between games and reality are blurred. The parts of their brains that say "no, stop" don't function, and that their being exposed to a world where the solution is always found in a barrel of a gun is a bad idea. (And your point that there are both violent and non-violent psychopaths is especially relevant: What differentiates the two.)

See the problem is that those who would object to violence in video games are not the kind of people gamers would generally listen to. Not that blood thirsty gamers are open to opinions outside of the box anyways, but you know they aint going to listen to someone who hasn't played anything besides Pac-Man when they were a kid.

Too the issue is not the few highly mentally unstable people who play GTA and then go shoot up a school but rather the overall accumulative effect on the mindset of millions as they spend their recreational time in a combative atmosphere where everything is solved through violence. Trust me, I've been in GOW matches online where everyone starts off friendly and then in an hours or so time people are cursing and issuing threats at each other.

Philonius: You are right, the words used are open to interpretation, and we clearly have different interpretations. I've always been about personal accountability and am disgusted when people attempt to take accountability from the perpetrators of the actions in question -- when Dr. Phil accuses society of "programming" these people who are already preprogrammed toward violence, I see accountability being misplaced and I do not like it.

These people don't need games to do what they do. My colleague at Morphine Nation has the perfect analogy for this when he asks "What was in Hitler's Xbox?" The most violence and cruel psychopaths of human history had no videogames -- there was no GTA for Ted Bundy, no Resident Evil for Jeffery Dahmer. Some of the worst humanity has had to offer happened long before videogames. To say we are a society use the media to program evil people into killers is not only erroneous, it's pretty damn tasteless.

You're right, it isn't "just" videogames and saying so is ridiculous. You can't isolate a single cause for such a complex range of behaviours, this is one of the reasons I have thought that Dr.Phil was reasonable in his claim: He takes into account genetics ("psychopaths") and a range of other forms of media. But I think that gamers who want to claim that gaming violence in no way influences actual violence are just as blind as pundits who blam gaming for everything.

@Philonious:
"Sticking out collective heads in the sand as gamers and ignoring potential links between media violence and actual violence is short-sighted (studies do support such links)"

That is not true though, there is no real evidence to support these assumptions in the studies that have been done.

To be fair, Dr. Phil has not spoken out as terrible as he could have, given his track record and position as an "expert". However, his phrasing leaves a lot to be desired in the current "violent games = violent behavior" atmosphere.
Still, it would have been better if he used the cultural glorification of violence in the media as a starting point, and then mention games as part of this media culture. If you gave GTA or Manhunt 2 to an Amazonian indian, he would not turn into a psychokiller. But it could happen with some fucked-up sex-starved teenage emo kid in a highly competitive society with a mainstream media focus on violence and sex. This doesn't say anything about the game though.

@jerrt: this is because there only a couple of wellknown people that study these kinds of things, and all of the research is slowly becoming politicized. And the voices of reason often get buried. Fast. A bit like Digg :D

So he's basically ssying that since some crazies don't know the difference between fantasy from reality, we have to abolish the entire creative outlet. Makes sense to me. While we're at it, let's ban all film, TV, music, and theater as well. Can't have anyone getting any bad ideas, can we?

@Philonius: I disagree with that link. JT and his cohorts often use C.A. Anderson's research on media&aggression from 1999+, while that research is based on trying to establish a link between the physical states of violent media exposure and the physical state of agressive overt behavior. Anderson has yet to claim any external validity to his claims however. And the state-theory itself is bullshit: if you get more angry playing Mario than playing Manhunt 2, his model will prove that Mario will make you relatively more aggressive in situations where you may enter such a state.

I agree with most of what you are saying and I don't think we should just say "talk to the hand, there will never be a link". But I don't believe in the causal link as it's being portrayed most of the time. There are so many other factors that are being overlooked by the Thompson crowd... Since you have Psycinfo/Google Scholar access, you could check out these articles for some varying insights if you wish:

Bensley, L., & Van Eenwyk, J. (2001). Video games and real-life aggression: a review of the literature. Jouranl of Adolescent Health, 29, 244-257.

Jansz, J. (2005). The emotional appeal of violent video games for adolescent males. Communication Theory, 15. 219-241

Kirch, S.J., Olczak, P.V., & Mounts, R.W. (2005). Violent video games induce an affect processing bias. Media Psychology, 7, 239-250.

Not trying to sound pretentious in any way btw. But every academic article claims it has "evidence" and most of them have little real-life relevance or validity outside the laboratory. And practically all of them feel free to select only reference material that supports their claims, like I just did ;)

Dr. Phil sucks. I've hated him ever since his show turned into a display of the most hopelessly twisted and perverted people to talk about their "problems"

Jack Thompson will probably have the same sympathy that guy who liked to pretend he was a dog did.

Ooh, nice. I think my parents might have one of his books lying around. I'll have to carry it around at a kids soccer game sometime. It's a diet book I think, but it should do the trick.

Haha, I showed this to my mom, and she went off on a rant about how Dr. Phil DOESN'T believe that couples should stay together for the kids.

As if that nullifies the point that he's a twat.

Any idea when this shitpile is going to air?