Student Arrested For Posting Zombie-Killing AR Game Clip Filmed at His High School (yahoo.com) 352
18-year-old high school student Sean Small was arrested in Indiana on Tuesday and charged with a misdemeanor for posting a videogame clip to social media. An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo Lifestyle:
The clip in question is Sean playing The Walking Dead: Our World, which is an augmented reality game that animates characters into a real-world setting. In this case, players kill zombies. Along with Sean's video he wrote, "Finally something better than Pokemon Go," which is also an augmented reality game....
Sean, who is a member of the Indiana National Guard, pleaded not guilty to an intimidation charge. He was released on $1,000, and his school expulsion hearing is set for next week. The video featured other students walking through the halls as Sean allegedly attempted to kill the zombies the game placed among them.
Realistic footage of shootings in the high school's hallways apparently alarmed the off-duty sheriff's deputy hired to work at the high school -- who then filed the misdemeanor intimidation charge with the county prosecutor.
Sean, who is a member of the Indiana National Guard, pleaded not guilty to an intimidation charge. He was released on $1,000, and his school expulsion hearing is set for next week. The video featured other students walking through the halls as Sean allegedly attempted to kill the zombies the game placed among them.
Realistic footage of shootings in the high school's hallways apparently alarmed the off-duty sheriff's deputy hired to work at the high school -- who then filed the misdemeanor intimidation charge with the county prosecutor.
thought crimes (Score:5, Interesting)
There seems to be a grey area between fiction, and really harmful content. However the line between free speech, and being uncomfortable about something is very hard to draw.
I'm not sure how to objectively draw a boundary. However if the game is setup to allow real life footage to be amended with zombie shooting, this would have happened sooner or later.
How this finally plays out is actually important for the future boundaries of free speech.
Re:thought crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see a difficulty in differentiating fiction from reality. Zombies aren't real. Shooting them, therefore, cannot be real.
A simple video of someone's game should not garner any response, other than if they are breaking any rules of the place where they filmed it.
I can understand being confused with an AR game, but nothing in this case seems to point at intimidation, harassment or threat. The complaint is, I'm sure, in good faith, but as soon as the kid explains what it was nothing further should have happened.
And I don't think this is about free speech, either. I see nothing about the kid's video hinting at threats, insults, etc. There is no speech of his that needs special exemption because it would otherwise be uncivil.
This is an overreaction to nothing by multiple adults that should know better. If not about the game and games like it, at least about the kid's intent and reactions to the complaint.
Reactions like these cannot become the norm.
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Seriously, sending your kid to public school is an act of parental malpractice these days.
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Seriously, sending your kid to public school is an act of parental malpractice these days.
Maybe in Podunkville, Indiana that is even true! But in "blue states," the cop would be getting transferred, and the school district would be apologizing.
Re: thought crimes (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah right, posting images of people on social networks without their consent is why people our outraged
Re: thought crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case why are they not charging him with that?
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Except the complaint was for misdemeanor intimidation, as stated in the summary. Which was why I raised the point about breaking the space's rules. If they wanted to punish him for that, go right ahead. I call him kid, but at 18 I fully expect he'd be capable of following such rules.
But this was clearly an overreaction to guns. Not even actual, physical, fake or make-believe guns. The added live footage angle of AR is where I kind of give the initial complaint some leeway, for anyone not familiar with AR, b
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I'm waiting for Leisure Suit Larry Go: augmented reality.
Giggidy!
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Drunkn Bar Fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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There is no expectation of privacy in public places.
Re: thought crimes (Score:5, Informative)
>He filmed people without their consent and posted it online.
Nope.
Scott County Sheriffâ(TM)s Deputy Joe Baker and principal Ric Mann determined after watching the video that it âoedepicted real Scottsburg High School students walking through the hallway along with fictional zombie characters,â according to WDRB-TV.
âoeSuch students could not be identified due to the appâ(TM)s photographic settings,â the station reported, citing a probable cause affidavit.
So apparently the app has a face blurring or obscuring algorithm that protects the identity of real people that happen to appear in game background.
Three reasons why this is wrong (Score:3)
He filmed people without their consent and posted it online. That alone could break rules and laws, even seen as harassment if people objected and he did it anyway.
There are several problems with this theory. Firstly, in most countries, it is fine to film someone in a public place provided it is not for commercial gain. Secondly, he was not charged with this but with "intimidating behaviour" and lastly he is a kid and the law _should_ allow for a good deal of leeway when dealing with kids who do not always think through the consequences of their actions as much as an adult and may not be aware of some less-well-known laws.
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He filmed people without their consent and posted it online. That alone could break rules and laws, even seen as harassment if people objected and he did it anyway.
In the US you can film in a public place, and you still have the right to show your footage even if your filming incidentally catches people in the background passing through your frame. Federal law doesn't legally require you must have a release for every model, unless you're in the porn/adult film industry.
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It could be "seen as" harassment, as a literary word, but you used it while talking about laws and rules. Harassment laws don't make it illegal to do anything that a person might describe using the literary word "harassment," instead they list out specific things that make up the crime.
Filming people without their consent may or may not "break rules and laws," depending on the context, but it is never "intimidation," which is what he's accused of. That would require additional, totally separate facts.
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I think it plays a big role if the fake fight against the zombies looked like that Sean attacked people for real. Part of the test would if the weapon looked real:
A sword made of foam rubber is a lot less imtimidating than a real one. Here we have a objective criterion.
Another criterion would be if he happened to run directly at people, or if he took care to "attack" only in empty parts of the hall.
A third one would be if The Walking Dead was a common pastime at school. If yes, it would be reasonable to as
Update (Score:2)
Looked at some footage now. It appears The Walking Dead in not even played with fake weapons. Oops.
Re:Update (Score:5, Funny)
I'm upping a patch tonight to replace the weapons with grief counselors.
*thrown*
*hits zombie*
Counselor: "How does that make you feel? Did you take the physical contact personally?"
*Counselor pulls out a plush High School Musical doll*
Counselor: "Where on Zach Efron did I touch you?"
Re: Update (Score:3)
That's idiotic. This is the clock-boy case all over again, except this time the kid is facing actual criminal charges instead of just being questioned and released. If you're OK with that, there's something seriously wrong with you.
Re: Update (Score:3)
He uploaded simulated footage of weapons at a school. It's just that's simple, that's generally going to be perceived as wrong.
By idiots, sure. I fully understand that there are people out there who are so terrified of guns that even pictures of a gun makes them pee themselves. I just don't think we should be basing policies and laws on the desires of such people.
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There seems to be a grey area between fiction, and really harmful content.
There's no grey area here. He was playing a game. If you're unable to distinguish between a game and reality then you're the one with the problem. The fact that you would even suggest that this is "really harmful content" is extremely worrying.
Re:thought crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a grey area between fiction, and really harmful content.
Oh please, it's Pokemon Go with zombies. You walk around with your cell phone and click to kill zombies instead of capturing pokemons. Next thing you know Pokemon Go should be banned for having "battles" in public locations. OMG the carnage...
Re:thought crimes (Score:4, Funny)
Pokemon should be banned for animal cruelty! /s
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Pokemon Go should be banned for having "battles" in public locations.
Not only this. But looking like Pikachu, I feel pretty intimidated.
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I feel intimidated every time I see Pikachu Dancer Lady!
Just search youtube for "pikachu song dance remix"
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Re:thought crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that this was considered by *anyone* to be a crime is just fucking insane. Those people are the ones who need to be locked away as they obviously can't separate real life from fiction and are potentially dangerous in this state of hallucinatory delusion.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
School officials answer to voters (Score:4, Interesting)
Schools have [zero tolerance] policies because it relieves them from having to think. Aren't all the grown-ups at a school supposed to be capable of critical thinking?
School administrators are capable of critical thinking. The voters who elect the school board that hires school administrators, not so much.
Re:thought crimes (Score:4, Interesting)
I know many people who work for various school districts in the area, the school can try and do the "common sense" action by telling the student and the parents that it's not acceptable behavior and not to do it again. The problem now is that the parents blame the school and threaten lawsuits for trivial stuff. The schools protect themselves by having these "zero tolerance" policies.
The baby boomers have passed their laziness and blame others mentality on to my generation. And it is our kids that must deal with this crap.
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If parents (in general) were responsible the situation likely would never have reached this point.
Re-read the story, Cluestick! The parents were never asked if they'd like to protect their child's civil liberties, instead the cop just decided on his own to violate them. You can't hang that on the parents.
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The real crime are the lawyers who invent these zero tolerance policies. It's not so much about not having to think, its more about avoiding drawn out litigation having to explain why in one case the punishment was X whereas in another the punishment is Y. Just about every insensitive, uncaring, policy you can name came from a discussion with the legal department. Add to that the loose interpretation of what qualifies, like the kindergartner that that at a pop tart into the shape of a gun and said bang, imm
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in this state of hallucinatory delusion.
It's Indiana. Personally, I'd hope the cop would get drug tested before testifying.
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Yeah.. the guy posted a video of himself shooting fellow students at a time where the public is worried because of students doing just that.
When you start thinking of zombies as just another peer, it is really time to think about checking in to an inpatient treatment center.
At least try to make it to a meeting tonight, OK?
Re: thought crimes (Score:2)
If you donâ(TM)t know how to define the boundary, please do not vote or run for political offices. The line is pretty clear: in the US, the bill of rights and constitution are the limits you are allowed to define. Sure, people will yell fire in a theater or shoot each other, thatâ(TM)s the price of freedom, the only other alternative always tends towards oppression and many more people die then. Look at National Socialism in Germany, Democratic Socialism in South America, Fascism in Asia, Italy an
Simple Test (Score:2)
I'm not sure how to objectively draw a boundary.
Well, since he was charged with intimidation a logical place to start is "was anyone intimidated?". Since the game appears to involve walking while staring intently at your phone screen and occasionally tapping it then, if this is intimidating, a LOT of people are going to be guilty.
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This is the classic problem of when students create fiction that involves real people.
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H
This is the classic problem of when students create fiction that involves real people.
Wait, wait, wait, are you saying that the zombies were real people?!?!
At least one of us totally misunderstands this game.
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The intimidation aspect was showing a virtual representation of somebody carrying and using a firearm on school property. The "zombie" element in the video is irrelevant.
No, it is very relevant. Having a virtual representation of someone using a gun on school property to shoot fictional monsters in order to save people is very different to one where you are just shooting the people.
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More to the point. Why are we finding reasons to punish people?
We spend billions of dollars to find reasons to be cruel to people.
For some things you can just ask the person to stop and they will, you don’t need to make a big deal over it. Just so you can be cruel to the person who made a mistake.
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Abstract fiction, even when violent, tends to be pretty straight forward. However this is a case where the game was using images of actual people around the player, and then the player posted a video of that artistic creation online.... which means the person posted a fantasy video of them gunning down actual fellow students. That is what crosses the line and makes people uncomfortable.
Sorta like, if I wrote a story about beating up nameless slashdot p
THAT line is not hard AT ALL (Score:2)
THAT line is not hard AT ALL. The right to free speech completely trumps any desire to be protected against discomforting ideas and images.
There is an explicit constitutional right to free speech. The Supreme Court recognizes that it constitutes a complete ban on government action to even have a "chilling effect" on it, and has incorporated it against the States and all their components and subdivisions, which i
Re:An arrest is not an infringement of rights per (Score:5, Insightful)
A wrongful arrest is absolutely an infringement of the arrestee's rights.
And this was a video of a game, not a video of a plausible violation of the school's rules on contraband (unless cell phones are contraband there).
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a nra shirt or even a yellow pink squirt gun or a pop tart chewed into shape of a gun will get police called in most public schools ...this is the future you voted for
Re:An arrest is not an infringement of rights per (Score:5, Informative)
Congratulations on supporting a police state?
Something ambiguous that, depending on additional facts, either could be probable cause for a crime or could be innocuous is not itself PC. Those additional facts have to be deduced to find PC. In this case, they weren't there.
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Indiana isn't a rich enough State to create a police state, the best they can hope for is to stomp on the rights of a few kids and maybe silence a few people who weren't sure if they wanted to speak, or not.
Explaining current law != supporting it (Score:2)
Just because someone explains how the existing law works to you (for the first time?) doesn't mean they've expressed support for that aspect of it
True. Here's a suggestion: Some users disclaim support for the law that they're explaining by prefacing such explanation with "Under current law" or similar. I, for one, have done this when explaining copyright, particularly some of the parts that I consider contrary to "the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
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You did not describe the law. You distorted your description in ways that are friendly to police.
A wrongful arrest is wrongful even if it is not proven so in court. One of many reasons that an arrest may be wrongful is if it performed without probable cause that an offense has been committed.
An ambiguous fact on its own is not PC. "Probable cause exists where the facts and circumstances within the officers' knowledge, and of which they have reasonably trustworthy information, are sufficient in themselves
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"Your rights end where [WHITE] children's rights to not be shot begin."
Corrected that so our more conservative viewers will be on your side.
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If you never have to deal with bullies in life growing up then the school has failed at preparing you for life. Life is full of them, if you shelter kids when they're learning how to survive in life, they will grow up to be worthless and probably die young or end up in prison.
Don't shelter your children!! Teach them about life and its realitys! You wont be there to hold their hand every day of their life.
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Schools have a legal no-tolerance zone 1000 feet around them for various things, this is found to be Constitutional. From that, posting a video of violating that boundary is considered evidence of a potential crime.
No tolerance to what? Playing computer games? Having a fucking brain?
His video violates what fucking boundary exactly?
Re: An arrest is not an infringement of rights per (Score:2)
Re: BAN BUMP STOCKS TO MAKE SCHOOLS SAFE... apk (Score:4, Interesting)
Just for that, I'm going to buy a bump stock. I don't own a rifle that has a pistol grip, but fuck it, I'll buy a bump stock anyways. I don't use Instagram, but I'll create an account and post a nice selfie of me holding a bump stock.
Snitches should get stitches. (Score:4, Insightful)
And effective gun control is a must to remove the fear of shootings.
That's all.
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That is exactly backwards. Places don't get gun control unless there is a pervasive and lasting fear of shootings. That fear doesn't go away once the gun ban is in place, it just gets augmented with fears of knife attacks, acid attacks, vehicular homicide, bombing public places, and so on.
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Congratulations, you are making a good case for banning straw men.
Scarecrow (Score:2)
Then we proceed to see whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. How else are farmers supposed to keep crows from stealing their corn?
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Guns?
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Sure, but I don't think the police are going to let you take their guns away.
Re: Snitches should get stitches. (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, if you are talking the US, you'te completely wrong. Gun toting is a right (without the quotes), but unfortunately, some states fail to grasp this concept - places like NY, NJ, CA. Those bastions of "liberal" thought...
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A "Right" is not something created by society.
Yes it is. If you live alone and by yourself, you have no need of "rights" or "obligations", you can do as you please. The concept of "rights" came up historically because people realized it is better to live together, and that having rules about living together is better than doing as you would on your own. It took more than a century or two, too. Here, you can start educating yourself on how the concept of human rights evolved even here: https://en.wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]
Re: Snitches should get stitches. (Score:3)
Most would agree that the only reason you have rights is because you can defend yourself and itâ(TM)s better for those that have power to give you a number of rights so you can protect them better. Those that collectively fight are better survivors.
The US has made, in the past 50-ish years, the choice that sacrificing human lives on the altar of gun ownership is a value. Other countries have made a different choice, by putting whatever is necessary for a person to protect themselves and their loved one
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The US has made, in the past 50-ish years, the choice that sacrificing human lives on the altar of gun ownership is a value. Other countries have made a different choice, by putting whatever is necessary for a person to protect themselves and their loved ones.
I was a member of a high school shooting team, and it was common to have firearms on campus (early 80s, Seattle area). No problem carrying my bosses' hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols from his office on Union and 4th down to his gunsmith, middle of the day, no worries. We've tightened things dramatically since then, and not a lot has changed.
What has changed is the racial composition of murder. Fully half of all gun violence is perpetrated by blacks, and overwhelmingly (90%) against other blacks. Thi
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Not really, even the US constitution explicitly sets the context of bearing arms - and it is not individual liberty, but a well regulated militia.
Have you even read your constitution? It seems you haven't.
No, YOU have it exactly, perfectly backwards. And clearly haven't read either the Bill of Rights (especially its preamble) nor any of the volumes of transcripts, letters, and essays by the people involved in writing and ratifying the Bill of Rights generally and the 2nd Amendment specifically.
As nicely explained by those who wrote it, you've got it wrong. They (the colonists, and then new owners of a new nation) had just lived through existence under a government that said that the only defense people w
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That certain inalienable Rights are not as widely accepted by other Countries actually speaks volumes about their lack of Civil Rights compared to the U.S., rather than that those Rights are somehow not "acceptable".
Except that many other countries recognize inalienable rights that the US doesn't, including right to privacy in public, rights to vote, right to a new start after serving a sentence, rights to healthcare and right to a roof above your head.
The US of A is way down the list of human rights, and needs to shut up. The US bill of rights was forward-thinking centuries ago, but has stuck on archaic while the world has moved forward.
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Interesting. Cuba, for instance, has a right to healthcare for all, so according to you they're ahead of us.
How many people do you know building homemade boats to get from Florida to Cuba? How many go the other way?
Were you saying something?
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Strangely enough, that right was granted when guns took about 30-60 seconds to reload, and they only shot one round at a time.
And it also included artillery and warships, so you're saying you're OK with your neigbor's 105mm Howitzer and the light battle cruiser he has moored down at the docks, right?
Also, the army's guns took the same time to reload and functioned in the same manner as that was the intent, to assure that citizens had weapons of standard infantry-grade so that citizens may form militias in times of emergency that can share ammunition and spare parts with the regular infantry and fight alongside them. Every able-bod
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Strangely enough, that right was granted when guns took about 30-60 seconds to reload, and they only shot one round at a time.
You're (deliberately, I presume) completely misunderstanding the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights. IT DOES NOT "GRANT" ANYTHING. It's based on the fact that some rights are inalienable (your rights to speak, to defend yourself, to gather in groups, to not be locked away without due process) and that since there will always be people who will try to use their power in government to attempt to take away those rights, that the nation's very charter must PREVENT the government from doing so. Every piece of
Re:Snitches should get stitches. (Score:4, Interesting)
Gun control is completely realistic in the most general sort of sense. I've lived in 6 or 7 countries, and all of them have strict gun regulation. In all of them owning guns is allowed, but it comes with reasonable preconditions. One has to pass a base sanity check, and one cannot easily own an arsenal.
Guess what, there are no recorded mass shootings in any of these countries. The police aren't armed to the teeth. They are not trigger-happy, and you don't have to live in fear that you'll be shot by them no matter what ethnicity is.
And, guess what, schoolchildren in those countries don't get arrested for playing a game. Even it is a FPS AR one.
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What does it mean to "value" the second amendment?
Its traditional interpretation is that the ultimate goal of gun ownership is protecting the liberty of a state from a power grab by the federal government. This protection is, on paper, guaranteed by a "well regulated", well trained and disciplined state militia. This, however, is just a paper proposition. The US states do not have well trained militia, and the threat of a power grab by the federal government which gave worries to the States in the late 1700
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What does it mean to "value" the second amendment?
Its traditional interpretation is that the ultimate goal of gun ownership is protecting the liberty of a state from a power grab by the federal government.
No, it's really not be adjudicated much at the Supreme Court level. The last two times it was, the Supreme Court recognized that it meant the right to self-protection (DC v Heller) and that the 2nd Amendment was incorporated against the States (Chicago v. McDonald). The Supreme Court has been very slow to protect 2A rights, but when it's made a decision, it's always been in the direction of personal use and ownership for self-defense.
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The US supreme court has been quite wrong and has taken populist decisions on many occasions, and this is one of them. And the drive behind it was that of the gun lobby and their political fronts. And the gun nuts like the one above, who's afraid the gubbermint will take the fredumz.
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is absurd.
Sadly, it is also the US history.
Re: Snitches should get stitches. (Score:3)
What mythical country do you live? Mass shootings in Norway has a death rate of 1.888 per million. No. 2 is Serbia, at just 0.381, followed by France at 0.347, Macedonia at 0.337, and Albania at 0.206. Slovakia, Finland, Belgium, and Czech Republic all follow. Then comes the U.S., at No. 11, with a death rate of 0.089.
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Seeing how large your strawmen are, maybe it isn't a bad idea to ban them.
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Tip of the Iceberg (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect this to get worse as AR becomes more commonplace. Imagine if it were a laser-tag AR game where he was shooting other students!
People love their battle royale games, I expect there to shortly be location-based AR battle royale games; last survivor in your school wins!
I'm honestly surprised that ~20 years after Postal, Pico's World, GTA and Super Columbine Massacre RPG, people still get their panties in a twist about games about killing sprees. Perhaps satire was the only thing that spared those games, anything that's halfway serious gets shouted down even by gamers.
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I tend to agree with this. Reading the article, I thought back to an aborted Doom2 WAD I was trying to build back in my first year or two of College, which would have been rather Downtown (Map 13)-like. This was before Columbine, but even after I don't think it would have caused an outcry like a modern AR game or a modern graphics game would.
No gun (real or fake) used to play this game. (Score:5, Insightful)
To play this game you move around with your smartphone and click buttons in the smartphone's screen to destroy pixels which make up zombie images.
Nobody in the school could have been intimidated by a student walking around waving his phone and clicking on it.
This is not even a thought crime. A thought crime would be "I so would like to kill this teacher who makes such difficult exams". Killing zombies in real life (yes, I realize how absurd that was) is no crime, thus phantasies about it are not thought crimes.
vampirbg (Score:5, Interesting)
Molest the Zombies (Score:2)
A dying society swatting at flies (Score:2)
Few people seem to ask why we have school shootings, and the answer seems to be a combination of suicidal students, a hateful society, and massive media attention for the kid with a high score.
We're giving people a choice between a lifetime of wage-slavery and stupidity, which they rationalize as "adulthood," and going out in a blaze of glory where everyone knows your name, your manifesto, your favorite bands, etc.
Then there's the fact that public high schools are jails. Sort of like jobs. What kind of dyst
1975 - 10 years olds and teachers would sing... (Score:2)
Glory, glory hallelujah
teacher hit me with a ruler
shot her behind a door
with a loaded 44
now teaches stands no more
Went to the cemetery
went to the grave
instead of throwing flowers
we threw hand grenades
then we went to school
and said we really had it made
cause teacher stands no more.
No student was suspended.
No teacher was fired.
It never made the front page of the paper.
That year there were three school shootings.
Intimidation from a posted video game clip? (Score:2)
Re:Some things you can't do in public, in school. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary, it doesn't sound to me, as though he thought he was pushing any boundaries. He was just playing a game, and thought he'd share it on social media. It wasn't a depiction of shooting students or civilians, only literal monsters. This genuinely sounds like an overreaction to me.
Re:Some things you can't do in public, in school. (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously the administrators saw 'AR', 'clip' and 'high school' in the same sentence and freaked out.
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I think the problem is, they arrested the guy and a lot of people are saying it's an overreaction, but if they hadn't done anything and he later shot up the school, some of those same people would have said, "Why didn't you do something when you found out he was playing that game?!"
Specifically, there's a tension created by the Republican rhetoric, and there's not a clear way to resolve it. On the one hand, they want to argue that the availability of guns isn't a contributing factor in school shootings, a
Re: Some things you can't do in public, in school. (Score:2)
The alternative is government control over speech, thoughts and subsequently guns. If the first two amendments fall, how quick will the others go?
If you can lock up anyone for having âoebad thoughtsâ like suicide or murder, then you can lock up pretty much the entire population. There is one clear answer to minimizing the carnage: stop glorifying the actors in the mainstream media.
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There is one clear answer to minimizing the carnage: stop glorifying the actors in the mainstream media.
And how are you going to stop it? There goes freedom of the press.
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I think the problem is, they arrested the guy
So far, so good.
and a lot of people are saying
Who cares? Saying things is an absolute right. Arresting people is strongly regulated.
if they hadn't done anything and he later shot up the school, some of those same people would have said, "[blah blah blah]"
Who cares? Yeah, they might say things, they're people. Why do you perceive it is as a problem if their words contradict other words they said before? Who fucking cares? That doesn't impact their right to say it. Compare that to, if you're arresting people and you do it in contradiction of the laws that allow you to do it! That one is illegal.
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As a member of the Indiana National Guard, isn't he technically part of the authorities in case of any weapon-requiring emergency situation, eg. a zombie outbreak?
Re:An Aussie Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight, you think that the guy is rather silly because he posted game footage that also included a public place? What's the real difference between that and a movie about a killing spree in down-town Washington filmed in said location? The actual playing of the game is rather harmless as no guns are wielded, just a (deadly?) phone!
I find it difficult that it is no longer possible for many people and powers that be to distinguish between a make-believe and reality. I am sure that the sheriff's department would be informed had a real incident happened. At least check the facts before arresting people. I think the silliness, if not outright stupidity, is to be found among people overreacting to literally harmless publishings like this.
My conclusion: The terrorists have won!
People are now so terrified of even little things that it is difficult to have fun if it is not entirely PC. Put the terrorist threat into context and look at how many people have died in the traffic in the last few years or from pneumonia or tuberculosis compared to how many people have died in terror attacks in the last 100 years.
Re: (Score:2)
We had this same basic debate years ago when it came to writing violent revenge stories about people. It isn't 'just fantasy' when you can go 'sure, A did this thing to B, but I am C writing about D so D should not take it personally!'
Re:An Aussie Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
This Aussie is rather silly to think it knows what "cultural context" is going to be shared or not. The US still resists the nanny state mentality. That's the shared cultural context that you don't, or can't, understand.
We don't need more laws to stop incidents like the Parkland shootings, we need officials who will enforce the existing laws instead of letting known-violent offenders do whatever the flip they feel like in some misguided attempt to "shut down the school-to-prison pipeline". They merely replaced it with a school-to-graveyard pipeline.
Re:An Aussie Perspective (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing lethal about it. See, the thing is, zombies are already dead.
Re: (Score:2)
Came to post this. Left satisfied.
Small's supporters need to come to his trial and sit in the gallery in zombie costumes.
#UndeadLivesMatter