Sensationalist Bullshit Does Not Save Lives
Written by Mark Osborne
Published on 04/17/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

There are some news items that cannot simply be posted as news items. There are times that as a journalist, as a human being, you cannot fall back on that cool, detached brand of prose. Probably the most famous instance was the early reporting on the assassination of president John F Kennedy, particularily the legendary Walter Cronkite being reduced to tears on camera.

As I'm sure you know by now, the worst school related shooting on record occured earlier today, at Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, the cumulative desensitizing that I, and I'm sure many people around the world, have experienced at progressively worse tragedies over the years saw to it that I didn't completely lose composure over that fact alone.

Instead it was the satisfaction of my morbid curiosity that lead to the complete breakdown. Four words typed into the google search field.

"Jack Thompson Virginia Tech."

In a sane world, in a reasonable world if I got any relevant results at all, they would be pure speculation. Not so. I still can't find the clip itself, but I've seen enough credible sources that I'm willing to believe that he's already appeared on Fox News denouncing the tragedy as being incited by video games. Instead, here's a clip from a debate he had on Attack of the Show again Adam Sessler for a taste of what is most likely to come in the next few weeks:



"Ambulance chaser" is far too nice of a term for the kind of shit sucking monster hiding in an ill fitting suit of humanity that would- without pause- pole vault it's bile spewing cancerous mass over the bodies of over two dozen university students and at least one professor (according to the Israeli newsmedia) to make an appearance on TV to make wild accusations before the bodies are even cold.

Who the fuck are you serving here, Thompson? The families of victims whose names have not been released yet? What fucking evidence do you have of anything? Fuck you, and fuck the kingdom of fear you're building.

I remember Columbine. I remember my mother crying because all she knew was that there was a shooting at a high school in or near Denver, where my cousins live. I remember- like I'm sure thousands of people my age do across the continent- going back to school and facing the taunts and jeers of the other students accusing me of wanting to kill them because I played those games or listened to that music.

I remember the sensationalist finger pointing bullshit that smeared countless musicians, filmmakers, and game developers. I remember the alarmism that your kind inspired, the kind that smothered the ability of artists in several mediums to confront the events, their aftermath, and possible root causes in an intelligent and challenging manner. The alarmism that ensured that the only way anyone can read Warren Ellis' seminal Shoot issue of Hellblazer is through ostensibly illegal scans and that the only way to get a copy of Battle Royale is through overt piracy.

Which left us with what (until Douglas Copeland's "Hey Nostradamus!"), exactly? An equally sensationalist piece of ambulance chasing garbage masquerading as legitimate polemic; Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.

Fuck all of you limelight chasing monsters from Michael Moore to Jack Thompson. Your bullshit has saved no lives. You will not twist another massive tragedy into a cheap political point at the expense of grieving families. You will not use it to persecute us, patronize the American people, or censor legitimate works of art.

We will stop you and we will destroy you. We will not do it with bullets or violence. We will do it with wit, verve, and humanity. It likely won't be us at Binary Culture. It could be Penny Arcade, VG Cats, X-Play, Joystiq, or 1-UP, but it hardly matters who does it because all that matters is this:

We will fucking end you.