By David Futrelle
After a man identified by witnesses as a participant in a Madden video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida opened fire on fellow gamers, killing several and wounding numerous others before turning his gun on himself, some of the regulars in the Kotaku in Action subreddit are directing their anger at one of their favorite targets — game journalists, who these Redditors are accusing in advance of blaming the shootings on violent video games and game culture.
Yep. The mall at which the shooting took place has only just been cleared by police, and no articles have yet been published on video game news sites blaming games or gamers or game culture for a mass shooting allegedly carried out by a gamer at a game tournament, but Redditors are already getting mad online about the hypothetical articles they think are coming that will dare to suggest that this mass shooting might just have something to do with the incredible toxicity of the gaming subculture.
Currently, these are the top comments in the main thread on the shooting on Reddit’s Kotaku in Action, which desccribes itself as “the main hub for GamerGate on Reddit.”
![[–]Taidan-X [score hidden] an hour ago Games journalists now eagerly awaiting the news of the race of the shooter, so they can decide whether this is a "senseless tragedy that we shouldn't politicise" or "more evidence of the toxicity of Gamers". Or as I call it, The Atrocity Ethnicity Lottery. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]peargarden [score hidden] an hour ago It's sad to think that some journalists are probably disappointed that it was a Madden tournament and not something like CS:GO so they can't spin the "violent videogame shooters make gamers violent" angle. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]Stark0s [score hidden] 58 minutes ago It's Madden. They can still try to play the "toxic masculinity"TM card. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]GarrioValereBest I can do is half homo. Make sure it's hot. [score hidden] 56 minutes ago If the shooter is who some people are claiming it is, he also extensively played Counterstrike, so merry christmas journalists. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]christianknight [score hidden] 54 minutes ago They always have the gun control issue to fall back on. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]B-VOLLEYBALL-READYThe internet was a mistake. [score hidden] an hour ago Seriously, keep an eye out for those pieces of shit trying to blame video games for this on Twitter. We had some utterly reprehensible comments after the Orlando shootings. https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/4nvfmz/misc_listing_all_the_people_in_and_around_the/ permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]PikaTools [score hidden] 59 minutes ago I've already seen some randos comment blaming games. I expect it to be ten fold since it was at a gaming event this time.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/jgffjkg.png?resize=580%2C612&ssl=1)
Some on Twitter had similar reactions to the shootings.
And since this was at a Madden tournament, I really, really hope the media and journalists don't start blaming violent video games or write stupid shit like "the toxic nature of gamers", but I have a feeling they will most likely happen.
— Allie-RX (@AllieRX) August 26, 2018
boy I can't wait for the scummy journalists of the world to spin this into more "violence in video games is the problem" narratives.
— MarioWrath (@Leafretv) August 26, 2018
https://twitter.com/realh0r1z0n/status/1033802067964583936
Methinks game journalists are trying to collect themselves after a collective cream at this news.
— ゴゴゴThe Juudeゴゴゴ (@juukuchi) August 26, 2018
I can already see the articles from journalists eagerly pushing the “violence in video games” narrative; showing no respect to the victims.
— Captain Hat (@CaptHat211) August 26, 2018
Glad you’ve got your priorities straight here. Wouldn’t want a horrifying tragedy at a games tournament to cause any needless self-reflection.
@ Rabid Rabbit,
Perhaps you were thinking of the “Chicago School” of economics?
Our fellow drunkard right here has an MBA from U Chicago. She says “I came out of that more stupid than when I went in.” They don’t teach any particular type of socioeconomic ideology though. And what people point to in the past of that, was like way back in the day.
Self and pals here all have undergrad engineering. Some of us have more ed., as noted above, or an MS in the sciences or applied sciences.
Our Miss T here has an MS in math. She had an idea for Phd. work, based off arithmetic, thinks she should get a Phd. for this idea, which is: “You could get a lot more than 99 bottles of beer on the wall.”
Our other Z here (the one with the MBA) thinks this is BRILLIANT! Because it’s “blatantly obvious”.
This is High Level Sciencing right here! Ivy league grads included.
Don’t let’s get started on the one who went to Harvard Design School. Wound up in a crappy job anyway! Not even Harvard will help you! Or the IIT grads who imagine themselves as some kind of Einstein but are about one step away from an abject moron.
This is all people like us know about “serious academia”. Most of us were done at the MS level, in the applied sciences.
T thinks she should get a Phd. for the “99 bottles of beer on the wall” idea. It’s an arithmetic and architectural breakthrough!”
Our usual miscreants are nodding along here.
Why do I keep falling in with these people?
😀
The first time I heard of the Trobriand Islands was in the film Circle of Friends. Main character goes to an anthropology class and the prof says something about the Trobriand Islanders’ sexual freedom. That’s contrasted with the more repressive attitude of the Irish church & such…
Thing is, I didn’t know the Trobriand Islands were real. This is what comes of watching/reading fiction and not paying enough attention to history and geography! I thought the name was made up for the movie. Now, I’m thinking that somewhere in the Islands someone is going, “Huh, so our whole community’s existence functions to help some fictional Irish college student realize she’s horny? Ooookay then.”
ETA – @Z&T – the whole “99 bottles of beer” thing made me laugh. 😀
And don’t forget about entropy affecting the allegedly infinite nature of “The Song that Never Ends” 😀
@Full Metal Ox – No, nothing as exciting as that. I’m American (ethnically, mixed Irish/English/Scottish). I’m interested in languages, though, especially words that express complex concepts.
@Mish
I also see people misunderstand this nuance soooo much. Everyone needs to go through a Taxology 101 course. Maybe that would help people begin to understand the concept.
Saying how we classify animals is abstract and not real =/= animals don’t real.
For my part, I’ve always been a supporter of the scheme for toppling the West that Michael Bérubé and a friend came up with back in 1991: “He will kneel behind the West on all fours. I will push it backwards over him.”
Hi Buttercup, a friend just gave me a copy of “Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition” (you can find it on Amazon). It’s just what you’d imagine: gloriously complicated German words that build a very precise meaning — Schadenfreude? Und so weiter… You might enjoy it too!
For non-native German speakers, this can be read as a companion piece to Mark Twain’s “The Awful German Language,” which still makes me laugh out loud, about learning German as an adult. He feels my pain!
@Z&T:
Advise them to visit Bruges.
http://www.shortandtalltales.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014-08-27-16.39.56.jpg
@ epitome of incomprehensibility :
At least in my experience the Trobriand Islands are the kind of place you don’t hear much about unless you’re an anthropologist or friends with an anthropologist in which case you hear about them all the time.
@Z&T Did the song ever actually state that 99 bottles was the maximum, or just the amount that happened to be on one particular wall?
You may argue on other grounds that gaming has a toxic culture problem perhaps, but making the connection to this incident is very dubious. More than a billion people probably play video games, and this is 1 accident and I think the first or one of the first of its kind. When someone is a mental powder kegg anything can be the spark, including losing a video game.
If this had been a Swedish or French tournament most likely the guy had just started yelling and kicking things over. At the maximum, he would have broken a glass bottle and tried to stab someone with it, and most likely failed to. But in the US, everyone that wants to can have a gun, which makes it both physically and psychologically much, much easier to kill people from just a moment of rage. That seems to me to be the important point here, not about video games.
I meant to write 1 INCIDENT, not accident…
Pertinent question time: why did he bring a gun to the game? That choice was made before he lost.
What I find hilarious is their utter inability to differentiate between the not-obviously-false-but-definitely-not-as-true-as-people-often-think-claim “Video games cause people to be violent” and the idea that “Video game culture, including ideas in video games, may not so much cause people to be violent as encourage toxic behavior that, yes, in some extreme cases can become violence and far more frequently becomes harassment and cruelty, and that’s not a result of violent video games but crappy people playing them absorbing crappy ideas from other crappy people”. As a gamer I get the fear that me playing Friday the 13th will lead me to be lumped in with mass shooters, but it’s time for adults to get over that, fight the censorship battle when it’s actually there, and fight other battles when it’s not.
Surplus, maybe he is the type of guy that always has the gun in the trunk of his car, when he lost he went out and got it, for example. Police investigation will have to answer that.
At hapnadsmannen, “You may argue on other grounds that gaming has a toxic culture problem perhaps, but making the connection to this incident is very dubious. More than a billion people probably play video games, and this is 1 accident and I think the first or one of the first of its kind. When someone is a mental powder kegg anything can be the spark, including losing a video game”: While you’re right to note that losing video games can be a problem, can you admit that the likelihood that they’ll then be called a loser, a f*ggot, etc. might worsen it?
The fact that an event is rare doesn’t mean that the correlation isn’t with a common event. That’s a statistics fallacy. Winning the lottery may happen rarely, but getting rich off of winning the lottery has a 100% correlation with playing the lottery. It could be that, yes, other factors were obviously in play, but gaming culture could still have been a key cause or in fact even the key cause. If, say, jackass-with-gun was motivated to shoot because he was angry about a team in the tournament, and his entire ideology had been shaped by a toxic culture, that too would matter. And gamer culture today includes a contingent that uses it as a means to deliver a quite specific, developed ideology of far-right vitriol and hate, which tends to lead to this kind of behavior.
I get the instinct to want to deflect and point out how many gamers are decent people (probably the same as the general population, as happens with any broad group). Hell, due to their socioeconomic status and position in more stable communities on average, it’s probable that gamers commit less violent crime than the average population. And it’s 100% possible that this event had little to nothing to do with toxic masculinity. But just like it’d be inappropriate to arrive at the conclusion that it didn’t before the facts are in, so too is the preemptive counter-narrative also inappropriate.
Katz had a gun with him in case some bad guy with a gun showed up and decided to shoot the place up.
Oh, wait….
All,
Our Miss T here is amazed and inspired that so many people “Are interested in the truly important issues, in the applied sciences”.
🙂
And this Bruges place, oh I think I’m going to have to go there!
I was reminded of something, here, too, and they might exist elsewhere. Our other Miss Z thinks they also exist in Oz. Anyway, what this is, is a “beer cave”.
It’s a small back room at a gas station where they keep beer (and maybe some pop and water too, I haven’t looked for that). These might only be regional here also. Not sure.
Most gas stations here have these. And it looks like a hidden door or another fridge panel, no it’s the entry to the beer cave. And yes you can go in there and help yourself. There are signs right on the door.
I figured it out! Ha
It’s a pretty small room, and the entire thing is refrigerated.
Ahhh…….
I was thinking of these for the cool air, since my AC broke. And I was in one the other day and thinking – I wonder how long I can stay in here before anyone notices?
🙂
More applied sci. Chilling in the beer cave 🙂
@kaybee – Ooh, will have to look that one up!
My current favorite words are tsundoku (Japanese), the art of buying a book and never reading it; and hanyauku (RuKwangali), the act of tiptoeing across hot sand. Makes me think we need an English word for tiptoeing across Legos.
@Z&T What happens if there are 99 Klein bottles of beer on the wall?
“If one should fall, there’ll be the square root of minus infinity bottles of beer on the wall…”
@Alan Or maybe there’s one wall inside 99 beer bottles. But simultaneously outside them.
Well, in order to figure out the answer to this, you’ll need to figure out the size and properties of the bottles in question, including how much beer each bottle can hold.
Start here: http://www.kleinbottle.com
Choose the 99 Klein bottles you want to work with, and go go GO! 😛