Updates to this story
The besieged Metropolitan Police thinks it has highlighted the root cause of the escalating crisis in London and other parts of the UK – a lack of expertise in Pac Man, replaced instead by violent video games.
London’s premier reactionary rag the Evening Standard highlighted the concerns of one police constable who laid the blame firmly at the feet of that most evil and corrupting of video games, Grand Theft Auto.
"These are bad people who did this,” the unnamed source said. “Kids out of control. When I was young it was all Pacman and board games.
“Now they're playing Grand Theft Auto and want to live it for themselves."
With such a warning one solution is becoming increasingly apparent. Like that famous quote goes, it seems the Met is advocating youths run around swallowing pills in the dark. More.
The Standard originally stood by its story, according to Hexus. It claimed that "Children as young as ten, inspired by video game [GTA], were among the looters".
Now the Standard has shied away from putting the blame of the rioting squarely on the shoulders of one computer game, and has ditched the reference.
Presumably the paper was swayed by other reports of a burning Sony warehouse. The 1968 Paris Riots these are not, but surely even our less intellectually driven rioters would not have burned a whole warehouse without grabbing a few PS3s to play their beloved GTA on first?
We just hope that PC Irate Retro Gaming Enthusiast doesn't find out about a press release allegedly put out by Sega. The title? Anarchy Reigns.
The elephant in the room is that unless the footages that we get here in Oz were filtered, the "young thugs" running around on the street predominantly appeared to be from one certain, err, ethnic background. Let say... Mediterranean.
It's a major failure of the social system and education in particular, if a certain group, whether on an ethnic basis or not, gets so marginalised and falls so much outside social norms. These things don't just come out of the blue, overnight.
Talking about civilised, whatever happened to shooting looters on sight? Please bring it back!!
There were no riots 30 years ago either .....ooooohh wait up.