Lately, the general media has decided to put a lot of the blame of today's problems onto video games affecting the youth of America. This is completely pathetic and in bad taste. The parents of today, following the path of human nature, do not want to take the blame for corrupting today's youth. If a child picks up a handgun and shoots his best friend with it, the news automatically reports "Detectives found a copy of Duke Nukem 3D on the child's computer!" Oh, of course! The kid was high off of some illegal substance and thought he was carrying a fictional rocket launcher and was shooting it at an alien. Wrong! How could such a fictional game make the child homicidal? It can't. The parents of the kid were obviously too wrapped up in their own lives to teach him/her what is right and what is wrong. But god forbid the blame is put on the "leaders of today". Let's think back about 30 or 40 years ago, when western movies and tv shows were the "in" thing. Everyone wanted to be a cowboy. Who can forget those fun-filled days of Cowboys and Indians. Did playing these games with our friends make us want to carry rifles or bows and kill others? Of course not! The parents back then would beat us senseless if we even spoke back to them. Because of this, the children were too scared to try anything stupid. We need to consider these things before putting the blame on computer software creators. Personally, I think games such as Duke 3D, or more recent games such as Quake2 and Half-Life, relieve daily tension and stress. It is because of these games that people are able to sit at their computer and blow everything up in a virtual world, instead of walking out into a shopping mall and shooting everyone in sight. Why can't people look deeper into these issues? Why can't the news reporters that make great video games look terrible, consider the good points of the games? Let's take a step back about 10 years or so, to the time of Super Mario Brothers for Nintendo. Now let's imagine some 8 year old kid broke his wrist when trying to break a brick with his hand. Would anyone put the blame on Mario? Of course not. "Mario is some cute, chubby Italian guy. We all have to love Mario! It's that damn Duke Nukem with the shotgun and BFG that we hate!" But what is the difference? Although both games are very different in style, along with other things, they still exist only through computers. They are simply fantasy worlds. And although people don't seem to grasp this concept, children simply aren't easily influenced by video games as much as people think they are. If a child has access to a handgun in the first place, it is far beyond a video game's fault. The parents of that child should not leave a firearm sitting around the house. I suppose we can't fight the lawmakers and the media. They really don't care about the truth, they just care about putting the blame on the youth of today. By doing so, the adults pay to read about the "youth" being at fault because it makes them feel like they are doing a great job. So this in itself is larger than can be defeated by a few text files created by some ticked off people such as myself. We need to look at ourselves, the youth, the adults, and society in general, and finally come to terms with the true problems at hand. Instead of blaming problems on what is just assumed to be the cause, we should put more care and effort into these things. By doing so, we will be stronger as a society in general, and will realize that things such as video games are not what drive kids to the point of homicide. Written by emuwizard@cyberbabies.com (aka snoopie)