Ten years after the Columbine shootings, violent video games have been cleared of blame for the massacre. All things considered, it's hardly an event worth breaking out the champagne for.
At the same time, even though I don't feel smug or vindicated in the least, I'm baffled that anyone would believe that two kids driven to such astronomical levels of violence would be inspired by the silly spurts and canned screams of video games. An article by USA Today revealed the twisted motivations of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, finally cobbled together through years of studying diary entries, emails, and witness testimonies. Harris and Klebold had initially planned to blow up Columbine High School—and the man they were imitating in reverence was Tim McVeigh, not Bomberman.
Society has long been wary of video games and the dashing ladies and gentlemen who play them, but the Columbine incident truly demonised the pastime thanks to seemingly fabricated reports that Harris and Klebold loved Doom. I remember reading that and thinking, all the way back in 1999, “Who plays Doom anymore?” Doom is fun and fully deserves its accolades, but it still makes me dizzy to even think that an ancient computer game could be blamed for such a tragic act of violence. Not because I'm worried about what strangers think about my favourite hobby, but because I am a sensible, sane person like 99.7% of gamers out there.
People who become depressed or angry enough to kill fellow human beings are thinking in a twisted, hellish realm that's thankfully closed off to most of us. Though outside factors—any outside factor—can trigger a final, deadly explosion, the problem lies with the damaged machinery itself. However, it's hard to accept that a person, especially a boy like Harris who put forth the polite facade of a good student, might be inherently borked in the head. For a decade the world was content to believe that Harris and Klebold were twisted by violent media, but in truth, they were both missing some frighteningly important cogs:
"These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation," psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. "These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems."
I don't have all the answers to life's problems. I can't even do long division. I don't know if the massacre could have been prevented; USA Today's report makes some truly frightening revelations about two boys who were in the grips of something dark that grew more severe over time. Reading their thoughts makes the idea of their violent streak being inspired by Doom almost laughable. The psychological impact from a 90s-era violent video game would have pinged off them like a fly off the grill of a speeding truck.
It's my hope that authorities, medical professionals and the general population have, at the very least, been inspired to dig for the roots of malevolence instead of scratching at the topsoil and accepting the easiest answers.
Related Links:
Miyamoto is Concerned About the Excessive Violence in Video Games
Penn and Teller to Cover Gaming Violence
Facepalm: Video Game Violence