Jack Thompson v. Gamers

Okay. World's gone crazy. (Well, the gaming world anyway.)

Jack Thompson (Wikipedia entry), in case you've randomly run across this weblog and do not happen to be particularly interested in the gaming industry, is a Florida lawyer who hates video games.

No, I mean HATES video games. Reading Jack's opinion, it sometimes seems he thinks they cause anyone who's ever touched a controller to steal, rape, and murder completely at random. It also causes your IQ to drop like a rock. Oh yeah, and it seems you're going to go to Hell for playing Super Mario Bros. that one time fifteen years ago.

Now, demonizing video games really isn't new. This has been happening since Doom and Mortal Kombat in the early '90's. It's still going on. Hillary Clinton does it all the time. She blames video games for violence, we make fun of her for it, and then we all go about our business as usual.

But the annoying things about Jack are he's a very LOUD individual who is not content with just going after the games. He attacks gamers. Frequently using religious language, he seems to think he is one of God's footsoldiers, and that the Almighty himself has given Jack the task of destroying the video game industry. Apparently, this Footsoldier of God is also a person who likes websurfing and who has a LOT of time on his hands, as he frequently visits video game websites and leaves taunting messages insulting the gaming community (calling us "drooling cretins" among other things). One of the most Jack-visited sites is GamePolitics. He also threatens to sue anyone who looks at him funny, and likes to use the phrase "OR ELSE" a lot.

So when you piss off a fairly large group of people, there is bound to be some backlash. Disregarding idiots who have been sending Thompson death-threats (Note to idiots... KNOCK THAT OFF. That really doesn’t help us AT ALL. In fact, sending Thompson death-threats actively HARMS our case.) there was a flood of complaints to the Florida Bar Association concerning his unprofessional conduct.

So many gamers reacted with glee this morning when it seemed that Thompson was under investigation due to the massive amounts of complaints received (Ars Technica article, Kotaku article).

However, Gamespot later wrote (article here) that Thompson was NOT under any new investigation. The Gamespot article also contains a letter from Jack Thompson that he apparently sent to the Bar. (Jack likes mass mailing his letters.) In it, he seems to conclude that every gamer who has sent a complaint to the Bar really works for Blank Rome, the law firm that works for Take-Two interactive. He also says that all the complaints are completely illegal and if the Florida bar processes them, it's risking breaking Federal law... (how that is possible I'm not sure, but I'll look into that.) Also, George W. Bush is worked in there somehow (Jack concludes that due to Blank Rome's high ties, apparently with Dubya himself, makes them think they can "run over" people who oppose them...).

Here's the fun part about the letters... They're rants. They're worse than my rants, quite frankly. Unabashedly calling people who oppose him idiots and sociopaths, he actually ended the letter in a threat to the Florida Bar.

Does that seem like a good plan to you? Threatening the entity that controls your license to practice law? Because it doesn't seem like a good plan to me.

Anyway, later on, Kotaku (article here) basically concludes, accurately, that everyone is confused. So we'll have to wait until tomorrow (or later) to find out what's going on.

So, final comments for this evening:
It is my personal opinion that Jack is completely insane. I can describe it no other way. He threatens gamers not just with litigation, but with Hellfire and Damnation. He believes God is on his side in this. That's a bad thing. Thinking they're correct on a religious level tends to make crazy people dangerous. He is also what is called, impolitely, an "Attention Whore." He doesn't send gaming websites copies of his letters out of the goodness of his heart. He does it to provoke a reaction. Understandably, the reaction is negative, and when we make it known we disagree with his "righteous" opinion, Jack uses this to reaffirm to himself that we are all incorrect, stupid, and evil.

I believe he can be described no other way than how he likes to describe us. "Sociopath." And because he is a scary attention whore sociopath, until it is confirmed he is or is not under investigation, this will be my last post on him.

Rock on, kids.

(As a side note, all sizes except 'Small' of ThinkGeek.Com's "I Hate Jack Thompson" T-shirt have been sold out.)