The Trouble With Boys

I was just reading an article, one of many that I have seen recently which attempts to diagnose the trouble with boys today. I live in a mostly childless, adult world so I can't say I have a good perspective on this issue. However, a commercial for EA's new game FaceBreaker made me feel like I had something intelligent to say on the subject of a generation of lost boys.

I do not believe in scapegoating video games. If a kid plays Grand Theft Auto and then decides to shoot up his neighborhood, I think there was something a little deeper going on then a violent video game. Most people don't realize that the worst school massacre in United States history, the Bath School disaster, took place in the very pre-video game year of 1927.

Back to FaceBreaker, a fighting game where, according to Snoop Dogg, the player is able to beat their opponent so bad that the digital face of the loser is literally disfigured. Again, I don't have a problem with the cathartic release provided by a video game. However, I do think that the lack of repercussions for these violent actions may be leading a distorted sense of the way the world works. In real life, an attempt to rearrenge someone's face most often involves putting the current status of one's own face on the line. The agression exercised in a video game is completely one-sided, playing up victories while glossing over defeats. Imagine how a kid would play GTA if the game was destroyed the first time his charachter was killed. I bet he wouldn't run into a gangster hangout with his guns blazing. He would probably just go to that arcade.