Using Games as a Scapegoat

For as long as there have been people on this earth, there have been people doing shitty things to each other.  For as long as I can remember, there are a lot of shitty things that people have done where video games and gamers have had to carry a portion of the blame.  It's a trend that is complete bullshit and needs to die because not only is it needlessly damaging to the image of people who enjoy video games as their main, or one of their main hobbies, but it's damaging to the people who have shitty things done to them.

From the pre-video game days of Dungeons and Dragons being accused of raising little Satan worshippers to school shootings being blamed on the likes of Doom, for the longest people have tried to use video games as the reason for shitty things happening.  Now, people have even added racism and sexism to the mix of things video games have caused so firing up gaming news can get a little depressing.  

Even with the most recent mass shooting tragedy in America, Orlando, there were articles trying to paint gaming as the reason for these things happening.  That horrible event happened around the time of E3 so there were a lot of people quick to point the finger and say it's their fault for "glorifying gun violence".  Take to a site like Twitter or Facebook and the number of idiots repeating these stupid ideas is ten fold.  

Here's the thing, using gaming or anything else as a sort of scape goat for the ills of the world is not only incredibly stupid, but it distracts from the real cause of the issue and basically guarantees that it will happen again.  It's a lot easier to attack games for gun violence rather than discuss things like gun control or the sorry state of mental care in America.  Whenever you read stories about violence at LAN cafes it's much easier to blame the game rather than examine the probably tragic lives of the victim and offenders.  It's much easier to blame games for sexism than actually have the balls to stand up for women in countries where you can be killed for that kind of thing.  It's spineless and shows that you care more about shifting blame rather than trying to solve the issue.  

Gaming is a huge hobby, a huge industry enjoyed by millions of people.  It's also still a fairly young industry that a lot of people either can't or don't want to try to get their head round.  When you have a hobby this large there are OBVIOUSLY going to be shitty people around and they are going to do shitty things regardless of their pasttimes. 

Using games to scapegoat real world issues is damaging, distracting and cowardly and any writer that's ever taken part in that shit should be ashamed.