Blaming gaming

This is the link to an interview, in Norwegian, where I say why we shouldn't blame games for what the wannabe did 22nd of July. The journalist understood what I as saying, and managed to communicate that well, all down to the fact that I consider speculation about whether or not games influenced the n00b to be - speculation.

For those of you who came here in order to find proof that my mind has been numbed by too much gaming, if you read Norwegian, why don't you go have a look at this very good description of how a skilled computer gamer thinks. As you will see, "kill, kill" is not on the gamer's mind. It's more along the lines of "optimise routine, check numbers, remember cooldowns, check threatmeter, move with the team, maintain healer safety, balance the output."

At the same time, I don't manage to care that much. In a way, if it makes people feel good, they can blame games all they like for me. They can blame the weather, the radioactive rain after the accident in Tjernobyl, a really bad streak of losses for his local football team, Fox news brainwashing (that's my favourite theory) or the colour pink. Perhaps he was poisoned by his own make-up. It doesn't change what happened. Also, it won't help us avoid these things happening again. It is an anomaly, something totally unexpected and unpredicted, something so far from the minds of regular people that we can't explain it or avoid it.

The only thing we can do, is not to act the way he wants us to. He added those computer game links to his new facebook profile for a reason, just like the deleted the old profile in order to hide what he claims to have been 7000 facebook friends. He wants us to chase down all kinds of paths, causing fear, anger and confusion looking for a reason. The cause is simple: He had a political agenda, and was sufficiently single-minded and ego-centric to go through with it, in an absolutely ruthless fashion. What made him into this monster? We will probably never know. Genetics, upbringing, socialisation - a bit of all, is my uneducated guess.

However, if you feel comforted by keeping your children away from computer games, please, do so. Personally, I take greater comfort in having kept my children away from handguns, single-minded political rhetoric and religious fanatics of any colour, while brainwashing them with analytical thought until they question everything and look for the peaceful middle way in conflicts.

Don't diagnose when you don't know!

While we game researchers are frustrated with how games are used to explain everything, psychologists have to face "experts" telling the media this and that about the wannabe, diagnosing him wildly. The Norwegian psychologist Kristine Tofte is as sick of this as I am of the "too much gaming" angle, and writes an extremely good post about it.

Her post is in Norwegian, but as a super-quick resume, she asks colleagues to quit diagnosing him from what is written in the media, and to remember that so far as she knows, nobody have acted exactly like this, ever, in history. It is an anomaly, and we can't say it's typical for anybody (gamers, sociopaths or trained soldiers), because it is a unique event.

I find this extremely important. We do not know and can not yet start to understand the why of this event.

Thank you, Kristine Tofte.

Another path towards control

Did you think the battle over free information was over? There's another way to argue for control of the internet. Faltin Karlsen, who is currently looking at problematic use of games and the Internet, writes this concerned note:

A group working with the next revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in the category called Substance-Related Disorders, suggests that:
"Gambling disorder has been moved into this category and there are other addiction-like behavioral disorders such as “Internet addiction” that will be considered as potential additions to this category as research data accumulate. Further, the work group has proposed to tentatively re-title the category, Addiction and Related Disorders."

This move will conflate substance addiction and compulsive behavior into one category and increase the scope of the diagnosis. In short, in 2013, overuse of Internet can become a diagnosis. This is problematic in a health perspective (although also with positive sides), but regarding freedom of expression it has more severe implications. Governments in countries without democracies and where freedom of expression is under pressure will have a valid argument for monitoring and regulating the use of the Internet even further. In the West it is difficult to assess what consequences this will have but it might easily put freedom of expression under pressure, in lieu of worrying about the health of the population. I can’t even imagine the avalanches of media panics this will entail.

It appears that the new motto for control is "Let's close it, and say it's for their own good."