Bangkok Guru

One of the most talked about issues this week in Bangkok is the recent murder of a taxi driver by a teenage schoolboy who tried to recreate a scene from the infamous Grand Theft Auto IV video game.

He confessed to repeatedly stabbing his victim, a 54-year-old man, to death because he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to do the crime. Looks like it might well be but he ain’t gonna be doing the time. Instead he’s widely expected to face death penalty by lethal injection. Yes, that’s a bloody heavy price to pay indeed but one many believe he deserves. I personally don’t approve of capital punishment though by the way.

This is Thailand and, predictably enough, copies of the game have now been pulled from the shelves, a move supported by many for obvious reasons but one which has appeared to demonise a large number of players of GTA and other similar video games. Well, as far as I’m concerned, this is just another news flash and I’d say get a grip folk: murders have been around much longer than video games.

I remember me and my mates playing this GTA game like mad as young kids when it was first released quite a while ago but none of us have ever tried to replicate nothing of it because, let’s face it, 99.99% of people can easily separate reality from fantasy. Those few nutters who can’t are a timebomb anyway. Disagreed? Just carry on reading!

When the copycat killing story was being reported yesterday, I also saw in other news in which somebody was speeding before crashing their car. Well, let’s ban all racing games then. Let’s ban anything any psycho says influenced them. GTA has sold millions of copies worldwide. Only one boy has gone nuts. In stats, this would simply be ignored as a mere anomaly.

Or better still, we should ban all forms of entertainment once and for all. Psychos might next try to recreate a new scene from pulp fiction. Books should then all go too. No one knows for sure what filthy ideas we can get from them. Basically, just ban everything, then we might finally see the nutters are still out there and still as nuts. Just a bit of common sense is required here, methinks. Unfortunately though, that’s not quite the case and so goes the saying,”If sense were common, everyone would have it.”

What about you? Do you think all violence-depicting games should all be banned too? Wouldn’t a rating system work better? Or should parents be a bit more responsible? Please share your thoughts. Cheers!