The Blame Game

Before I write this tonight I want to be clear and upfront about this:


If you don’t feel comfortable hearing about this event I suggest clicking somewhere else or reading my other blogs that are not as serious. Secondly, the event discussed was a tragedy. I don’t mean to diminish or sound insensitive about what occurred, thanks.

Columbine, probably the biggest and bloodies school shooting in U.S. History. I don’t think I have to explain what happened on that day at Columbine, but I want to talk about some other topics that have sprouted out over this tragedy. As some of you may know there’s this campaign to increase awareness over bullying called Rachel's Challenge.

I support it. In fact, they came to our school. The speaker was actually shot by the two teenagers. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I don’t want to talk about my personal experience, I want to talk about a experience I have heard happened at one of these assemblies. One of the speakers said that the teenagers involved were influenced by violent movies and video games.

No No No No No!

Yes, it is true, they were very involved with video games in fact they even made a few levels of Doom (Eric). The Media, and politicians, jumped all over the Video Game industry over this revelation. The industry has been demonized after this tragedy and are even starting to ban certain video games.

There’s a term that they are using for this now. It’s called "Ultra Violent" video games. Now, I ask you, what does this define? What falls under this category? Nothing. Nothing does because that term doesn't exist! Do we not see what they are doing? They are trying to manipulate Video Game content games like GTA, CoD and the fact this term doesn't exist, it can fall under anything. Even Mario could be "ultra violent".

And you know why I'm confident video games didn't do this?

I have looked into this topic several times. I have seen some of the blog entries by the perpetrators of this tragedy. They were egotists they believed they were above us. They believed they were above the human race and they were more evolved than what we are. I don’t know what Video Games convey that you are above humanity.

In fact, they even believed they were geniuses and, what were there motives? They wanted to be remembered. They wanted the satisfaction to taint the world with this memory of this shooting of what they did. They wanted a legacy so they shot up as many innocent people as they could (Rachel included).

They originally wanted to set off a pipe bomb in the lunch room when it was most inhabited to, of course, try to kill as many as possible. Mainly because they felt those who claimed responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombings in '95 were their "Competition". They wanted to surpass that bombing with their own.

I think the bullying was more of a cause than "ultra violent" video games. And, even then, it doesn't appear it would have changed anything if they weren’t bullied. They still hated humans because once again they believed we are inferior.

I do think if a set of ears were there things may have went differently.

Now, I want to talk about another thing in this shooting; the media.

First they claimed video games the next you said Marilyn Manson. I think we all remembered that one. Somehow, someway the Media needed a scapegoat for this. Who else but the guy that most people don’t agree with? And when Harris' diary was discovered to uncover all of this info on his egotistical ideas where was the media?

No-where

So, to this day, we still hold to the idea that Manson and Video Games caused this horrific incident and it's garbage! You don’t turn a TRAGEDY INTO A FEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST VIDEO GAMES AND MANSON. This was a TRAGEDY nothing more nothing less. What happened was caused by two kids who were rejected and believed they were above us. That is what I stand by, and the fact that this is still what is being used instead of the teenager who killed his own mom thinking she would "Re-spawn". That is someone who needed help. Just like the Columbine shooters. They all needed help and were never given it. We won’t blame ourselves for not being a lending ear to help these kids get through the evil thoughts. We want to blame something unrelated to lessen up our guilt.

And I'm no major Manson follower; I can understand why people think he’s a freak or don’t like his music. Even I don’t like his music much other than one to two songs. But I praise him for letting the media have it for blaming him for this shooting and Gamers.

Instead of telling each other why Halo sucks and Call of Duty owns maybe you should rise up to your congressmen and tell them to keep one of the biggest forms of entertainment in our great country still less censored than most other countries.

Rest in peace Columbine victims, Good night.