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FoxNews Fear Mongering: Online Games May KILL You!
from the sensationalism-at-work dept
In a piece that with just a few tweaks could easily be from The Onion, FoxNews has written up a fear mongering article about online game players. It selectively picks out a few extreme cases where people who met via online worlds ended up doing something bad, and broadens that to suggest that online games like World of Warcraft are a threat that's only going to get worse. To be fair, the article does squeeze a few quick quotes in the middle from folks who point out that the premise is highly exaggerated, but it brushes them off and quickly goes back to fear mongering. It includes typical fear-inducing sensationalist statements like: "But some hook-ups have had deadly consequences" (you can practically hear the scary voiceover voice saying it). The article offers nothing in the way of proof that anything described in the article is a common occurrence, instead just offers scary words and conjecture not supported by facts: "You're going to see a lot more of these stories, unfortunately." Oh really? Then how come as these games have become more popular, violence has been dropping? How soon until we see Congress start looking into laws regulating online games?
