Video Game Scare Stories Have a Pattern

It’s a given that Old Media loves hating on video games. This is partially because a huge chunk of Old Media has never picked up a controller, and also associates video games with that blogging fad that will go away eventually, and then newspaper sales will rise again, oh yes, we need not change; partially because our society insists on keeping a tight grip on the myth that media equals mind control, and therefore video games will drive otherwise perfectly normal kids into a murderous rage; and partially because lousy parents will never, ever, accept any portion of the blame for little screwed up Johnny who just blew up half the school.

But data journalist David McCandless crunched some numbers and found that video game scare stories are big in two months: April and November. Why exactly this is the case remains unknown, although McCandless has a lot of really impressive charts and graphs to back up his assertion. McCandless’ guess is that April is the anniversary of the Columbine shootings, and that November is rolling into the shopping season, and since news reports can’t panic you over a toddler swallowing a Blu-Ray, they’ll try and panic you over how your perfectly normal child will become a murderous psychopath because he started collecting Pokemon. The full video of McCandless’ talk under the cut: