An Ohio state attorney offered an interesting example of cyberfear this week. Seeking to explain why fraternity brothers accidentally killed a pledge, Keller J. Blackburn gave this intriguing theory:
“The overall lesson that I think is so difficult for our youth when they live in this video game culture is that if something goes wrong, they can reset it, start it over, and everything’s O.K.,” Keller J. Blackburn, the Athens County prosecuting attorney, said in announcing the charges on Tuesday.
But in real life, he added, “their decisions have actual consequences.”
This has several dimensions. First, there's the argument that players can not distinguish between reality and games (which only works for computer games, not tabletop ones, although analog role-playing games have long had this mystique). Second, Blackburn associates games with "our youth," here meaning teenagers and men in their very early 20s, missing the social reality that people of all ages play computer games.
Third, there's the gap between the crime and games. To explain, here's the Times account of the former:
About a month after enrolling at Ohio University, Collin Wiant pledged the Sigma Pi fraternity. But on Nov. 12, 2018, he collapsed at an unofficial party at the fraternity’s off-campus house. A coroner later determined he had died of asphyxiation after inhaling nitrous oxide from a canister, known as a whippet...
James Dylan Wanke, 25, the general manager of the store where the nitrous oxide was purchased, and Joshua Thomas Androsac, 20, a member of the Sigma Pi fraternity who the authorities said provided the drug to Mr. Wiant, were charged with first-degree involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 11 years in prison.
This reader can't think of a computer game where the player learns how to sell or give nitrous to another character. For that matter, it's hard to think of a game where you can do whippets.
But this is unfair to Mr. Blackburn, who doesn't seem to be charging the Sigma Pi men with acting out game instructions precisely. Instead, his charge concerns the specific game mechanics of restarting and extra lives. Since those date back to the 1970s, we should expect Blackburn to outline the multi-generational crime way that followed in the wake of dire social influences like Ms. Pacman.
Notably missing from the attorney's account is the non-digital, far more prosaic explanations familiar to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with American fraternity culture. Frats can do horrendously stupid things in their hazing processes. Frats can also encourage young men to ingest dangerous substances in potentially fatal amounts. Frats can mishandle the medical emergencies that result. Again, this isn't news. It's simply history and our lived reality - and hence less exciting to mention when one can, instead, babble about the menace of a video game culture.
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