Quack Professor Releases Dumbest Violent Video Game Theory Ever

from the yeah,-it's-really-that-bad dept

If you have sensed an increase in the levels of air-borne stupidity in the world lately, as have I, you might be looking for the root cause of this collective mental climate change. I think I’ve found it. I believe it’s caused by emissions of stupid generated by the debate over violent video games. Where else can you go for opinions that so blatantly ignore statistics and reason? You have retired military trumping up the next generations of “killers,” despite violence and mass shootings being down in America. We have the damned Vice President of the United States showing his complete blind spot on the legality of taxing supposedly violent games. Not to mention newspaper industries that rely on the 1st Amendment to operate considering whether censorship of violent media might just be the answer to all of our problems.

But if you thought that was as bad as the theories get, on how violent games are harmful, oh boy were you wrong. See, a South Korean professor now believes that violent games are a plague on all of us…because they make our video cards run hotter and the resulting radio waves are harmful.

Korean site Inven (via tipster Sang) reports that the professor’s study apparently revealed that a game’s graphics card temperature was 36°C when idling. Now, that sounds about right. The card’s temperature apparently increased to 45°C during a racing game. But then, Professor Cho’s study stated that when a “violent game” was played, the temperature supposedly shot up to 57°C. In turn, the game emitted more radio waves.

For those of you who aren’t suffering face-palm-induced concussion syndrome, you’re probably already thinking about all the other everyday things that can cause your GPU to run hotter, such as graphic design work or, you know, watching HD movies. In fact, those activities can push the temperatures even higher. Or maybe you’re thinking about how correlating how much work a GPU does to how violent a game is just might be the kind of thing that can cause a brain to commit suicide. Or maybe you’re wondering if having your notebook computer on your lap every time you’ve played Doom has put your testicles at risk of mutation, turning them into monstrous, sentient testicilians, a race of self-reproductive hell-nuts bent on destroying the world.

Well, whatever you’re thinking, calm the hell down and put your pants back on. This guy is as crackers as crackers gets.

Previously, Professor Cho has apparently published research on how drinking for three days straight will cause liver damage, how watching porn will cause unmarried men liver damage, and how smartphones cause people to have irregular voices. He sounds like a very serious researcher!

Were any of that actually true, I can assure you I’d be speaking in falsetto about my double-liver-damage instead of remarking on how crazy Professor Cho is.

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Comments on “Quack Professor Releases Dumbest Violent Video Game Theory Ever”

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51 Comments
Rikuo (profile) says:

“Or maybe you’re wondering if having your notebook computer on your lap every time you’ve played Doom has put your testicles at risk of mutation, turning them into monsterous, sentient testicilians, a race of self-reproductive hell-nuts bent on destroying the world. “

Timothy Geigner just won the Noble Prize for the Internetz with that sentence.

Watchit (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Over 100C!!!

Also, to extrapolate a bit…

According to this professor’s logic if I had a laptop running at 100C that’s like double 57C so that’s double the harmful radio waves! And since the graphics card was situated right above my unmentionables we can further multiply the effects of the harmful radio waves by tenfold!

But that means… OH NO! I’M HITLER!

Coogan (profile) says:

This explains all the rage during the SimCity launch. It wasn’t because of the DRM or the servers crashing or the sucky gameplay, it was because video cards was overheating and turning people into homicidal maniacs.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt an uncontrollable urge to kill dragons and bandits after an overnight Skyrim marathon. All this time I thought it was just sleep deprivation and the half-dozen bottles of NOS.

Rocky Oliver (profile) says:

I rarely add comments to Techdirt....

But this particular post is geek comic genius. My Cubehog coworkers are popping up over their walls to stare at me, wondering what could possibly make me laugh in this place.

Thanks for the opportunity to leave them guessing.

Or maybe you’re wondering if having your notebook computer on your lap every time you’ve played Doom has put your testicles at risk of mutation, turning them into monsterous, sentient testicilians, a race of self-reproductive hell-nuts bent on destroying the world.

Brilliant.

GMacGuffin says:

Minecraft as empirical evidence of validity ...

1. Minecraft is a violent video game. You must kill mobs to survive.

2. My best friend likes a high-res Minecraft texture pack and is hell bent on killing mobs. I stick with a 64x res pack and hide from mobs in a hole at night.

3. He sometimes gets drunk and wants to start a fight. I do not.

Therefore, using hi-res texture packs on the violent game of Minecraft has been shown to make people more violent than those who use lower res, video-card-heat-friendly texture packs.

Proven.

Anonymous Coward says:

Correct me if I am wrong.

“In turn, the game emitted more radio waves. “

I fairly sure, it would be the video card emitting more radio waves, not the game, games are not really known for their radio emissions.

Heat is also infrared radiation, although on the same spectrum as radio, most people consider it as LIGHT.

Internet Zen Master (profile) says:

I never thought I'd actually say this

I honestly miss Jack Thompson.

The guy may have been an overzealous anti-video game crusader, but at least his “arguments” were slightly more realistic than some of the bizzaro claims made by today’s anti-violent video game crowd.

How long is the video game industry going to put up with this bullshit?

As the Zen Master says, “We’ll see.”

Anonymous Coward says:

i find it strange how the violent behaviour and killings in USA are all being attributed to violent video games. how come none of the blame is being associated to the last 100years of violent movies? we have watched everything from cowboys and indians, spacemen and aliens, gangsters and policemen and war films depicting America versus every other nation on the planet but i dont recall reading/hearing about their influence on kids, only video games. i suppose if you take into account the amount of money that Hollywood throws at Congress we get a reasonable answer. perhaps the video gaming industry ought to throw more ‘campaign funding’ in a particular direction, then someone could think of something else to blame!!

Wally (profile) says:

In my professional opinions (yes I’m now A+ Cert working on Network+ Cert) he is definitely a loon in spite of the fact that he is right in saying that liquid particle flow in the simulation of blood typically does run video cards ragged…especially with flying gibs…so at least he’s right about the video card’s/cards’ rising temperatures…

The violence stems from the detachment from reality and not knowing between what is real and what is not real. Watching violence doesn’t affectively make one violent, but it does make us slightly less prone to sympathizing with victims of violence and abuse if we are exposed to it at an early age.

PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re:

“In my professional opinions (yes I’m now A+ Cert working on Network+ Cert)”

No offence Wally, but unless you have lengthy actual professional experience to back it up, the A+ does not make you a professional in the field. It’s an entry level certification that even the COMPTIA website lists as “the starting point for a career in IT”. It means you’re qualified to fix PCs and mobile devices up to a certain level, not that you’re an expert in any field.

You can certainly use your studies to make informed opinions in some areas, but in professional terms you’re barely a newcomer, let alone a seasoned professional. Your opinion is welcome, but please stop waving around your basic certificate as if it makes you an expert. Enjoy the Network+ and hopefully that will lead to better things, but once you pass it you won’t be an expert on networking.

Orin Laney (user link) says:

Quack Professor Releases Dumbest Violent Video Game Theory Ever

OK, credentials. I’m an electrical engineer and a certified electromagnetic compatibility engineer. My business is knowing about those ‘harmful’ radio waves. Fun physics fact: when a graphics card heats up, current consumption actually goes down. The cute little MOS transistors inside have a negative temperature coefficient that helps guarantee thermal stability. Result: the radio waves actually diminish somewhat when a graphics card gets hotter. Fun regulatory fact: the radio emissions for personal computers are held to levels low enough that they can’t interfere with the Saturday morning Funny Bunny show your slack-jawed kids are watching on the boob tube. Worrying about radio waves from a personal computer is like paranoia over the danger of heat stroke from exposure to moonlight. Although, come to think of it, maybe that’s what happened to the learned professor.

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