Pop princess Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam recently claimed that video games were responsible for teaching American kids to act violently and prepare for war.
Arulpragasam told Connect magazine that she “saw violence all the time” while growing up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
“My kid’s gonna see it, but he’s gonna see it in computer games…I don’t know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there’s a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan.
“They feel like they know the violence when they don’t. Not having a proper understanding of violence, especially what it’s like on the receiving end of it, just makes you interpret it wrong and makes inflicting violence easier.”
Unsurprisingly, Destructoid’s outspoken Jim Sterling expressed skepticism over the pop singer’s controversial assessment.
“Funny that she mentioned Afghanistan. By all accounts, there are some pretty violent bastards out in the Middle East, many of them very young males, and something tells me they didn’t get their tendencies from videogames,” wrote Sterling.
“I should think somebody claiming to have firsthand experience of violence would have the maturity to realize that videogames have never been needed to encourage inhumanity, and that it’s something unfortunately hardwired into our basic evolutionary nature.”
Sterling added that blaming a media source for violence was little more than an “easy ticket” for “intellectually lazy” individuals.
“You’d think we could expect more from a political activist who has had traumatic experiences herself. Apparently this M.I.A character would rather keep that easy ticket. Shame.”
