Video Games, Bullying and Columbine

I have spent a number of days working on this post when time permitted. I hope you enjoy it.

---

I am a video game fanatic. I have loved playing them since I was very young. Being an adult who is approaching his thirties, it seems a little juvenile that I still get so much enjoyment out of flashing lights, bonus points, and senseless violence.

My mother has never understood my enjoyment of video games. I recall from the very beginning of my digital tenure, that my mother would be pressuring me to "go outside and play with the neighborhood kids", or draw, paint, or do something -- anything -- more constructive than sitting in front of the television exercising my reaction time. As I grew into adulthood, my mother became more obstinate in her stance against my "wasting my time playing video games". For the record, I see her points, which were (and still are) valid. She just doesn't understand what I get out of playing these games, which I will attempt to address in a future post.

I imagine if a person could categorize my clothes, attitudes, favorite music or interests, the word "retro" would be most likely used. This might also be true with my interest in video games. I sure enjoy the old games -- as much or even more than some of the ones designed today. Too many video games today are using souped-up 3-D graphics, extreme violence and gore to sell their product. I would rather play a game with inferior graphics and sound, but had a better gameplay experience, than one that had state-of the art sound and graphics, but lacked in objective or storyline.

I still love the "Classic" coin-operated video games. Games like Space Invaders, Ms. Pac Man, or Galaga are as enjoyable today as they were when they were introduced almost a quarter century ago. The success of these games were due to the following factors. They had a simple objective, acceptable graphics and (usually) sound, bonus points/rounds, and a simple user interface. It took a player less than five seconds to learn how to use the controls. This formula made many companies like Midway, Williams, Nintendo, Sega and many others very wealthy in the late Seventies and early Eighties.

Fast forward to the Nineties, and we see a paradigm shift in the design of arcade games. The sound and graphics quality of the games increased exponentially, just as the processor speeds increased at the same rate. But what these games gained in technological advancements were lost in the quality of gameplay. The value of entertainment was no longer justified in the number of gameplay rounds, or bonus points. The objective was now to either defeat a competing player, or the machine. Sparring games became the norm. Generally based an a battle to the death, these games featured lifelike sound, extreme violence, blood and gore. The characters resembled comic-book superheroes, with males having exaggerated muscular definition, the female heroes being scantily clad, with augmented breasts, and small waistlines. Objectives of the game changed to defeating a set number of opponents, or learning secret keystrokes to deliver massive damage to an opponent via a "special move".

It was about this time that I quit playing video games for a number of years. I found no enjoyment in the ultra-violent arcade games such as Mortal Kombat, and other similar ilk. The number of controls on these games increased, and it required a much greater investment (in quarters) to attain any skill in the game. The interface was complicated, with numerous buttons and/or joysticks, and I could not appreciate senseless gore (ripping out an opponents' heart with a secret button combination was not my idea of a fun game).

By the turn of the millennium, arcade games have made another paradigm shift. The new games are still ultra-violent, but they have been designed in the first-person interface. Many of these games feature a light-gun of sorts, where you enter a area (a house for instance), and enemies begin crawling out of every crevice. Your success in the game is determined by your shooting accuracy, your reaction time, and (largely) by the amount of ammunition you manage to conserve. I find these types of games to be marginally more interesting than the sparring types, but I have to be in a certain mood to play these. Again, the gore level is also a determining factor of my enjoyment of the game. If you have ever seen the arcade game "House of the Dead", there is so much blood that I find the game repulsive. From what I have seen of the game, there is little objective, except to kill everything that moves. On the other hand, a first-person shooter game I have enjoyed for many years is Golden Eye (007) for the Nintendo 64. It is still somewhat gory, but there are less violent objectives given for each mission. You may have to steal blueprints, intercept transmissions, infiltrate military installations, but rarely is your sole objective to kill somebody. In the Golden Eye game, the violence is usually the effect, and not the objective. There is much more strategy to a game like Golden Eye, than there is to House of The Dead.

I would like to see one conclusive study done that proves that ultra-violent video games are the cause for the apparent increase in violence in high schools. Angry parents, attorneys, the clergy, critics, and sociologists are citing that the boys involved in the Columbine and Taber shootings enjoyed playing these ultra-violent video games, and it was because of these video games that they resorted to violence against their peers. The premise of this is logical: who would be capable of such unspeakable violence, if they were never exposed to it in the first place? This is their exact reasoning for their mandate to censor all forms of art and media, including books, music, television, movies, and video games.

What sociologists forget, is that human beings -- in fact many mammals -- are capable of abstract thought processes, and are innovative. This of course means that human beings are capable of many things, including violence, without having prior exposure. What makes case studies like this such a challenge to separate the fact from the fiction, is that there is so much subjectivity to these arguments, that really, you can't conclude anything one way or the other. To prove that children being desensitized to violence through the media and video games are more likely to commit violent acts is about as difficult to prove as the existence (or non-existence) of God. Philosophers have been working on that question for centuries, and they are no closer to an answer than when they started.

We know a few things about these teenagers who opened fire on their classmates at Columbine and Taber. They were social outcasts with few friends, they listened to aggressive music, they enjoyed ultra-violent video games, and they were victims of bullying. Now just think about that statement for a minute or two. If you examine the North-American teenaged male demographic, you will find out that most of them listen to aggressive music, and play violent video games. Again, the term aggressive music and violent video games, are subjective terms, as I am sure someone would argue a yellow circle eating purple ghosts in a maze is violent, just as someone else would argue that all secular music has aggressive characteristics (e.g. one could interpret the Carpenters' "Close to You" as having stalking themes in the lyrics).

Now, I have listened to aggressive music not unlike Metallica (for example) throughout my teenaged years. I have played violent video games since childhood, and I have never swung my fist at another human being in my life. If the means justifies the ends, then I should be as angry and aggressive as the shooters at Columbine and Taber. I should be considered a threat to society. But this, of course, it not the case, since I feel I am accurately able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, as well as what would be considered morally acceptable behavior. I can identify with these angry teenagers, as I went through as many tribulations as they did. I had few friends, I listened to angry music, I played violent video games, and I was bullied...

Now let's talk about the bullying situation. Bullying has become the societal bogeyman of the 21st Century. During the Nineties, social workers, teachers, parents, and the police were worried sick about guns in their schools. In the Eighties, it was drugs. I am too young to know what the concerns were in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, but I am sure alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, racism, sexism, and politcal/sociological protestation all were major concerns at one time or another during those decades.

Bullying is a serious issue. It has taken the school system the better part of a century (perhaps longer) to figure that out. Of the generations before me, bullying was prevalent in all grades in all schools throughout the developed world. Hollywood has glorified the relationship between bullies and wimps in schools in almost every decade possible. Bullies are not the product of the current education system; they thrive within schools because of the lack of control the teachers have. Bullying is a sociological issue, and it has been documented since the beginning of History. For proof, read the story of Cain and Abel in the Bible.

What irks me, is that for generations, being bullied was regarded as a rite of childhood passage. That it was a phase that everyone had to endure, that it built character, and that it would end upon reaching adulthood. Geeks, wimps, nerds, and losers were tormented in school halls with no place to go, no where to hide, no one to protect them, and no one to enforce order in the school. Money has been extorted, pants pulled down in front of hundreds of faces, heads flushed in toilets, bones broken, and even lives lost at the hands of bullies. Not a thing had been done about it for decades. Why?

Now, let's consider the victims. I was a victim of bullying for probably eleven of the twelve years I was in grade school. Money had been extorted, articles stolen from my locker, I had been picked up and thrown around like a football, beat up, spat on, sexually assaulted, and knocked unconscious by being hit in the head with a math text. All at the hands of bullies. I am sure there are far worse things that have happened to me but have been buried so deep that they will never surface again. The worst thing is, many of these cruel acts were committed while under direct supervision of a teacher -- and not a thing was ever done to rectify the situation.

If you think bullying only takes place in a playground or school, think again. I have even been a victim of bullying as an adult. And, it's even worse than like it was in school, as you don't have a chance of anyone helping you. You may be able to go to a police officer and file a complaint, but without witnesses or hard evidence, the police will probably be unable to do anything. Being the victim of these unspeakable acts of terror has impacted my life, and attitudes significantly. I am a introvert, I shy away from meeting new people. I am depressed, I underachieve, I drink heavily, and I play violent video games. I am uncomfortable calling strange people on the phone. I avoid eye contact. I don't like applying for new jobs; conversely I don't do well at interviews. I don't like crowds, and I don't like going places, even taking vacations. I am a pessimist; a nihilist. My life has been so troublesome at times I often wondered what I had done to deserve my pitiful life.

So I can completely empathize with the anguish, rage, and helplessness that these teenagers at Columbine and Taber must have felt. It is a terrible feeling to dread the thought of going to school. School is meant to be an enlightening and joyful experience -- something I didn't not get to experience until I was in College. Once the bullies disappeared -- or left me alone, made all the difference in my enjoyment of school.

I scratch my head in wonderment about the horrors of Columbine and Taber -- and I mean the media circus that transpired. It seems that the media goes on relentlessly about what a tragedy these shootings were. The media glorifies the victims: "This 16-year old male was a Junior at the high school, and a member of the football team. He had many friends, and was considered to be quite popular". Then they go to describe the gunman (or gunmen) "They were Sophomores, who didn't have many friends, listened to bands like Marilyn Manson, the Insane Clown Posse. They were quiet, and played violent video games." Then, the media goes on and on about how the gunmen were psychotic, mentally unstable, neglected, and how those who were killed nothing more than innocent victims.

Now before I go on, please understand that I perceive these shooting as tragedies. I don't think anybody should die at the hands of a gunman, let alone at school. Some of you may feel that those gunmen at Columbine are burning in Hell for murdering their schoolmates, but I am sure there are many who have been bullied all their lives who perceive them as martyrs.

What is the question that nobody has been asking? What happened to these kids that pushed them to the point to kill their classmates? You can't blame it on video games. You can't blame it on angry music. Those are just scapegoats that sociologists, the clergy, psychologists, and teacher/parent committees use to put the general public at ease. I am not denying that the gunmen may have had some emotional problems. Perhaps those problems were the effect of something, and not the cause of their unspeakable violence.

The truth is, these kids were bullied. They were bullied to the point of such desperation, that they could not feel safe in that school without some form of defense. In a school, the bully runs the show. Teachers are powerless, and often there is no place for a victim to run and hide. For the gunmen, pulling the trigger was a matter of survival. The kids feared for their lives. So for the media to say that the kids who bled the school walls were innocent victims is the biggest pile of bull I have ever heard. The gunmen believed that those people deserved to die. Those victims, were in fact, guilty of years of violence, extortion, and emotional abuse. Nobody did anything about it, until the true victims stood up to their bullies, in one defiant moment, and said: "You are about to pay for all the pain you have brought myself and my brothers over the entirety of your short lives!"

I have had just about all I can take of violence in schools. Something has to change -- and it must start with the system. Many schools are adopting a zero-tolerance for bullying and/or violence in their schools. This is a start. But all that is meaningless until the power to discipline is returned to the teachers.

More about violence, music and video games to come in the future.