Glenn Beck Claims Watch Dogs Is Teaching Children How To Hack The Public For Realz

from the no-it-isn't dept

You know how fads are. They just get boring so. Take violence, for instance. Blaming video games for real-world violence is so yesterday. We need a forward-thinker, some kind of super-genius who can bring us into a new era of blaming video games for something way more hip than just blowing stuff up. You know, a real bullshit artist of the highest caliber.



My hero! Yes, Glenn Beck, upstanding journalist of freedom and 'Merica, has decided to expound on the dangers of video games in a way so completely backward and ill-informed, it sort of makes you wonder how everyone in whatever studio compound he tapes this drivel in didn't drown out the sound mics in laughter. Should you be unable to view the video, or simply don't want to waste the time and brain cells doing so, here's the relevant part of this illogical rollercoaster.

We start off with Beck quoting the coroner in that dumb story I just wrote about, with his shoot-from-the-hip remarks on how Call of Duty somehow made four teenagers kill themselves. He actually quotes the coroner fully, which is sort of nice for me, but bad for him, since the coroner helpfully noted that he had no actual evidence for anything he was saying. He then goes on to note that Breivik, the Norway killer who murdered 77 people, trained to do so on Call of Duty, and apparently just decides to take the psycho's word for it and assume that this video game is every bit the murder simulator a real-life assassin needs. We start the Watch Dogs portion of this discussion with Beck wondering why we always need an anti-hero. He asks why we can't have a Superman in our entertainment. I mean, it's been almost an entire year since Man of Steel came out. What the hell, people? And then Beck gets to the culmination of this stupid screed, holding up his iPad and informing his listeners that Watch Dogs is training children how to hack into his tablet while he sleeps next to it.

Whoo-boy. Okay, let me make this simple, since I've actually, you know, played Watch Dogs: if the game teaches children how to hack people's tablets then someone is going to have to show me where the square-button is on my phone, because I can't find it. Hacking devices in the game is that simple. You push a button. Sometimes you actually have to solve a little navigation puzzle, too. That, I'm fairly certain, isn't hacking.



I've said this before: don't watch anything remotely resembling any cable news network or their talking mouthpieces. Beck isn't the only slinger of stupid out there and it's especially bad when it comes to video games. If people want to have a frank and open discussion on the impact of gaming on the lives of children and society as a whole, fine, let's do that. But the children have to shut up while we're having that discussion, because their wailing lies are getting in the way.

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Filed Under: glenn beck, hacking, video games, violence, watch dogs