I agree with Tri-City News reporter Diane Strandberg, who recently wrote a column suggesting we discuss violent video games calmly with our children, rather than screaming for bans and jail time.
Ms. Strandberg was responding to the recent release of a development video for a first-person shooting game featuring a very recognizable Port Moody secondary school. It shows an arm holding a gun, moving down the rainbow locker-lined hallways of PMSS blowing away people in military gear who appear in doorways, people who fall in blood-spattered heaps as the "shooter" moves on.
On cue, we all go nuts, responding with just the kind of outrage the video maker may have been hoping for, giving him his 15 minutes of fame and an eager clientele of an alienated, fatigue-clad, PMSS minority.
Instead of freaking out, we should treat the video with the disrespect it deserves. We should ignore it, like we quickly paint over and ignore graffiti, rather than reinforcing the behaviour with angry moralizing and threatening PA announcements.
The considerable talent and skill required to produce this violent video game is more likely to be refocused on something less anti-social if we respond to such videos calmly (and indifferently) rather than with moral outrage and empty threats of recrimination.
To suggest "banning" things we don't like on the internet is just plain silly.
Our analog brains visualize a body of internet supervisors with a mandate to "ban" obscene or violent materials and punish their purveyors. Unfortunately, the "bad guys" are at least as smart as the "good guys" and probably more motivated. We can't police the internet in any comprehensive way, even if it was any kind of an effective moral strategy - which it isn't.
That's why I agree with Ms. Strandberg's call for calm. The only control we have over virtual violence and obscenity is local, very local, in our homes and within our families. And even at home, outraged prohibition doesn't work very well.
Ms. Strandberg's suggestion that we talk, not shout, about violent video games may be banal in the eyes of some but I prefer her banal response to the unproductive "ban-all" anger of my outraged colleague.
