Counter-Strike Tied to Virginia Tech Shooter

[Linux]

DaRk-AnGeL wrote..

1. Whatever joke you are coining about Osama Bin Laden is totally unrelated, I never once likened your country to some terrorist fearing place where you shoot every person wearing a turban did I ?



2. The hype, drama, aggression and fear that I speak of are commonplace in every single thing I have ever seen come out of America, be it through the mainstream media or small news companies. Maybe the UK is just a pretty dull place, or maybe America likes to ham everything up to such an extent that it supercedes anything outside its borders.



3. I'm 21.



4. I have never lived in America



Maybe you are the one who is so fucking arrogant that he can't see what his own culture looks like because he knows nothing of other cultures around the world. Pretty typical. Countless American authors have spoken about this consumeristic culture of fear that the American population has, I use the word fear loosely, be it fear of terrorists, people who want to rob or rape you, home security, gangs etc etc etc.



Or maybe it's all just the fault of the media or the suggestions from the media (who do a really shit job by the way).

I'm going to have to agree with him on this. Although I have lived my whole life in America, I've been Europe and other feign countries, and although some might be 3rd\2nd world, they're cultures are by far much better off than Americas tone of voice in world items\objects.



Everyone has their right to their own opinion and that needs to be respected, and people need to learn to understand that America is not the only thing one earth and that this isn't the place that this stuff happens. Think of the Russian school shooting by a radical group of people... this isn't the only place and its not only Americas fault nor should be blame other countries or go to war because of this (well that all depends on that topic which is completely different).



Personally my feels if I had the chance to live outside of the U.S. I totally would for the different experience because the media in our country sucks pain old sh*t, and they put everything negative and alway make a bigger deal out of something than it should be, but that has always been the news and its hard to change that fact.



What I'm mainly saying is everyone has the opinions, you need to respect them and not tell people that they are arrogant fu*ks, because I know that I'm not perfect and I don't think anyone else is in my opinion, but if you think you are then post why and keep this topic going, its interesting to see views that have facts and makes sense to read.

[omgomgz]

Edited by [user="381418"] @ [time="1176934362"]

DaRk-AnGeL wrote..

2. The hype, drama, aggression and fear that I speak of are commonplace in every single thing I have ever seen come out of America, be it through the mainstream media or small news companies.



Maybe you are the one who is so fucking arrogant that he can't see what his own culture looks like because he knows nothing of other cultures around the world. Pretty typical. Countless American authors have spoken about this consumeristic culture of fear that the American population has, I use the word fear loosely, be it fear of terrorists, people who want to rob or rape you, home security, gangs etc etc etc.



Or maybe it's all just the fault of the media or the suggestions from the media (who do a really shit job by the way).

You have NEVER lived in North America and yet you're judging it. That is the very definition of ignorance. I have more credibility than you do over what life is like in the US. And I say that what you're saying about America is completely baseless and untrue.



I'll take a stab and say that whichever author is saying these things, is clearly exaggerating and is probably complaining about the Bush administration.

Linux wrote..

What I'm mainly saying is everyone has the opinions, you need to respect them and not tell people that they are arrogant fu*ks, because I know that I'm not perfect and I don't think anyone else is in my opinion, but if you think you are then post why and keep this topic going, its interesting to see views that have facts and makes sense to read.

All I said was that he sounded arrogant. He has never lived in North America and seems to be believing some propagandist source.

[DaRk-AnGeL]

omgomgz wrote..

You have NEVER lived in North America and yet you're judging it. That is the very definition of ignorance. I have more credibility than you do over what life is like in the US. And I say that what you're saying about America is completely baseless and untrue.

Sorry for not being allowed to talk about America without actually having lived there. Outsiders have an opinion too, that is what the heads of your country and in fact most of the residents of your country fail to see.... Rather than take the advice of someone who can actually analyze you better than you can analyze yourself, you would sooner dismiss it as propagandic bullshit.

[Linux]

DaRk-AnGeL wrote..

Sorry for not being allowed to talk about America without actually having lived there. Outsiders have an opinion too, that is what the heads of your country and in fact most of the residents of your country fail to see.... Rather than take the advice of someone who can actually analyze you better than you can analyze yourself, you would sooner dismiss it as propagandic bullshit.

omgomgz wrote..

You have NEVER lived in North America and yet you're judging it. That is the very definition of ignorance. I have more credibility than you do over what life is like in the US. And I say that what you're saying about America is completely baseless and untrue.



I'll take a stab and say that whichever author is saying these things, is clearly exaggerating and is probably complaining about the Bush administration.



All I said was that he sounded arrogant. He has never lived in North America and seems to be believing some propagandist source.

I understand where both are coming from. Believe I do not like all that America does, nor Europe, but everyone gets their opinion, its ok to say he sounded arrogant, just word it nicely is all I believe the other person would ask. @ omgomgz



Your totally welcome to have an opinion about America and I fully support that idea of getting views from out sider to give us a little truth how other feels about us. I do not understand why people get defensive about outsider voice, but that is kinda an America close minded thing, so don't get to pissed :), I'm very open minded myself (atleast I try to be). @Dark-Angel



I feel like a mod of this haha, but its good stuff guys, just keep the tempers down and we could really have something, just be nice about the posts :), anywho I'm off to my house I'll catch you all soon.

[omgomgz]

DaRk-AnGeL wrote..

Sorry for not being allowed to talk about America without actually having lived there. Outsiders have an opinion too, that is what the heads of your country and in fact most of the residents of your country fail to see.... Rather than take the advice of someone who can actually analyze you better than you can analyze yourself, you would sooner dismiss it as propagandic bullshit.

When did I say you couldn't talk about it? I said it was false. You're the one talking random crap about how you can analyze a country you've never been to.

that is what the heads of your country and in fact most of the residents of your country fail to see.... Rather than take the advice of someone who can actually analyze you better than you can analyze yourself, you would sooner dismiss it as propagandic bullshit.

Total 100% arrogance.

[V.C. Sniper]

Some one really need to correct the Virginia typo in the title.

[Thortok2000]

Edited by [user="152360"] @ [time="1176946959"]

I've lived in America my entire life and I know we suck in lots of ways...mostly in national arrogance and ignorance.



We have lots of good things in our favor and in general I would prefer to live in America than in any other country. (Although I haven't even visited other countries, except for the Bahamas.)



But I agree, America as a country, and the majority of its citizens with regard to what's going on outside the US, are arrogant and ignorant. And America's news media plays a very large role in that state of affairs.



~



Back on topic, I saw de_aztec on fox news today for a few seconds before I left to go to work. When they said he played video games. Counterstrike was the example they showed.

[Diamond Dust]

Thortok2000 wrote..

But I agree, America as a country, and the majority of its citizens with regard to what's going on outside the US, are arrogant and ignorant. And America's news media plays a very large role in that state of affairs.

Can you say that about every country though? I mean we care most about what is going on around us, most of the news you watch on TV is local (not to mention extremely worthless). I watch the BBC news occasionally but even that doesn't give you a decent picture of things going on. I'm sure if you asked an American and a Russian whats going on in Italy they would both be equally clueless. Who has time to learn everything going on in the World.



Although everything said about our media is accurate. They have no credibility and I for the most part trust nothing they say. I have been close to a few news stories over the past 8 years and the news has gotten most of the facts wrong every time.



You guys keep bringing up culture, America has as much culture as any other country (considering we are made up of immigrants from all over the world). While i do thing there is a percentage of embarrassing people who live here, I'm sure the same is true in your countries. Hell people are people and what piece of land they live on doesn't change that.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

I'm gonna have to do subject headings on my responses to organize things.



PEOPLE'S RESPONSES

While I do find the "haha 31-1" responses to be personally offensive, you have to remember that people deal with things in different ways.



When I think of the 9/11 attacks, for instance... there is no way for me to honestly comprehend the sheer loss of life that happened in that event. Similarly I cannot comprehend what would snap in a person's mind that would allow them to kill 30+ random people without any remorse.



Some people deal with these things by slumping into shock and depression, others need to actively find some little way they can feel they helped the situation, and still others try to deal with it through humor. Yes, it's sickening to those of us who are sensitive. But so are "your mom" jokes to someone who's mother really was raped, jokes about retards to someone who is close to a mentally disabled person, and so on. None of these things are "funny" in their reality, but making jokes about them is a fairly common coping mechanism to distance someone from the horror or pain of something.



AMERICAN CULTURE

We all realize American culture gets bashed a lot, and that a fair amount of it is legit. There are very few things I've found in this world that I can't find plenty to be critical about, if that's the attitude I'm coming at it from.



Mother Theresa was a Catholic, for instance, which means she supported an organization which was historically responsible for more human rights violations than Saddam had time to get to in his entire life. This doesn't change the fact that Mother Theresa was an amazing individual who helped humanity in a very significant way. The point is that if you want to be critical of something, you will always find flaws in it, no matter how many good traits it has.



What if we looked at America in this light. The American population is one of the most heavily armed nations in the world. My family owns four guns, and where I live most of my friends my age or older have at least a hunting rifle of some sort. A few of my friends are collectors and have various handguns and AR-15 / SKS47 weapons as well.



Yet with a population of over 300 million people, do we see the chaos that many other nations face? Yes there are murders, and yes occasionally someone snaps and we have a scenario like we see here, but by and large America is an overwhelmingly law-abiding nation. Something as simple as getting people to consistently obey traffic laws (perhaps fudging on the speed a bit) is something that I've never seen in any South American country, for instance. Murder, general law-breakers and sociopaths have always been a part of society, and always will be.



ON THE MEDIA

The biggest difference I see in American media from other media sources I tune into is commercialism. The BBC is largely government funded from what I've heard, and it seems to pay off in less sensationalism and more of a global perspective. American media unfortunately usually panders to the common idiot who doesn't really care that much about events outside of their social scene, which means either local news or the celebrities they fantasize about. It's become a show, more about presentation than substance, sensationalizing everything to try to suck in more viewers for their commercial breaks.



When it comes right down to it, though, I'm not surprised. The stereotype of Americans as self-absorbed is not one I find to be inaccurate, and so those of us who actually have some interest in the global scene just look elsewhere for our news and let the average Joe's flip on the television each night to find out where in a 300 mile radius from their home someone might have been murdered, and how they can prevent having a failed sex life by whitening their teeth with the latest product.



MISC

I think peagle's comment was the most amusing thing I read on here, with the dry humor that it held...



"During my history studies, I was curious to note that there had been no violence or psychopaths in society before pong was invented in 1971."



What made it truly golden was the comment that followed, trying to contradict it. Truly classic. :)



It does bring up an interesting point, though. Men like Saddam Hussein are now viewed by society as monsters, evil men who destroyed precious human life and should be viewed as the lowest form of life. Yet there have been countless other rulers in millennia past who conquered, slaughtered and butchered as many if not more of their own citizens and neighbors... yet we glance past these names as the famous rulers of great civilizations. Perhaps that's an oversimplified perspective, but it is interesting to consider.



ON TOPIC

It used to bug me when CS got blamed for these things, but I've come to just accept it as a reality of the situation. The media never likes to say "we don't really know why" when there is a much more supported "blame something that our main viewing audience doesn't connect with" alternative. Nothing is really going to change about that scenario until the CS generation are the businessmen and common workers in society, at which point we'll be sitting in our living rooms being told the newest fad (that we don't participate in) has caused all of the violence we still see.



If you made it this far, congrats -- I can tend to be a bit wordy in my thoughts. :)

[Thortok2000]

Edited by [user="152360"] @ [time="1177060625"]

Like 98% of the time, I agree with the vast majority of what Nighthawk just said.



Especially peagle's comment. It was so golden I didn't even think it needed complimenting, it was perfect in and of itself.



I actually found the 31-1 comments funny, but in extremely bad taste. Like, it would've been funny if that hadn't actually happened, y'know? I can see both sides of it. It was inventive and creative and humorous...but it refers to something that is completely not humorous in the slightest. So it kind of flops, both as a joke and as being mature.

[DaRk-AnGeL]

Well summed up and well put to the point Nighthawk :)

[Gpig]

nighthawk left off his works cited page



Oh and I figure I'll go ahead and say what I think. I've found that the people who are "mourning" the tragedy, such as the people on my campus who went to a candle light vigil, but have no relation to the shooting are doing it for selfish reasons. Like nighthawk said, American 24/7 news is a glorified tabloid and it appeals to the lowest common denominator who doesn't really care about people that die that they don't know. I don't care that 170 died in Iraq on Wednesday, and there really isn't a reason to care about the VT murders.



I asked two people about it that were effected by it who normally don't care about these things and are happy-go-lucky. My roommate came in at 4 in the morning and started watching the news wednesday night/thursday morning and I walked in and asked him if he was watching the news. The photos of the shooter and the tapes were playing and my roommate goes, "Can you believe this shit?" I wanted to gauge his opinion on the tragedy in Iraq and the tragedy at VT so I said, "No, it's horrible. 170 died in Iraq today too." and his response was, "Were they American?" I guess the optimistic thing to say was that he was concerned about our troops, but the implied thing is that if they aren't American they don't matter. I said I was kind of apathetic on the VT shooting so that he would state why I should care and why he cares. He says, "This could have happened to you." That could have happened to me? I should care not because people died, but because they died in a way that I could die?



As far as blaming videogames are concerned it's like nighthawk said, people will always blame something. My roommate said after telling me that it could have happened to me that there are "20 kids like him in the engineering building." and I said yeah. I mean, we're the 6th largest school in the US so I'd say we definitely must have some loners, right? He went on farther though to clarify, "you know what I mean? All these foreign kids. Asian, Indian, Iraqi (seriously, Iraqi)." The racism came out of nowhere to me, and I was stunned, but it's a good example of how people try to search for where to place the blame in tragedies. Of course, I blame it on him being a sociopathic, depressed loner, so it's not like I'm not placing blame either. People will make the worst fucking connections though.



The conversation echo'd what someone else said earlier that I had talked to aside from the part about placing the blame. For the Iraqi story his first response was also, "Were they American?" before going on about how he thought about if the shooting had happened to him, what would his girlfriend do etc.



That's why I'm making off color, offensive jokes. It's to get a rise out of the fucks who pretend to care that they died, but only care because the people that died are American and that they worry that it could have happened to them. I would find them in poor taste if I was just saying them for my amusement rather than to get a rise out of people (although there were some genuinely funny 9/11 jokes I heard/saw). Anyways, I've cooled down from earlier in the week.



edit:



Works Cited:

-:Nighthawk:-, Comment #38, 12:23 am edt - 4/20/07, http://www.csnation.net/comments.php?id=8699

[omgomgz]

Edited by [user="381418"] @ [time="1177091780"]

Gpig wrote..

"Were they American?"

It's a completely valid question if you consider the question; How often do Americans die in the Middle East? It's grown to be completely common for suicide bombers to explode in a market and kill their own people. It has nothing to do with Americans only thinking about Americans. It's a fairly recent development for Americans to be targetted in the middle east, and obviously it has increased since since Iraq.



It's not that your roommate or whoever you asked doesn't care about the Iraqi people, it's that we already know Iraq is a mess and some parts of the middle east have suicide bombers killing innocent people daily. It's insensitive, but it's how people think, not limited to how Americans think.



I agree what Nighthawk said about the media, but please listen to me when I say not all of us absorb what the media says to be true. In large parts, I would say that most Americans don't trust the media at all. I think some of you could be listening to our media, and judging is based on that. Just because that's the way it is, doesn't mean that's what we asked for or want.



I think it's ignorant (word of the week) to call any whole country as self-absorbed, even if you've spent 30 years of your life in the country. If I spent my whole life in the Bronx of NYC, I would think "What a shitty country." If I spent my life in a quiet suburb of Chicago, I'd think "This country is great." The point is, the Bronx doesn't represent the United States and there are very many cultures in the United States, people would be shocked if you even labeled America as having one culture. It's impossible to label a country as self-absorbant, or label a country's people as anything whatsoever.



Let me also say, for the good of America, do not weigh into the comments on the internet (whether here or anywhere else) said by American people too much. You can get an incredibly wrong impression of americans by believing what some kids say. For example, sometimes to me it appears as though 90% of the internet is Liberal/Democrat, and you would think that America completely despises Bush by what is written about him on the internet.



From reading what some of you have to say, it's my inference that some of you already have feelings about the United States bottled up and they're the reasoning for your responses. If someone told me the US has a bad image in the world, I'd believe it, and with bad images comes with things that are true and things that aren't. It may be true, it may not be, but hey, I didn't start the debate here.



For my own curiosity, how often have you guys heard something along the lines of "Dumb Americans" (not specifically), because I'll be honest, I don't hear a lot of insults about your countries here (at least I can't recall any). The earliest thing I can recall was from Europe on the 2004 election: "How can x number of Americans be so stupid."

[Thortok2000]

Everyone always cares about themselves and people like them and disassociates themselves from 'others'.



If you are humanitarian enough to consider Iraqis to be people like yourself (which, since they are human, just like you, makes sense), then you will care about Iraqis.



If you consider yourself to be not just a human, but an American college student, the only people you'll care about are American college students and those like them.



In general, the majority of people don't care about people that are different from themselves.



Somewhere in Australia, somebody just got ran over by a truck about 5 minutes ago. Somewhere in China, somebody just got fired. Over in

Africa, some child just starved to death after having lived on crumbs for months. You can't care about everyone everywhere all the time, the entire world and all the human lives in it is too big a concept for the human mind to handle.



In my opinion, other people care about it, which means I don't have to. If nobody in the world cared, then I'd raise an upset about it. I support the people that care about the Iraqi bombing...without really caring about it myself. It's not because I'm insensitive, but because I'm not directly affected by it and I can't go caring about every single thing in the world that doesn't directly affect me. Somebody in Japan just got mugged and all their money stolen. Should I fly over there and offer them a hug?



To a really big extent, the VT shooting is an American tragedy, and it affects Americans. It also affects college students. Security is going to be tightening in colleges all over, and people will be looking at 'loners' differently. Counselors will be working overtime. And while people that work in gas stations and walmarts and large corporate CEOs will be affected, slightly, they won't be as affected by a college shooting as they would be by a gas station shooting or a walmart shooting or a large corporate CEO shooting. Because, to them, colleges are different.



It's just the way of the world, Gpig. What matters to you doesn't matter to others and what matters to others doesn't matter to you. Nothing can change that and it isn't even worth bothering to try.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

As I read over you guys' comments, I find a lot I agree with. Perhaps the difference of opinion comes in how you define the word "care."



If "care" means having enough personal investment that we will actively do whatever we can to improve a situation, then I would have to admit that I honestly care about a very small section of the world that impacts me directly, those I have contact with on a regular basis. Even some of my relatives would fall outside of this definition, most likely.



If "care" means being strongly emotionally moved by a situation, yet not to the point where we're ready to change our lives in any dramatic way to try to impact or rectify it, then the group which I "care" about expands significantly from our initial group. Now people I know personally but see very infrequently are included, as are my general coworkers and others that I come into contact with but don't have much personal investment in.



Naturally it follows that a definition of "mildly emotionally moved" will include still more people, groups you identify with, etc.



Our final, most expansive definition of "care" will be to just say that you have some sort of intellectual concern for someone. If someone was holding a gun to their head you'd say "yes, I'd rather you didn't shoot them" but so long as you're not a witness to this affair happening halfway across the world, it's more or less just another statistic to you.



I think it's safe to say that most of us have at very minimum the final definition of "caring" about humanity in general. To completely not care about someone is to exhibit the same sociopathic tendencies that this young man so clearly had. This sometimes happens and manifests itself in the form of interracial/interfaith hatred among other things.



Looking at the scenario Gpig presented, it would seem that Gpig has a fairly normal distribution of the levels of "caring" that the rest of us have, but he paints a picture of his roommate expressing views that lead us to question whether he even possesses the intellectual concern for members of certain ethnic groups.



I'd agree with Thortok2000's statement:

You can't care about everyone everywhere all the time, the entire world and all the human lives in it is too big a concept for the human mind to handle.

...but I'd have to balance it out by saying that you can have at least intellectual concern for everyone. When you start to pick out groups that you don't even have that for, as with Gpig's example:

I guess the optimistic thing to say was that he was concerned about our troops, but the implied thing is that if they aren't American they don't matter.

...that is when I really start to worry. The complete lack of any intellectual concern for another group is the gateway that allows people to go on killing one another, denying the humanity of other men and women not unlike themselves.



Ultimately, we've all grown up in a world where a minority of people kill others for a huge variety of reasons, and we've come to accept this as one of the facts of life. It's not pleasant, and big occurances that seem out of the ordinary such as this one do spark a little more emotion and confusion than even larger massacres do in warring areas. It's life, though, and as with anything that happens regularly we're all desensitized to it.



Really, though... we can't successfully deal with life if we aren't able to look past these events in the world around us and continue living our lives as normally as possible. People losing their lives is never a pleasant thing, but most of us are just going to continue making our way through life. Harsh as it sounds, life is too damn short to spend crying for the unlucky people we've never met.