You can read the full article by Eric Grunhauser here…
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/05/29/pinball_was_banned_in_new_york_until_a_single_miraculous_shot_convinced.html
The short version was that by the early 40’s in the United States, pinball machines were “considered by many to be both a moral and economic stain on America’s proud cultural quilt.” It was such a scourge that Mayor of New York City Fiorella LaGuardia got pinball machines banned in 1942…a ban that lasted until 1976. A seemingly well intentioned individual that was trying to save us from ourselves, banned something as innocuous as pinball machines for 34 years.
Ancient history…who cares?
I do and you should too.
You see back in the early 80’s there was this wildly popular game, D&D, you may have heard of it. Well it turns out that this game, D&D, “it received negative publicity for alleged or perceived promotion of such practices as Satanism, witchcraft, suicide, pornography and murder.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_controversies
All of the controversy was basically a news media that sensationalized a tempest in a teapot (or crack pots).
Does anybody else see a trend?
Well the UN Cyber Violence Against Women And Girls: A World-Wide Wake-Up Call report came out (10/1/2015).
http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/cyber_violence_gender%20report.pdf?v=1&d=20150924T154259
To say that I would wipe my ass with this report would make me criminally negligent in wasting printer paper (and the trees from which they come). They trot out the usual dog and pony show.
Page 48 of the UN Report.
“Recent research on how violent video games are turning children, mostly boys, into ‘killing zombies’118
Reference 118
PROGRAMMED TO KILL – Video Games, Drugs, and The ‘New Violence’
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/New_violence.html
Just a taste of what can be found in PROGRAMMED TO KILL…
“The child-killers we have seen so far are only the first of what will be many more Nintendo killers—if we fail to recognize and stop the phenomenon. There is a pattern, certain features which are common to all of these cases in the United States:
Moses Lake, Washington, February, 1996;
Pearl, Mississippi, October, 1997;
Paducah, Kentucky, December, 1997;
Jonesboro, Arkansas, March, 1998;
Springfield, Oregon, May 21, 1998;
Littleton, Colorado, April, 1999
In each of these cases, Satanism, nihilism, and a fascination with violence and destruction figure prominently. In several of the more notorious cases, addiction to video games, and to nihilistic and graphically violent movies (such as Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers”) were major components of the lives of these children.” [Emphasis added]
Yes, there is a pattern…in that they are offering up the same old tired tropes as excuses for these tragedies.
Over 100 million people have played Call of Duty, I have certainly put more than a couple of hours into the game. Nearly 60 million people in the United States surf the net for porn. Yet, for all the handwringing and gnashing of teeth the simple facts remain. The overwhelming majority of people who play violent video games, paintball, tabletop rpgs, view violent movies, watch porn, read comic books, and yes…I am going there…own guns are perfectly well adjusted souls who go about their business without incident.
I am of the school of thought that you can’t blame an inanimate object for people’s actions. Hopefully we can have an epiphany as a civilization in the not so distant future, violence is a people problem not a tool problem.
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