I don’t know why, but reporting on a kid who threw a taco at his mother for unplugging his Xbox, in relation to a murder initally alleged to have been inspired by Mortal Kombat (later refuted) seems a little distasteful.
Zachary Moir is currently in a jail cell after assaulting his mother, throwing the taco was just one facet of the incident which also included physical assault and verbal abuse. News sources reported on this as a simple case of parental abuse, which is exactly what it is, with the video game angle not emphasized in the least.
However, a certain site has decided to play up the video game angle, surprisingly, it’s Kotaku. This isn’t me having a pop at Kotaku at all, but this left a sour taste in my mouth. What that blog is doing is the equivalent of trying to get a fight going between two people in a school, riling up their readership over the way the media covers incidents where video games are only vaguely mentioned. Of all the sites mentioned above, only Kotaku mentions Xbox in all but one of their paragraphs.
Clearly this Zachary is a pathetic piece of shit in many many different ways, but this violence wasn’t video game motivated. It was the latest in a series of assaults “provoked” by the most minor of incidents. It’s just surprising that the only media source emphasizing the video game angle is a video game blog. Whether or not it was posted deliberately to rile the masses, I don’t know, but I’m cynical by nature so what do I know?