Television – video games – crime

These are experts whom I want to believe, so I do:

Violent video games may actually reduce crime as aggressive players are “too busy” shooting virtual enemies to cause trouble in the real world, experts claim.

I have long believed that television caused crime waves, in each country it arrived in, by immobilising the respectable classes inside their respectable homes and handing the world’s public spaces over to non-television-owning ne’er-do-wells, every night. It is not the sex-and-violence-on-telly that causes the crime. It is the near total absence of these things. Violent people were repelled by telly, because it was so abysmally well-behaved.

I myself have spent a huge proportion of my life watching television. Had television not existed, I would have been out in public places fighting crime, by looking like I might notice it and then give evidence against the ne’er-do-wells committing it.

But now, with the rise of video games, it is the ne’er-do-wells who are busy playing video games. Video games are not well-behaved. You get to kill people, and to commit grand theft upon autos. If duty calls, it calls on you to kill yet more people.

Presumably, this evening, the public places are all deserted. I wouldn’t know. I am watching television.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

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