Oh, Come On! Yeah, We’ve Learned Stuff from GTA, But Do We Gotta See It in Reality?
Okay, for those of you not in Houston, Grand Theft Auto-mentality has reared its sometimes-ugly head in real life. A guy by the name of George Theobald is accused of stealing a Range Rover, getting into a fender bender in a busy shopping center parking lot, then hitting and killing one of the other vehicle’s occupants when she got out to check the damage. (Read more at http://bit.ly/Fzmat.)
Kill frenzies only happen in video games, people! Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m just waiting for someone to blame Grand Theft Auto, Saint’s Row, or, heck, even Modern Warfare 2. After all, they’re hit games, two of the three are about stealing cars and other crimes, and one was just released to a veritable fuster cluck of hype. The thing is this: Just like the omnipotent “they” blamed music for the rash of school shootings in the late ’90s and early ’00s, video games have become a scapegoat. But here’s the facts:
- Theobald is almost 40, and while that doesn’t preclude him from being a gamer, his record, which stretches back to 1987, just might. Also, he’s definitely past that age when peer pressure is a marginally accceptable excuse for bad behavior.
- Hitting a person and killing her when you were just in a minor, low-to-no-damage accident with her car is a jerk move. All the more so when you consider that there are plenty of witnesses and you saw the person get out to check the damage.
You have to wonder why anyone would try to run from the scene of a double accident. (I don’t know if that’s a real term, but it seems to fit.) What could you think at a time like that? “I got their attention with that first hit. Now, let me pin a person between the cars and see if they notice if I run”? Dude! I don’t think that’s going to fly.
What about you? What instances of complete video game jerkery have you seen enter real life?
