An 18 year old man in Thailand has admitted robbing and killing (stabbing, 10 times) a 54 year old taxi driver. He has allegedly confessed to committing the crime due to the influence of Grand Theft Auto. He wanted to see if it was 'as easy as in the game.'
Horrible and tragic, I know, but the authorities in Thailand are in uproar and are requesting that GTA IV be removed from sale: "We are sending out requests today to outlets and shops to pull the
games off their shelves and we will replace them with other games,"
Sakchai Chotikachinda, sales and marketing director of New Era
Interactive Media, said.
The problem with this kind of situation is that there's always going to be one idiot. The guy who kills because of the game. The guy who kills because of the movie. The guy who kills because of the heavy metal band. The guy who thinks he can fly and so jumps from a building instead of trying to take off from the ground.
You can't punish everyone for one person's idiocy, neither can you protect everyone from that person and their aforementioned idiocy. It just breeds hatred and contempt.
There will always be idiots who kill the innocent, it's very, very sad. But it's a fact. Put GTA back on the shelves, don't let the stupid among us dictate our entertainment.
And to finish off, here's an amusing quote from Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the ministry's Cultural Surveillance Centre: "Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."
I'm sorry, what? A video game shop owner? How did they pull that one out of their ass? Why not a policeman, a prostitute, a drug lord or any other character in the GTA series?
Anyway, off to the X360 to go shoot some people. I expect you'll see me on the news later, then?
Now you can get an E-Mail alert whenever I update! Enter your E-Mail below and click submit.*
This is now working, sorry for the previous error.
*Your E-Mail address will be used for NO OTHER PURPOSE than to notify you of updates to the blog. E-mail addresses will not be passed to any third parties under any circumstance.