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"A scapegoat for every Tragedy"

Well, seems nowadays no-one does anything of their own will. It cannot be acceoted in modern society that mankind is just a bit screwed up. If someone does something 'crazy' it has to be for a reason beyond that individual.

In Erfurt in Germany not long ago a 19 year old bloke shot a lot of teachers at his school, now, seemingly inevitably, the media has found its scapegoat. Allegedly, the person had Slipknot albums, and a song by them called 'school wars'. Now according to Kerrang, (and I would assume they know more about Slipknot than the tabloids...) Slipknot have never written a song under that title or any song with similar lyrics to those printed. But apparently the mass media knows best.

Know I am no genius, but ultimately this scapegoating does no good what so ever. In fact, if the papers think Slipknot and other such extreme bands are so bad they shouldn't be printing stuff like this... all it will do is give the band more publicity. And ultimately it's a load of rubbish. Listening to any type of music doesn't make you go out and shoot people. Neither does playing videogames. Neither does watching films. Have the world press never sat down, watched some violent films/ extreme music/ gory videogames, and then thought 'hmm, well we haven't gone on a huge massacre yet...'?!? Are they so dumb that they don't realise people still got murdered before video games, before television and film, and before extreme music...?

And with the number of Slipknot hoodie wearing types around nowadays (although granted, a lot of them are probably making some kind of fashion statement and bearly even realise Slipknot is a band not a fashion label...), you'd expect there to have been massacres all over Britain by now, but unless they were very well covered up I don't think there have been any... No doubt if there was a PS2 and copy of GTA3 the guys room that would have been blamed... Do they actually have a clue what part they played in his life? He may have bought a Slipknot CD, disliked it and never listened to it again. Unlikely, but no more so than saying listening to a certain type of music makes you go out and kill people...

All I can say is that I'm sick of this scapegoating... When will the media realise that no one can MAKE you go kill some people. They seem to believe that certain entertainment has some magic to it that causes all the suffering in the world. Humans cause it.

Sibs wrote:
> And with the number of Slipknot hoodie wearing types around nowadays
> (although granted, a lot of them are probably making some kind of
> fashion statement and bearly even realise Slipknot is a band not a
> fashion label)

Why do they wear these? My 10 year old sister bought one (a Sum-41 one...) and they are crap! They just fall apart whenever you wash them !?!?!?!?

First off thank you for all replying to a topic that has probably, okay, definitely, been done 1000 times before, but I don't think people will stop topics like it until the media stop scapegoating...

Anyway, just to say I think some of you nailed it. Why would an artist tell its fans to kill each other...? Surely that'll harm sales. And banning something so often makes it more desirable... eg. they banned 'God Save the Queen' and it got to no. 1. They banned GTA and tons of people wanted it. Same with Carmageddon. Just advertises the 'evil' thing in question... you'd think the media woulda latched on to that by now...

Scapegoating things like movies and music is, like you said Sibs, one of the greatest forms of free advertising any band, director or games developer can get. The only alternative is to ban these so called materials, which are supposed to force a gun in some people’s hands. The only problem with that is, banning a form of entertainment publicises it even more. Remember the Exorcist, it was banned for years. Everyone wanted to see that film because it was banned.

I think its wrong the media shifting the blame onto violent forms of entertainment just because people who cause these kinds of sick acts 'may' have seen violent film or heard a song with certain lyrics and so on. Its about time the media tried to figure out the real problem as to why these people decide to go out and kill, instead of pointing the blame at things which may not have anything to do with these kinds of incidents at all.

Bit sick, really.

Fair enough.

I thought thats what you meant.. but... well, you never know nowadays.

Mind you how an 8 year old corpse could command someone to pipebomb still astounds me.

Duh......

because I don't like them. I though that was relatively obvious from the tone of the post.

Hmmm... why?

Having said that, listening to Nirvana would lead to an "urge to kill...rising" scenario with me.

And now that kid who's been pipebombing america recently has been branded an 'obsessive' Kurt Cobain fan, and fronted a band called 'Apathy'.

Apparantly if he hadn't liked Kurt none of this would have happened.

Yeah, right.

That German guy also played 'sick' computer games late in to the night. The media scaped games before music. Maybe eventually they'll discover that having an active social life is responsible for creating mass-murderers. You never know...