Top Shrink: Akiba Stabber’s Brain Poisoned by Games
- Filed under: Games, News
- Date: Jun 23, 2008 12:20 JST
- Tags: Akihabara, Crime, Mass Media, Psychiatry, Stab Alone Complex, Think of the Children
Rag Gendai suggests that top shrink and noted game hater 岡田尊司 / Takashi Okada’s theories on “mental pollution” are directly applicable to the case of Akiba stabber Tomohiro Kato; in his view children into games lose the ability to discern fantasy from reality, exhibiting all the symptoms of drug addiction, and so degenerate into inhuman killers shorn of all pity or remorse.
Okada presents statistics to back his claims; in a survey of middle schoolers, we hear that gamers exhibited the following abnormal characteristics in comparison to wholesome non-gamers:
“I’m lucky to be alive, I like myself” – gamers five times more likely than normals to answer “no”.
“I don’t know whether a person is a friend or enemy” – gamers two and a half times more likely to think these distrustful thoughts.
“When somebody hurts me, I want to get back at them” – gamers were twice as likely to think this compared to spineless normals.
“I’ve teased or injured small animals” – wicked gamers were a terrifying three times more likely to respond thus as opposed to angelic normals who would never admit to doing such things.
Okada theorises: “Children who become unable to maintain a balance between the real and the virtual can be said to be living in a completely different world. That virtual world becomes their very reality. When this situation persists, they can even come to lose the taboo against killing fellow man”.
The article goes on to lament that it’s enough to make you want to take the games away from the poor children. Don’t forget to take their mobiles while you’re at it.
It should be noted that this bears all the hallmarks of the article publisher, a noted tabloid rag, fishing for a response (which they certainly have obtained with 2ch), particularly as the book was published a few years ago and no direct statements by the psychiatrist in question are available, but I think the fact that the mass media seems to leap at any chance to print anything critical of games and otaku culture is news unto itself.
[sarcasm]
And while we’re at it, let’s revive a wholesome tradition from the Heian era: raping women! Fun for the whole family! And the woman too!
[/sarcasm]
More reason to disregard these so called ‘experts’…
Sure there are some genuine experts in psychology but these sorts of guys just piss me off.
Their facts are fished out of the depths of their own colons.
What’s worse though is how the mas-gomi will jump on this like flies to dung and attempt to prove that this theory is universally applicable :(
In that case all us gamers and anime/manga lovers must be potential murderers *sarcasm
I think they should look at the true and serious problems facing society such as depression from a stressful upbringing or work environment etc.
Maybe the person had a horrible childhood, pressured and bullied at home and at school.
They are avoiding these problems by the sounds of things and this worries me (this is not an exclusive problem to Japan as the media do this all over the world sadly)
@Thomas: I like your usage of words. Mas-gomi (Mass-Garbage) ^_^
I think this calls for…
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Argh, so much for space shrinking. Anyways, most should understand what that meant.
I am inclined to agree with all of you.
Arg, this is why Japan’s psychological counseling system is so behind. This shrink himself is committing the error of “mistaken causality”. Just because two things are correlated does NOT mean one causes the other. There could be other factors (depression, social isolation, low self-esteem etc.) that predispose one to both play games AND commit crimes. Is this so hard to understand for a nation that prides itself on its superior scientific/technological developments?