I'm sure some of you saw or read about the tragic career-ending injury to Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett this past weekend. Today, on the other hand, we have a tragedy of another type; journalism. Bob Molinaro of The Virginian Pilot wrote an article on Everett's injury, and made some of the stupidest claims I've ever seen made in an article. He's actually claiming that violent video games desensitize people to real-life injuries, similar to Kevin Everett's.
I'm dumbfounded, to be honest. I'll just quote some of the article and link you to the entire piece, because I can't compose the words to comment on this any further due to being left in complete disarray at his ignorance.
Quote:
I IMAGINE THERE'S a large segment of NFL fans that envisions pro football to be the embodiment of the video games they love to play.
Perhaps most of the NFL's popularity can be attributed to the interests of gamblers and fantasy fanatics. But I've got a feeling that a certain percentage of males, those whose senses have been bombarded by video violence all their lives, are attracted to pro football by the slickly edited TV images that are a variation of their virtual-reality experiences.
This makes me wonder if the catastrophic injury to Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett will make any real impression on the desensitized adolescents and adults raised with the cartoon violence of "Madden '08" or "NFL Blitz," or the absurd blood-and-guts scenarios associated with other Xbox games.
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And the rest of the article, for those interested:
ARTICLE: Video-game generation may be desensitized to NFL injuries (The Virginian-Pilot - HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com)