[Skybird]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

Kids go to their schools and kill everyone because they don't want to live anymore. Not because they have played the wrong game.

That is wrong, as a matter of fact. Some facts from psychotherapy: most suicide attempts are meant as sending a signal, a desperate call for help. Most candidates that survive are actually thankful for having been saved. Another fact: amok runs are often conducted by people (if they are not mentally ill in a psychiatric understanding, for example be psychotic) who want to penaluize others, who want to teach others a lecture for misunderstandin g themslves or doing themselves injustice, as they perceive it. The explanation attempt of "people go amok because they want to die" is to short-reaching, and wrong. The intention is another one, but includes the willingness (sometimes deriving from an irrational feeling of "I am God/superman and noone can stop me") to get killed in the attempt to carry out the intention.

From what is known about the amok shooter in virginia, he suffered from an obviously very severe personality disorder. Frightening that such people can get legal acess to firearms so easily, like I would buy a piece of butter in a store.

Of course games often deliver inspiration for how they will go on about their killings. But then they shouldn't be allowed to watch the news either!

Call it TV and movies. As I said, the Western culture is dominated by american influence, and that makes it a culture with a strong love for explicit illustrations of violance and brutality.

I don't know the exact figures but in a typical modern country there are already millions of people playing computer games, mostly violent ones. In a couple of years, there will be only a certain fraction of people who don't do it.

That is scary, isn't it?

Actually I think video games are good to get rid of aggression, and they improve a lot of skills.

A lot of skills? For example? See what I wrote about findings in related examinations on page one of this thread. And on the part where you say they help to get rid of aggression: I agree, they can help. but only when you are a healthy personality yourself. See what I wrote before about vulnerability theories and factor that help to stabilize or destabilize your character.

I wonder how many crimes have never been done because somebody could channel their boredom and aggression into playing a game, or watching a movie?

I also wonder how many crimes have been committed because a violant scene from a game or movie gave the attacker the final push needed to get it going, and how many crimes try to copy patterns and actions that had been observed in films and games before.