In a move that has sent shockwaves through the nation's internet cafes and incited a paroxysm of panic in the corridors of Whitehall, the Republic of the Philippines has declared war on a video game. Not just any War, mind you, but a full-blooded, red-blooded, pre-emptive strike against an entity of questionable lethality: a game allegedly linked to the mental contortions of a school shooter. The game, whose name I shan't utter lest I summon it like a demon, has been banned by the stern-faced guardians of Filipino virtue, who have decided that pixels are the root of all evil.
Now, in the United Kingdom, where our cyber experts likely subsist on a diet of tea and panic, alarm bells are clanging with the fury of a thousand broken fire alarms. They warn of 'copycat risks', a phrase so deliciously vague it might apply to a remake of 'Casablanca' or your aunt's new curtains. The logic, as far as I can decipher through the fog of gin, runs thus: if a spotty teen in Manila plays a game and then does a ghastly thing, then any spotty teen in Slough might do the same provided he has the same game on his hard drive. This, my friends, is the new theology. We have traded the devil for a download, sin for software. We burn the disc instead of the heretic.
Let us examine the evidence. The game in question is no doubt a masterpiece of interactive vulgarity: blood, guts, and the occasional elasticated bra strap. It might even be a tactical shooter where one reloads rifles with the practiced ease of a SAS operative. The Philippines, a country with more pressing issues like typhoons, corruption, and the occasional president who threatens to kill you for smiling, has decided that this is the hill to die on. Or rather, the hill to ban. The UK cyber experts, whose job description presumably includes 'inventing apocalypses before breakfast', nod sagely and say: 'Copycat risks, you know. It could happen here.'
But let us ask the unaskable question. If video games cause violence, why have we not all been shot by a horde of Tetris enthusiasts? Why does the nation's youth not spend its Saturday mornings mimicking the intricate plumbing strategies of Super Mario? The truth is that the Philippines and the UK both need a villain. It is easier to ban a game than to fix a school. It is easier to point fingers at a screen than to examine the failures of a society that produces broken children. And so the game is banned, or at least solemnly warned against, and the cyber experts go back to their sandwiches.
Make no mistake: I am not defending the indefensible. If a kid plays a game and then shoots up a library, he is a monster and the game is a tool, just as a kitchen knife is a tool for a stabbing. But we do not ban kitchen knives because someone used one to cut short a life. We say: 'Let us look at why he wanted the knife in the first place.' Yet in our panic, we opt for the easy theatricality: the ban, the warning, the stern press conference. We confuse the prop with the playwright.
So here is my final thought, drunk on the absurdity of it all. The Philippines bans a video game. The UK warns of copycats. And somewhere, a teenager in a basement laughs hollowly, his teeth yellowed by energy drinks, his soul eaten by apathy. The game is not his teacher. The game is not his father. The game is not the system that has taught him that the only way to be seen is to become a monster. But it is easier to ban the game, isn't it? This is our age, written in blood and silicon. And I need another drink.
