flamingdog

Point is, you don't know do you? How much media you consume, I don't know, but if you're anything like me, you probably listen to music with explicit lyrics, you watch movies rated R for violence, sex or language, and you play violent videogames, and think nothing of it. Thing is, we spend hours and hours over the course of our lives swallowing these particular messages.

The effect of that cannot necessarily be measured, just like the effect of hearing your friends around you swearing, or they hearing you, cannot be accurately gauged. You're a melting pot of your experiences to date, in my view. They can be viewed as 'causes'. Your behaviour in the here and now, and all behaviour in the future are their effect.

Basically, I'm saying the impact of media cannot be accurately charted, and as such, we can assume (we can just as easily assume the opposite point of view, though I think it makes no sense to do so) that it has an effect on our personalities in direct correlation to the priority we give to spending time immersing ourselves in it. In exactly the same way we have a colloquial and scientific belief that behaviours can be inherited and learned from our peers and social contemporaries, we can extend this to media without too much of a cognitive leap.

I think if we assume this is the case, the question posed by the lawsuit becomes one of how we assimilate these 'causes' into our lives, how we act upon them. Those acts, again, are not necessarily choices, but based on 'causes' (experiences) of their own. To single out one cause for one particular human behaviour is simplistic, naive and dangerous, in my opinion.

The kid needs to be judged on his actions. He killed some cops. The facts and the circumstances need to be tried for their veracity, and the societal punishment should be meted out. The reasons why are irrelevant. His exposure to GTA might have just as much bearing on the situation as his troubled family background. He did what he did, and now he's being punished for it.