http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=661167
Can’t say anything that hasn’t been said about brats/retards already. I just hope the parents don’t feel responsible.
Haha, that kid was selected right the fuck out of our gene pool 
I hope the parents feel fucking awful because its their bad parenting that caused all this. I hope they one day realize that its their own damn fault and stop looking for external sources of blame.
Also, look what else I found on that site: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=661108
I’ve seen few faces I’d like to smash with a slugger as much as the one in the second image on that article. That retarded bitch smirk represents everything I hate about aimless, airheaded whores like her.
I sound a lot angrier than I am.
I dunno about smashing her face with a slugger
But I’d smash it with my penis
Wow…what a bitch. Good thing they sacked her. And people wonder why Facebook can lead to nasty shit…hahaha
Don’t feel too bad Hades, I know what you’re talking about there. I used to work with someone like that. Good thing she got what was coming to her…(Got pregnant and living in a trailer home someplace. Funny as hell.)
As for the gamer kid, he should’ve found something else to do. Hell, doesn’t the 360 have parental controls? (not that any parent actually uses it) Can’t say I’m sympathetic…
Guess he should’ve thought his plan through a bit more…also, I bet the dad feels real good right about now, calling his son’s bluff to run off. Reverse psychology doesn’t always work.
Don’t you think your being a little hars h there? I didn’t see the father blaming anyone but himself, and in all actuality I don’t believe he did anything wrong. If my kid was stealing money or acting badly I’d punish him with more than taking away with videogame system.
We have a mantra in the South that I’m sure most of ya’ll have heard of and have heard before; “spare the rod, spoil the child.” If that Dad had wooped that kid this wouldn’t have happened. I hope he wooped him when he got back.
Having been on the edge of ruining my life over video games before, I can tell you that there’s very little that anyone can really do about it. My mother told me once, for example, something along the lines of “Something just got into you one day and you picked your life back up; and it sure as hell wasn’t anything me or your dad said to you!” You really just have to realize that you’re unhappy with your life, and fix it; or, NOT realize it, and become a total loser. I personally believe that if you have such an obsessive personality, there’s not much anyone else can do for you.
As a vague Confucianist, I think I have to blame society as a whole. Either that or impoliteness. As a vague absurdist, I think I have to go for impoliteness. If he had just eaten his soup with the proper motion and attended more white tie events. If only.
As a vague aesthete, I blame the ugly. I find it the most comforting.
I live in the past, I blame the Reds.
That said, I’m probably going to have to agree with Sinistral, this is a parenting issue.
I’ve never really had any sort of real relationship with either of my parents
Look how I turned out
fuck the polise.
Mullenkamp:
I’ve been keeping track of the case since this happened a month ago and all the dad did was blame video games and call of duty and think that he had run off to some call of duty cult because of how fucked up his son had become.
Really Sin? Granted I haven’t been following the story that closely, I just saw one interview on CBC Newsnet where the father came right and said they DIDN’T blame videogames or Microsoft or anything. They WERE concerned he ran off to join people he met online, but the word cult wasn’t thrown around.
The talk of blaming videogames could very well have been before or after that though. Perhaps some Canadian version of Jack Thompson got his hooks into them.
Also Mullenkamp, er, the father isn’t ‘whooping’ his son since he isn’t coming back. The article says the kid was found dead.
I think what the father did in this particular case is probably correct. What wasn’t correct was how he let it get to the point where it is now. This kid sounds like he was seriously addicted; the parents should have stepped in far sooner.
However, this is hardly as big a parenting error as some other mistakes parents make, and it certainly shouldn’t have ended how it did. The boy was 15 years old; the father reasonably thought he’d run off for a day, realize his mistake, and come rushing back. Looks like he ran into a mishap somewhere though. The police said they don’t suspect foul play right now, so some kind of accident happened. It’s not really the father’s fault, and I really feel for him.
Poor kid. His dad didn’t expect such an outcome, but I wonder what his (kid’s) social life was like. It’d be more normal running off to a friend and if he didn’t have close friends his parents should have known about it and taken interest.
I don’t think addiction is the proper word to describe the kid’s situation. It lacks the nuance necessary to address the kid’s situation.
Addiction or not, the dad’s course of action wasn’t the right one. If the dad was worried about online play, all he had to do was disconnect the xbox from the internet or pull the internet altogether. The dad went too far and didn’t communicate with his son regarding his situation, what he went through and what his life was like. The kid didn’t just leave because dad took his xbox away. Saying that this is what happened is stupid, narrowminded and uninformed. For the kid’s situation to have been what it was and have led to this, there are obviously a lot more variables at play that synergized. Unfortunately, saying this has much too many syllables and as demonstrated, is too complex for the public to understand. Therefore, the only message that gets through is “video games are evil”.
With regards to what happened, I think Sin has it right. The parents in this case just didn’t understand what they were doing, and what they were allowing to happen all that time.
There are a lot of misconceptions and over-simplicities regarding video games that are held by people that either didn’t grow up with them, ignored them, or just look at them as kids toys. They’ve changed so much in the past 10 years and the vast majority of parents out there don’t understand to what extent. Worst of all, there really isn’t a knowledge base out there that’s easily available to parents who just don’t know. They probably find internet resources, such as forums, completely impenetrable and nonsensical. Then they might turn to other parents who share similar opinions on video games for advice and knowledge, but then it’s just the blind leading the blind.
Perhaps gamers should work together and create some sort of handbook for clueless parents, so they know what to look out for, what behaviors are dangerous, what sort of games have a multiplayer/community aspect and how to talk to their kids about them. If the parents of this kid had known from the start that they were getting him a game that was going to potentially draw him in then they could have laid out ground rules from the start so he went into the game knowing he was only allowed to spend so much time. At the very least he might have acted differently, knowing the entire time that his hours were limited or that his folks knew he was interacting with a new community. Maybe it might’ve changed things, maybe not.
A lack of information and understanding is what caused this. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last time. And Sin is right, whether or not the parents are the ones blaming video games here, video games will be blamed by others regardless. It’s just easier that way.
Communication is the other factor. So many parents out there just don’t talk to their kids, or even listen to them, then run off and blame everything else under the sun when something happens.
This, and what Spoony said. In my situation, my dad - whom I lived with - didn’t really seem to concerned about how I was faring for the majority of the time. He was mostly just concerned with “That nintendo is ruining your life” and condemning it all the time. Hell, he would even scoff at my career choice until he started reading on the news about how video games are such a large-growing industry. Now that he thinks there’s a future in it, he doesn’t see a problem 
To echo what I originally said, when you’re in a situation like this, there’s not much anyone can or will do for it, and the parents probably won’t be on their kids’ side. To their credit, at least, they’ll THINK they are, because they’ll say and do a lot of shit that they think is best for you. And, to be fair, I feel like this situation can happen regarding other things that aren’t just video games; however, cos of all the things that Spoony said, it feels more likely to see this kind of thing happen over video games, because there’s such a huge disconnect between parents and their children in this regard.
I define addiction as anything which you spend a majority of your time doing, which you can’t bear to be apart from, and which may or may not have a negative effect on you. Coffee can be addictive. Talking on the phone can be addictive. I think terming it an addiction is quite correct in this case. Hell, all of us have heard of “EverCrack”.
Of course some people will say “video games are evil”, but the main point is that video games in moderation are fine. Practically anything without moderation isn’t.
I blame the kid
I probably played WoW for a long while more than he played CoD and still did awesome in school and had a great social life (I hadn’t started drinking or doing drugs yet though)
What a weak link