I don’t think we’ve said anything on PCS yet about the massacre at Virginia Tech this week. It goes without saying that everyone here, and hell, everyone across the nation, is shocked and disgusted by what happened, and wishing the best for the victims and families of those affected by this.

But that hasn’t stopped some opportunistic assholes from attempting to use the emotions this tragedy has brought out in all of us, to further their own hateful agenda. And yes, I’m talking primarily about Jack Thompson, that wacky Ace Attorney from Miami, on a mission from God to protect the good American citizens from the corrupt morals of Italian plumbers everywhere.

I know gamer public opinion is divided as to how to handle Mr. Thompson. It’s not like we don’t see through his attempts to remain in the media spotlight by any means necessary, in an effort to become “the guy” network news calls when someone around a boardroom says “Hey, someone dig up a guy to talk about video games hurting America. Can someone find a guy?” And a lot of us see this attention whoring, for lack of a better phrase, and figure the best way to combat someone looking for attention is to ignore them. You know, like a child throwing a tantrum in a grocery store.

I must have been going to a different grocery store when I was a kid, though (or my tantrums were something else, something of legend, or so my mom would have you think). Because if I threw a tantrum, my parents didn’t ignore me until I got bored of screaming at no one. They’d slap the shit out of me. All I had to hear was my dad says, “I’ll give you a reason to cry,” and it was like pressing my internal mute button. Maybe that’s why, as an avid, habitual video game player in his 20s, I’ve never once felt the urge to go out and kill some hos, even though, as I’ve said many times, I do love me some Grand Theft Auto. I couldn’t even throw a good-natured public tantrum without my dad teaching me what I should or shouldn’t be crying about. I don’t even want to imagine what he’d have done if I was violent. It probably would have involved the words “I’ll show you some violence!”

Anyway, my opinions on Jack Thompson are the about same. We can’t afford to ignore this guy, thinking that we’re “beating” him by not giving him attention and showing him that we don’t care. Because Jack Thompson doesn’t really care about what we think. He’s not talking to us. We, and our opinions, even as good productive adults who contribute daily to society in a variety of ways, don’t mean a thing to him. When he gets on these cable news talk shows, he’s not talking to us, he’s talking to the rest of America, the people too ill-informed about video games to really know any better. These are people who have never YouTube’d Thompson’s courtroom antics, or read his absurd, hateful public letters to the gaming world. All they see is a nice looking man in a suit who says he’s a lawyer, saying something on a forum that gives him an air of authority. And the informed public (meaning, you know, us) being quiet and staying out of his way is exactly what he needs to keep being given a soapbox to preach from.

So this is what gamers do. They get their shit together. Kotaku forwarded their exposé on Thompson’s bold-faced lies to MSNBC before his latest interview, giving Chris Matthews a little harder Hardball to throw at him. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone on these cable news programs take the guy to task, if only a bit. It maybe put a little more doubt in the mind of the housewife watching Virginia Tech news that video games could be to blame, and put a ding in Mr. Thompson’s credibility that people other than ourselves (who are already clued in to his lunacy) could see.

And May 5th, in New York City, a group of gamers going by Empire Arcadia will attempt to get their voices heard as well. So, via GamePolitics:

We will protest, mourn and show how real gamers play videogames peacefully and responsibly.

This demonstration is to show that gamers will not take the blame (for) this tragic (VA Tech) matter but we will do what we can to help put an end to terrible events like this.
We… urge that all leaders of gaming communities, organizations down to the last gamer to set aside 10 hours of this day to pay respect and come together not just as gamers but as HUMAN BEINGS for peace. Bring your Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Playstation Portables. Bring your favorite games to link up and play with your friends. Tetris, Tekken DR, Mario Kart and more.

Here’s the MySpace event listing.

And there you have it. Saturday, May 5th, at 1pm, Bryant Park (42nd St & 6th Ave) in New York City. And seeing as we’ve got more than a few New York-based writers and editors here at PCS, we’ll be there to cover this event, let you know if it’s a positive public relations move on the part of gamers, helping dispel the image that we’re all overweight anti-social shut-ins waiting for our own moment to lose our sanity and murder innocent people because of our preferred choice of interactive entertainment, or this rally just a sad excuse to finally find 3 other people to play Contact with.

Regardless of how it turns out, I consider this rally to send a much more positive message than the attempted “No playing FPS” memorial day some other gamers had planned (which, in my mind, implies that there’s something negative about playing an FPS in the first place, that we should feel guilty enough to stop for a day in memorial). And seeing as I’m usually in the park playing my DS on lazy spring Saturdays anyway. . .