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From: lkk@teddy.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.suicide,net.games.frp,net.kids
Subject: Re: Suicide and D&D (Re: Violence and the arts)
Message-ID: <1198@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 15:09:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: teddy.1198
Posted: Fri Aug 23 15:09:37 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 00:32:34 EDT
References: <6601@ucla-cs.ARPA> <449@im4u.UUCP>
Reply-To: lkk@teddy.UUCP (Larry K. Kolodney)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 28
Xref: watmath net.suicide:710 net.games.frp:1859 net.kids:1735
Summary: 

In article <449@im4u.UUCP> riddle@im4u.UUCP writes:
>I'm no fan of the culture of violence, but the case for linking D&D with
>suicide seems to be overstated.  Interested readers can take a look at page
>18 of today's New York Times.  It seems that a group of fundamentalists in
>Connecticut is trying to get the local school board to ban Dungeons and
>Dragons from the schools, on the grounds that D&D caused a 13-year-old boy
>to commit suicide and is the work of the devil to boot.  The kid's friends
>tell reporters that it wasn't D&D that made him kill himself, but drugs.
>Chalk another one up for the fundamentalists' grip on reality...


I personally don't see how drugs are any more likely to make someone kill
themselves than D & D is.  Both are ways of finding alternate realities.  Some
people use drugs (or play D & D) because their everyday reality is unpleasant
(while others have different reasons).  These people might kill themselves
because their (perceived) life stinks, but drugs are unlikely to actually cause
that.

Drug use and D & D playing were (it is likely) BOTH symptoms in this case.



-- 

Sport Death,
Larry Kolodney
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