Silver Bullets

So...I just realized that I've only posted one blog this entire month. That's somehow surprising to me. I think it's because I always plan what I'm going to write in a blog. But now I see that I haven't actually written anything at all.

Aaannnyway...let's talk about the Magic Silver Bullet Effect.
We briefly touched on it tonight at our study session or else I might have forgotten about it. But I have noticed it running rampant through the Internet, television and conversation as of late.
You know why? Because everyone loves a tragedy.
As I'm sure you heard, there was a student at Virginia Tech decided that he'd shoot a lot of people at school. So last Monday 32 people died and many more were injured from the bullets shot by Seung-Hu Cho. It has been labeled as the largest massacre in the history of the United States.
And as I'll bet you also heard, lots and lots of people have the answer to problems to things like this. I'm sure you hear it all of the time. Columbine, 9/11 all of the major tragedies. And even though we all mourn at times like this, I have a sneaking suspicion that people love to take these opportunities to indulge in long and senseless ramblings of their opinions concerning such issues.
The Magic Silver Bullet Effect suggests that our media texts affect us in immediate, powerful, direct and uniform ways. I noticed that a lot of people tend to lean that toward that belief when these tragedies occur. Or at least they voice their opinions about them more.
Someone pointed out the high correlation bewteen kids who are violent and kids who play video games (particularly violent video games). I thought this was an absurd connection to make in the same way that it's absurd to compare the number of people who get in car accidents and the number of people who own microwaves. A lot of people get in car crashes and a lot of people own microwaves. The correlation is probably higher there because most people own microwaves, but the fact is a lot of kids play video games. I don't know exact numbers, but even without them I always thought it was ridiculous that Magic Bullet believers didn't realize this on their own.
More people seem to believe in Magic Silver Bullets than I thought. Would Seung-Hui Cho have shot up the school if he never played a video game, listened to any music or watched a movie? Maybe not. But I like to think that the media is less like a bullet and more like...ultra violent rays? They slowly soak into your skin, sometimes burning you immediately. But the burning fades away. You play in the sun a lot and still protect your skin from the rays. You can too much sun, you can get too little. See where I'm going? So on and so on.

~Nadia