Microsoft blamed for VT shooting

[drewh4386]

WaPo writer talks VT shooter/Counter-Strike connection, removal

Posted Apr 18th 2007 7:09PM by Kyle Orland
Filed under: PC, First Person Shooters, Strategy
When a Washington Post story mentioned that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui played Counter-Strike in high school, we were intrigued. When the nugget disappeared from an online version of the Post story, we were even more intrigued

To clarify the situation, we caught up with Washington Post Staff Writer David Cho, who was responsible for originally reporting the factoid. Cho said the information was based on talks with some high school acquaintances of Hui's who occasionally saw him playing at an cyber cafe during his high school days.

Cho said there was no solid indication either way whether or not Hui continued to play during three-and-a-half years at college. Hui's college roommates reportedly saw Hui on the computer constantly, but said he was usually writing, not playing games. Cho said a group of Virginia Tech Counter-Strike players he talked to had never heard of Hui, and that Hui hadn't attended a recent Counter-Strike tournament held on campus.

As for the removal, Cho said it was standard practice to replace a rougher online version of a story with the polished print version when it was available. The Counter-Strike connection was removed, Cho said, to make room for more recent, more relevant information. Still, the fact is on file at the Post, Cho said, and it's possible it could make it into a future story.




Just search. It is all over.

http://forums.xbox.com/11802454/ShowPost.aspx

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/04/18/wa...ction-removal/

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/13296/...r-VT-Shooting/

[drunken monkey]

so they haven't figured out that 99% of the asian/oriental kids in the western world play a lot of video games yet?

what next?
gasp!
he was a student just like the other school shooters, maybe schools are secretly teaching kids to be murderers.
wait-a-minute, he was a guy!
just like the other school shooters!

hang on!
he was american!

that means you got to watch out for every male high school and college student in america.

oh yes, my logic is never wrong.
(oxymoron intended)

[DarkFox142]

oh man, what a load. Lets blame counter strike for a massacure.....whats next. Its just a game, its not teaching shit about shooting, yea okay so you go aorund shooting the other team. But honeslty you dont learn to shoot a gun that way. none the less get it into your head to kill a bunch of innocent people. and furthermore he is one player out of how many CS players??? Dont let one nutcase make the game look bad. All in all i love CS and i think its a great game.

[TexasF355F1]

I'm so sick of Political Correctness. It's always someone/something else's fault.

[drunken monkey]

that's not really to do with being pc or not; that's down to people unwilling to be responsible for things.

[drewh4386]

Originally Posted by drunken monkey

that's not really to do with being pc or not; that's down to people unwilling to be responsible for things.

What do you mean?

[drunken monkey]

which bit?
about political correctness or about not taking responsibility?

[drewh4386]

Originally Posted by drunken monkey

which bit?
about political correctness or about not taking responsibility?

Both I guess?

[drunken monkey]

political correctness is about being more sensitive to the minority or any other sub-group within a community.
the main reason for this is that certain terms that were used to refer to them had been corrupted and turned into abusive/insulting terms outside of the proper use.
two best examples of this would be the use of midget and spastic.
an extension of this was a result of the "new" terms that were adopted and someone thouht it would be a good way to classify all groups in a similar fashion.
from an accurate "mentally challenged" we get the more rediculous "vertically challenged" and so on. As it stands, not many actually adopted a ".... challenged" title and some hadn't needed it.

Political Correctness has nothing to do blaming someone else for something.


This is a case of people not wanting or are not willing to take responsibilty for the situation.
I mentioned this before but i think the most responsible here are the parents. They live with the guy and they should know if something is wrong. If they didn't know something was wrong then that is an indication of a problem in the family unit. If they did know something was wrong then quite simply, they didn't do anything about it.
The next group that holds some responsibility are his classmates. Next to his family, they are the ones who spend the most time with him and again, should notice if something is wrong. Of course, knowing what secondary school is like, I can also see how it would actually be his classmates who are part of the cause for his particular grievances. Still, I find it hard to believe thatr 100% of his classmates were asses to him. That means that like before, some people must have seen something was wrong and did/said nothing.
In the school environment, there is also obvious responsibilty from the teaching staff. I put them third here because well, how many students to how many staff? With that said, again, I find it hard to believe that not one member of staff noticed that something might be wrong.

Of course, there is the possibilty that he outwardly gave no indication that he was an unhappy chappy but from the little that I have read, it seems clear to me that he was that step beyond the "lonely" friendless child.
I mean, even the losers have their loser friends, right?

here's something I wrote somewhere else a while back about another story.

Originally Posted by me

as you might've heard, today, a 21 year old eminem fan has pleaded guilty to the murder of a 26 year old student. First of all, you will have noticed that I included (part) of the newspapers favourite technique of giving the subjects title but please bear with me, I did that for a reason.

The title of this post is about censorship, something that I think deserves more discussion than it is usually given. The first point here is that the victim was a student; someone with masive potential. The second more important point is that in every single report that this article has been addressed, the fact that the guilty party was an eminem fan has been mentioned. In one instance, the fact that Eminem's original intention for the track we all know and love called "Stan" was to be a satirical, at times mocking sneer at "fans" who take things such as music, films, art, poetry (football?) too seriously and do not understand the distinction between those worlds and reality. However, in most other cases, the only fact that mentioned, was the eminem connection.

I guess the real point here is that of the obsessive; more specifically, those who are so obsessed with something that it over-rides all other aspects of their perception of the real world (not a matrix quote).

It is all too easy to blame Eminem for this obsessive fan's actions and that is the big problem. I have a fear that for the next few days, we are going to have countless number of day time television shows discussing this very issue and all too many people failing to see that
i) the real issue here is that the murder was commited by an individual who was naturally aggressive, violent, drinks, takes drugs and with known personality disorder.
ii) censorship will not solve this.

My question is why wasn't someone known to be like that under more supervision (incidentally, I am currently working on a project for a Support House for such individuals so this is a little close to what I am working with). Some of you might know that the bloke that lives across the road from me has a psychological problem that requires medical control. For the most part, he is a very nice bloke who always asks if we need help with our garden. Once in a while though, he forgets to take his medication and he starts to get rowdy. We all know this, espcially his immediate neighbours who all have the number to his carers. Last christmas, about a week before the day, he started to almost camp out in his front yard sitting in a wooden chair like you see them big guys do in the films of the American Suburban Ghetto 'hoods. A few days after this started, his carers were here and we didn't see him until after the new year.

There are always going to be people like this who need a certain level of support/control. Putting a ban on things that might serve as a catalyst for these people's perverted perceptions does nothing. Every time this sort of crime is commited under these sort of circumstances, we often hear the usual: "it's the music's fault", "it's the film's fault" and the usual call for censorship often follows blindly.
Censorhips does nothing because it isn't the thing being censored that isn't fault (lest we forget "helter skelter" and "catcher in the rye"). I think censorship is wrong on all sorts of levels, most important of which is that it assumes that we, the general public are stupid. For the most part, I'd probably agree with this in that the general public, as a mass/group are stupid as the recent (10 years?) of watching footall take over from things such as polictical/social issues as the popular topic of discussions alludes to. However, it is also true that the (average) individual is smarter than he/she has ever been (at least I hope so). We know what is right/wrong. We know what is real/virtual. We know what we should do and what we shouldn't do. We know that films are fantasies and that songs are just words put to music. If we see something in a film, we don't all rush out to imitate it. Granted that to a degree some of us do (.....long black leather jackets anyone...?) but not many of us go the whole hog and stick a big metal spike at the base of our brain-stems. Why? Because we're not stupid.

I also guess that the other point of this is that people seem to be less inclined to actually take responsiblity for things, ergo the earlier point about the care, or lack of, for that individual. Rowdy kids? Must be the films/music. Heaven forbid that it's actually the parents' fault for not teqching their kids some level of respect and control. Several years back, Maryln Manson was blamed for turning middle america into a bunch of satan worshippers. In several interviews, he made the wonderful point that him, being at that time quite prominant in the media for his particular style of music and music videos, he was a natural target. It is always easier to blame someone who is almost not of our reality such as pop-stars, film stars, politicians because they appear to exist on a different world to ours. We can blame them because then it isn't just NOT our fault but it is also something that is way beyond our control. This is where I say bullshit to all that. Take responsibilty for the things that happen around you because everything you do influences and affects the things around you.

the point it, if it were the fault of these modern outside stimuli, then how does that explain people like Ed Gein or John Wayne Gacy?

[Shpyder]

Originally Posted by TexasF355F1

I'm so sick of Political Correctness. It's always someone/something else's fault.

Sigh, tell me about it. This manner of the blame-game seems to be much more prominent in the USA than anywhere else though. The media, the affected individuals and the people, all want to point fingers as far back a chain of events as they possibly can, knocking as many birds as they can with this one stone. I remember when I was in Europe, things never got this stretched.

So, technically, not only can Counter Strike be blamed for Cho going bonkers at VT, but we can also then blame the very first person shooter game that ever came out, the maker of the PC's Cho played those games on, the operating software he was using to run those games.... uh. You get the point. This can spiral out of control quickly. I'm not sure if there really is anyone to blame in this case. He just...lost it. Sometimes, it's as simple as that... sadly.

[drewh4386]

Cool. All of it makes sense. If I ever rob (which I would never) somebody and get caught, I am going to sue Soild Snake or Sam Fisher for not showing me to be sneaky enough. Well I mean, that is or seems like what the world is coming to.

[Jimster]

I blame Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, tbh. The ultra realistic gameplay turned this kid into a killing machine with the skill of a marine sniper.

I also think this new Rock and/or Roll thing the kids are listening to is encouraging them to snatch purses off pensioners.

[lv_sinnerz]

Originally Posted by TexasF355F1

I'm so sick of Political Correctness. It's always someone/something else's fault.

Too bad the fingers usually point elsewhere instead of to their owners. I'd like to see some parents and teachers and staff actually start owning up to their responsibilities to prevent such occurrences. Microsoft, CS, and other games like it are just scapegoats for the real problem.