‘Killed by a videogame’
A 16-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome andSudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome had a heart attack after getting overexcited bySonic the Hedgehog.The Daily Mail‘s take on the story? He was, of course, killed by a videogame.
Britain’s favorite home of right-wing xenophobia and jubilant misogyny had a lot of fun using the death of a boy with a heart condition to make videogames look bad — part of itslongrunningobsessionwith takingcraven secondhand swipesat the game industry. Writer Kerry McDermott exploits the personal tragedy with surgical precision.
“Killed by a video game,” reports theMail. “Excitement ‘triggered fatal heart attack of teenager who died while playing his Xbox’.”
The 16-year-old’s mother is calling for more measures to be taken in screening young people for heart conditions, something that warrants little more than a footnote in the Mail’s story ofdeath-by-Xbox. Rather than a focus on the heart condition, we instead get rent-a-docSanjay Sharma saying, “There is a definite risk in predisposed young people playing video games that causes surges of adrenalin in the blood.”
Perhaps one day, theMailwill find a new witch to burn. Then again, it still needs to get over its hatred of women, immigrants, and anybody who isn’t an upper-middle class bitter white man, so I guess we’ll be waiting a while.
