{"id":612,"date":"2007-04-20T06:45:57","date_gmt":"2007-04-20T10:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=612"},"modified":"2007-04-20T06:54:01","modified_gmt":"2007-04-20T10:54:01","slug":"virginia-tech-copycats-cowards-and-pundits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Tech copycats, cowards and pundits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, it&#8217;s bad enough that this week folks at Virginia tech had to endure the pain, misery and infamy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601103&#038;sid=aAzMBuAV1cQw&#038;refer=us\">hosting the largest school shooting massacre in history.<\/a>  Now, there are a bunch of psychotic morons who apparently lack any creativity or spine whatsoever, causing panic as they threaten a string of copycat incidents in schools across the country this week.  Incidents were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/domesticNews\/idUSN1926039420070420?feedType=RSS\">sparked in California<\/a> yesterday, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thnt.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20070419\/NEWS\/70419014\">New Jersey<\/a> earlier in the week, as well as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2007\/04\/19\/national\/main2707751.shtml\">Michigan, Minnesota and Florida<\/a>.  So far, it would seem that all the copycat incidents were the work of pranksters with no real intent to carry out their threats (though one can never be certain these days).  All of the incidents resulted in prompt arrests, at least two the suspects being between the ages of 14 and 15.  One (the perpetrator of the New Jersey incident) was female.<\/p>\n<p>What is the problem with these people?  Are these idiots really so attention-starved that they have to ride on the coattails of a lunatic?    How can they possibly look at <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cho_Seung-hui\">Seo Cheung-Hui<\/a> and think of him as someone to pattern their behavior after?  I really hope that each and every copycat gets charged and punished as if they <strong>did<\/strong> carry out their threat.  The real thing was bad enough.  It makes me beyond angry that anyone, even at age 14, would beleive this was such a cool thing to imitate.  These social defects have proven they have no place in society, and probably ARE dangerous enough that they might carry it out if they get bored enough.  Better to treat them seriously, and lock them up for as long as possible before they have the opportunity to make good on their threats. Evidently, it&#8217;s exactly what they want.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also sick and tired of these ridiculous talking heads that are using the Virginia Tech massacre to trot out the old &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&#038;ct=us\/4-0&#038;fp=4628ddf8cb368888&#038;ei=B5coRuqjA8qMsgGxhIAS&#038;url=http%3A\/\/www.newsmax.com\/archives\/ic\/2007\/4\/18\/230755.shtml%3Fs%3Dic&#038;cid=1115507328\">ban violent video games<\/a>&#8221; campaign.  Without even verifying their facts, Dr. Phil and his disciples, dozens of self-described &#8220;experts,&#8221; went on camera with their sound bytes and talking points, holding the shooter up as the poster boy for why we need a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nanny_state\">nanny state<\/a> to sterilize the games we play and the content we see, read and hear.  They immediately assumed that this guy had <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&#038;ct=us\/4-0&#038;fp=4628ddf8cb368888&#038;ei=B5coRuqjA8qMsgGxhIAS&#038;url=http%3A\/\/www.newsmax.com\/archives\/ic\/2007\/4\/18\/230755.shtml%3Fs%3Dic&#038;cid=1115507328\">violent video games in his possession<\/a> and was a real fanatic.  As it turns out, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&#038;ct=us\/1-0&#038;fp=4628ddf8cb368888&#038;ei=B5coRuqjA8qMsgGxhIAS&#038;url=http%3A\/\/www.tgdaily.com\/content\/view\/31701\/98\/&#038;cid=1115543080\">not a single violent video game was found among his belongings<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>So, can we stop this now?  We&#8217;ve established that he didn&#8217;t own them and thus, very likely didn&#8217;t play them.  In fact, the real cause has been long established: <strong>HE WAS A PSYCHO!<\/strong>  And I hate to break it to you, psychopaths and violent lunatics have existed in this society long before the first video games (violent or otherwise) was invented.  No one had video games to blame for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Whitman\">Charles Whitman, the guy who shot up the University of Texas in 1966 and killed 15 people<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>These censorship morons who are clinging on Cho Seun-hui&#8217;s back for their next campaign meal ticket are, in my opinion, just as bad and just as culpable as the copycats; opportunists sickly taking advantage of this event to further their own agenda.  They failed to look at the facts, and instead made assumptions that because he was a raving madman with deep psychological issues, Those Evil Video Games Made Him Do It.  I suggest these people shut the hell up, climb back into their slimy little holes, and allow us to grieve and find the <strong>real<\/strong> causes and <strong>real<\/strong> ways to try and prevent a reccurrence of this.  Spreading misinformation about the cause and solution is just as dangerous as pulling the trigger yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, it&#8217;s bad enough that this week folks at Virginia tech had to endure the pain, misery and infamy of hosting the largest school shooting massacre in history. Now, there are a bunch of psychotic morons who apparently lack any creativity or spine whatsoever, causing panic as they threaten a string of copycat incidents in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociopolitical-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}