Glenn Beck Claims Watch Dogs Is Teaching Children How To Hack The Public For Realz
from the no-it-isn't dept
You know how fads are. They just get boring so fast. Take violence, for instance. Blaming video games for real-world violence is so yesterday. We need a forward-thinker, some kind of super-genius who can bring us into a new era of blaming video games for something way more hip than just blowing stuff up. You know, a real bullshit artist of the highest caliber.
My hero! Yes, Glenn Beck, upstanding journalist of freedom and ‘Merica, has decided to expound on the dangers of video games in a way so completely backward and ill-informed, it sort of makes you wonder how everyone in whatever studio compound he tapes this drivel in didn’t drown out the sound mics in laughter. Should you be unable to view the video, or simply don’t want to waste the time and brain cells doing so, here’s the relevant part of this illogical rollercoaster.
- We start off with Beck quoting the coroner in that dumb story I just wrote about, with his shoot-from-the-hip remarks on how Call of Duty somehow made four teenagers kill themselves. He actually quotes the coroner fully, which is sort of nice for me, but bad for him, since the coroner helpfully noted that he had no actual evidence for anything he was saying.
- He then goes on to note that Breivik, the Norway killer who murdered 77 people, trained to do so on Call of Duty, and apparently just decides to take the psycho’s word for it and assume that this video game is every bit the murder simulator a real-life assassin needs.
- We start the Watch Dogs portion of this discussion with Beck wondering why we always need an anti-hero. He asks why we can’t have a Superman in our entertainment. I mean, it’s been almost an entire year since Man of Steel came out. What the hell, people?
- And then Beck gets to the culmination of this stupid screed, holding up his iPad and informing his listeners that Watch Dogs is training children how to hack into his tablet while he sleeps next to it.
Whoo-boy. Okay, let me make this simple, since I’ve actually, you know, played Watch Dogs: if the game teaches children how to hack people’s tablets then someone is going to have to show me where the square-button is on my phone, because I can’t find it. Hacking devices in the game is that simple. You push a button. Sometimes you actually have to solve a little navigation puzzle, too. That, I’m fairly certain, isn’t hacking.
I’ve said this before: don’t watch anything remotely resembling any cable news network or their talking mouthpieces. Beck isn’t the only slinger of stupid out there and it’s especially bad when it comes to video games. If people want to have a frank and open discussion on the impact of gaming on the lives of children and society as a whole, fine, let’s do that. But the children have to shut up while we’re having that discussion, because their wailing lies are getting in the way.
Filed Under: glenn beck, hacking, video games, violence, watch dogs
Comments on “Glenn Beck Claims Watch Dogs Is Teaching Children How To Hack The Public For Realz”
Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
What kind of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, slack-jawed morons are so amazingly stupid as to permit that?
Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
Glenn Beck. Seriously, he set up his own channel.
Re: Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
It’s called ‘The Blaze’ for two reasons:
1) It makes excellent flamebait
2) You probably have to be ‘Blazed’ off your ass in order not to shut it off almost immediately
Re: Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
Wow. WOW. I’m really not at all sure how to react to that.
Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
Yes. I get occasional emails from him because I left a comment at the Blaze.
In the situation your curious, The comment was in the form of a flaming bag of dog poo on his front doorstep.
Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
I dunno. May have something to do with freedom of speech or whatever…
Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
In a word?
Republicans.
Re: Glenn Beck is STILL on the air?
He is. He owns his own channel lol.
“Okay, let me make this simple, since I’ve actually, you know, played Watch Dogs”
First rule of being an asshole trying to create a moral panic among other morons: you don’t need to have actually played/read/heard/seen what you’re trying to attack. Just make some crap up based on false assumptions and the people dumb enough to believe you probably won’t take any notice if you’re forced to retract your claims.
Re: Re:
He most likely read what the game is about not actually seen any game play…though…knowing him he ranted and someone else just dubbed in the name of the game.
Innumeracy
Someone has to teach the children how to hack. Otherwise we will end up with a generation of computer illiterates/innumerates that while totally dependent on computers, have lost all of the skills to build, program and maintain them.
Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Child in 1990?
And does he plan to get a DMCA notice issued against this comment like he’s done in the past? Goddamn free speech hypocrite
Beck is right.
Why, my kid picked up Watch Dogs, and he’s already crashing Gibsons and hacking the planet. I’m OK with it though, as he’s also started hanging out with a young, booby Angelina Jolie.
Re: Beck is right.
heh, I was gonna comment if he has ever seen the movie hackers that actually used known hacks in the movie.
Re: Re: Beck is right.
heh, I was gonna comment if he has ever seen the movie hackers that actually used known hacks in the movie.
I don’t remember hackers ever showing “real hacks” but I can’t think of anyone I work with which didn’t go giddy when they saw Trinity using nmap on a movie that was somehow related to the movie Matrix (which some people refer to as Matrix 2.)
All I can remember about Hackers, other than a young Angelina Jolie, is a graphical operating system that looked like Tron 2.0 (and amazingly similar to the “It’s Unix…I know Unix” operating system on Jurassic Park) and a collapsible skateboard.
Re: Re: Re: Beck is right.
Hackers, aside from being a pretty bad movie, was grossly inaccurate when it showed the actual hacking. The only good thing that can be said about it on that point was that it was less grossly inaccurate than most such movies.
Re: Re: Re:2 Beck is right.
Yeah, grossly inaccurate and probably not that good, but damned if I don’t still love that movie. And NCIS could have still taken a few pointers from it.
Re: Re: Beck is right.
Shoot, David Lightman was hacking before the word “hacker” entered our vocabulary.
Beck himself doesn’t bother me, as much as the nearly unbelievable fact that he has a following who believe his inane ramblings.
Re: Response to: Groaker on Jun 3rd, 2014 @ 6:12am
So he’s blaming video games for the mass shooting in Norway eh?
Rembember when he said the people killed by that gunman were the equivalent of Hitler Youth and deserved it?
In his defense
In his Defense… he might still be perturbed about Ben Affleck playing Batman in the upcoming Batman/Superman crossover movie…
Yah…I actually listen to Glenn Beck and I agree with some of the things he says… but let’s face it… much like lawmakers and judges… if you don’t know the technology, please don’t comment on it and especially don’t pass judgement on it.
Are video games desensitizing people to violence? Probably. But so is TV, books, magazines, youtube, THE NEWS, etc. At this point, it’s inescapable… but given the number of violent games vs the number of violent incidents, you’re more likely to find a connection between eating sugary sweets than to video games.
It reminds me of the Dungeons and Dragons scare tactics and movies that came out in the 80’s… about how people couldn’t separate their lives and went on to join cults…
I’ve been playing role playing games since the 80’s… and while some of the players WERE a bit “different”, I have yet to meet a single person who couldn’t distinguish reality and I met a handful of Wiccans… but no cultists….
Re: In his defense
I was going to mention D&D but you beat me to it.
I will never forget the garbage about role playing games that was spread as fact back in the 80’s.
Such stupidity still bothers me.
Re: Re: In his defense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-leYc4oC83E
it had to be said…truth is out there…
Re: In his defense
Is Glenn beck desensitizing people? You bet.
Re: In his defense
Roger Ebert said it best…
“Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn’t you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. But what about ‘Basketball Diaries’? She asked. Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
http://www.quoteland.com/author/Roger-Ebert-Quotes/1553/
Re: Re: In his defense
Actually here is a better link from his own blog where he has the entire story…
http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/the-newtown-killings
Re: Re: In his defense
Wouldn’t you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?
That’s preposterous! Everyone knows kids like these are influenced by evil, godless music. You know, like Marilyn Manson.
Re: Re: Re: In his defense
You mean like the “evil, godless music” the kids of oh… let’s say… every generation since the creation of pop music?
Re: Re: Re: In his defense
or the Beatles.
Re: Re: Re: In his defense
But I had to poke her face! Lady Gaga told me to!
Seriously, though, you don’t see fans of artists like Lady Gaga, Madonna, Britney Spears, Selena Gomez and the like going nuts and shooting, stabbing, and otherwise killing and harming people. Why do you think that is?
Re: Re: Re:2 In his defense
Cause they’re busy with other poor life decisions like teen pregnancy,
Beck…just a friendly tip before you go shooting your mouth off about video games. Look up on Youtube the Sexbox Mass Effect scandal. This was a number of years ago, where another person made claims that the game Mass Effect was a full blown pornographic simulator, only to be revealed to have made up the whole thing and to have never played the title in question.
Just like what you did.
Re: Re:
I disagree. I contend that Beck is explaining how Watch Dogs is teaching players to circumvent laws, hack into personal devices, and become voyeurs into the private lives of private citizens. This concerns him as a parent and what effects it may have on his children.
He hasn’t called for any censorship of the game, though.
Re: Re: Re:
“I contend that Beck is explaining how Watch Dogs is teaching players to circumvent laws, hack into personal devices, and become voyeurs into the private lives of private citizens.”
And he’s not just wrong on every count, but laughably so.
Breivik, the Norway killer who murdered 77 people, trained to do so on Call of Duty
Just another example of US military waste. Seriously, why do we spend billions of dollars training soldiers the old-fashioned way when they could buy a handful of second-hand xBox 360’s and have their entire force trained up in a matter of weeks? Think of how much money we could save on training ammunition alone if our soldiers trained in a virtual world where they can never run out.
Let’s move on this.
Re: Re:
I think Call of Duty is the PERFECT murder trainer. We can convince potential murderers that real combat involves weapons that they can hold up to their face indefinitely, automatically track targets, magically zoom into people, and where you can avoid enemy fire by running around and jumping up and down, and that they can take ten rounds to the chest without losing hardly any accuracy?
I’d love to see how that works out for them when they face a police force that knows how actual combat works. Call of Duty represents real combat like the Madden games represent real football. Maybe we should have the NFL get rid of coaches and practices and just give their team some game consoles. I’m certain they’ll win the Superbowl no problem!
Re: Re: Re:
Well, I’ve always known that the most realistic part of CoD is the way that if you get shot several times is you can hide behind a box for a minute then be completely healed! I mean, why don’t they teach real troops this little trick…
Re: Re:
The military actually has done some of that however it was more for practice with understanding tactical training. Do you remember Marine Quake?
Re: Re: Re:
I’ve done so-called “Virtual Training” where we all played a stripped down version of “America’s Army” and pretended to do convoy ops. It’s effective for teaching the larger strategy (within limits) but not for teaching weapons handling or movement, and is an extremely limited form of interaction.
To use the above Madden example, a football game can teach you many different plays, what those plays look like, and even general strategy for when to use certain plays as well as the rules of the game. It is not, however, going to allow you to go out and play quarterback or defensive tackle, because you don’t have any of the core skills (throwing, tackling, etc.).
And there is a HUGE difference between a gallery shooter like Call of Duty and a simulation game like Arma. And even Arma is only going to teach you the “History Channel” version of tactics; real life is inherently different from a video game, and everyone who plays games knows it.
Re: Re:
They already have one, its called virtual battle systems 2. Created by Bohemia. Its identical to arma 2(also written by Bohemia) with the exception that theres no campaign
There’s also America’s army, but I think its basically dead at this point.
My head hurts after listening to that.
If hacking where only that easy, everyone would do this:
“It’s a UNIX system, I know this”
Re: Re:
hacking is that easy…just turn on any news network and you will be showered in irrefutable proof.
Need to update my resume
I really need to update my resume.
I played the Thief series, and other various stealth games. I must be a master lockpicker/locksmith.
I played the Battlefield series. I must be an expert explosive ordnance technician disarming bombs, and an expert in all kinds of weapon systems, able to pilot jets and helicopters, tanks and APCs.
I played a bunch of war-sims, set in the Roman empire, medieval Europe, pre-western Japan, and the first half of 1900 Europe and the Pacific. I must be a master general and strategic planner.
I played SimCity (the decent ones) and other city builders. Sign me up for urban planning and budgeting.
I should be making way more money than I am now. (And that’s just from the stuff that actually exists in real life. I could be casting magic or flying spaceships too)
Re: Need to update my resume
I played Populous, therefore I must be a god.
Re: Need to update my resume
Actually, if you have played SimCity, you’d be better at urban planning than a large majority of municipal officials in my area. (Vancouver,BC)
Sad but true.
Anyone else wondering if Glenn Beck’s head would explode if you showed him something like Wireshark?
Re: Re:
HAXOR!!!!
Re: Re:
I consider our duty to humanity to find out.
Get off of my lawn!
And who do you think Mr Beck turns to when he needs to find out how to access his email, print a document for his producer, or take a photo with his phone? Dollars to dumplings it’s his son.
Defying all logic, these darn kids somehow seem to be learning something from these infernal gadgets beyond how to plan mass killing sprees — they may even know of a means to get around the insuperable problem of searching an ebook for a particular passage without the benefit of “tactile memory”.
Cool. So according to Glenn Beck all I need to do to become a Doctor is play Surgeon simulator
Re: Re:
I play Wizard101. That makes me a wizard! i’m going to go cast an anti-stupid spell on Beck.
We should introduce Glenn Beck to SlaveHack. It would be hilarious.
http://www.slavehack.com/
Glenn has forgotten
The direst threat to our way of life is the gay teletubby.
You know what is teaching people to hack?
Education… We learn it in my school, but they just call it “IT security”.
Hey! I have an idea: lets just drop education. That shit is dangerous.
Re: Re:
Don’t worry, they’re working on doing just that. They’re still in the “privatize it” stage of the destruction of mass education.
time to reinstate voting tests
I know that tests were perverted to discriminate early on based on race, but we really need to weed some people out. If we had a test, we might actually get higher turnouts as voting starts to be associated with an ability to think. Initial screening would be easy. If a potential voter takes Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olberman, James Carville, or Paul Krugman seriously, then that person needs to just leave voting to others.
Re: time to reinstate voting tests
Yes, silencing dissenting opinion is a great step towards fascism.
(speaking about son) “I told him, ‘Son, these games rewire your brain, they rewire…’ We don’t even know what they do yet.”
So we don’t know what they do, but we do know they rewire your brain. Where again did Dr. Beck get his degree in neuroscience?
Re: Re:
I believe Beck was speaking to the brain being rewired to something we do not yet know. But being rewired in the sense of being desensitized.
Man, what a hatefest
Man, what a hatefest here.
If we had to get rid of anything, I think that training programs for mass shooters (aka shooting games) might be a step in the right direction.
Okay, delirious haters ….. GO!
Re: Man, what a hatefest
I think that training programs for mass shooters (aka shooting games) might be a step in the right direction.
Why stop there? Let’s ban sticks too. Every young boy I’ve ever known has picked one up to play Cowboys & Indians or G.I. Joe at sometime or another. Ban all TV and movies too, since they contain a lot of violence too. What the hell, let’s keep all of our children in hermetically sealed boxes until they’re 21.
OR
We could, oh I don’t know, actually talk to our children and provide them the skills and confidence to become well adjusted, productive members of our society.
Re: Man, what a hatefest
You think wrong.
Re: Man, what a hatefest
Who mentioned anything about getting rid of things?
Watch Dogs takes place in a dystopian future where a monopolistic telecom company has taken over an entire city. I share Glenn Beck’s horror, and would call on all his viewers to oppose the Comcast merger. Maybe fight for some net neutrality rules, too.
Glenn Beck the foul conservative POS……………HAR HAR HAR fool !
We gamers shall take the face of Beck so we can use this to put on the forces of evil which we shall take out with our super duper future guns.
Beck shall be the “New Illusive Man” .
I went to the bank the other day, my plan was to steal a million dollars from them. I took my trusty tool, xbox controller, and sat at the entrance and held my button down for hours, no money 🙁
I thought watch dogs was going to teach me how to hack, i spent my entire life savings buying this game.I thought it would pay off, but the industry lied to me and now im broke and have a stupid game that didn’t teach me anything.
Watch_Dogs setting
In the setting of Watch_Dogs the government decided after a devastating hacking attack to connect everything to a government centralized computer system. At least they’re smarter in dealing with terrorism than our own government in reality.
Re: Watch_Dogs setting
… by giving any future terrorists a single target, rather than several? Guess I’m not seeing the ‘smart’ bit, that or I missed the intended sarc mark.
Re: Re: Watch_Dogs setting
It was intended as a jab at them. “Bad as the blatant stupidity in game the real government has managed to do worse.”
TotalBiscuit’s ‘Tragedy and Video Game Violence’ video is well worth a watch. For anyone who hasn’t seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwAo8lcAC4
I love how he takes two phenomena – real-world mass shootings with real deaths caused by real guns, and people playing videogames – and manages to conclude that ‘guns don’t kill people, videogames do.’
Re: Re:
Simple solution to end that discussion – stricter gun control. The only people who are against it are potential murderers like hill billies and assorted old drunks.
Re: Re: Re:
I hear Chicago has strict gun control. Percentage of murders associated with handguns in Chicago has steadily increased year over year.
Source: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
Re: Re:
I watched the same video sourced above, and didn’t arrive at the same conclusion– but it did make me think that video games and other media are having more of an effect on ourselves and our culture than we think.
Glen Beck is trying to hack into your mind. Don’t let him in.
this is a joke
Glenn Beck is part of the problem. He should be taken off the air, spouting off the garbage. Stop brainwashing people with this hate filled nonsense.
Re: this is a joke
This “hate filled nonsense” to which you reference, is it in the source video in this article? Can you cite specific examples from the source video?
Problems in the Article
Reading through the article, then listening to what Beck had to say in the source video, it’s clear to me the author isn’t being completely honest with the words he claims Beck said:
No where in the video sourced does Glenn Beck say that Watch Dogs is training children how to hack into his tablet, nor doing so as he is sleeping next to it.
When confronted about this false premise over Twitter, the author stated:
Now, I’m still unable to find in the video where Glenn Beck mentions his wife. Perhaps the author can clarify?
I learned how to hack from Techdirt, by reading the article about the guy with mad haxxor skillz who incremented the number at the end of the url for AT&T email and then notified them they wrote crap code. And got arrested for hacking under the CFAA.
Attack Dogs Bite the Hand that Feeds them Information
Everybody is so eager to tell somebody off & call them morons, that they COMPLETELY MISS the point. Beck is NOT saying the game teaches a kid the technical how to of hacking. What it teaches is WORSE. It teaches them that is OK and even GOOD to hack! once you get them past the moral restrictions of right and wrong the detail of how to is easy enough for them to find on the internet on their own. And since they have been convinced its heroic to do so, they have motivation to figure out how. Ever heard the saying, “Where theres a will, theres a way”?
Re: Attack Dogs Bite the Hand that Feeds them Information
“Everybody is so eager to tell somebody off & call them morons, that they COMPLETELY MISS the point.”
Because you are morons. RIGHT NOW, gangs of criminals from China and Eastern Europe are profiteering from hacking systems. Most of them are doing so because the people using those systems are so scared about the fantasy world of hacking that they can’t even work out how to use and secure their own computers. Not because someone made a game about it that doesn’t even start to tell people how to achieve any such thing in the real world.
Watch_Dogs is rated as M for Mature and thus not suitable for anyone under 17. If the parents of those kids actually parented, and perhaps learned how to secure their own computers, they’d stop crapping their pants and listening to morons like Beck. Most of the biggest tech giants today, from Apple to Google, were originally started by “hackers” anyway, so there’s not necessarily anything to worry about even if what you say is true (which it’s not).
How about you let the adults enjoy the entertainment they want, and leave the moral outrage for actual criminals and real problems in the world rather than paranoid fantasies, OK?
GLENN BECK THINKS KIDS SHOULD BE PLAYING WATCHDOGS?? BE INTERESTING TO SEE WHAT HIS VIEWS ON PARENTING ARE :/