Hamptons Police Say Video Games Lead to Aberrant Behavior
The Hamptons Police Department announced this week that they will be closely monitoring video game usage among the citizenry. It seems, according to experts in the HPD Psycho-Science Division, these games can directly affect the behavior of players, who will often act out in real life what happens on screen. This includes various crimes.
“We’ve learned quite a lot about the power of pixelated action on the human mind, and we’re no longer willing to let the fallout land in our streets,” Hamptons Police spokesman Larry Hirsch said on Wednesday. “I, for one, have seen firsthand how a seemingly innocent game of the Atari classic Frogger can result in people ignoring traffic signals and trying to cross busy highways without assistance of signs or lights. It’s terrible.”
In another incident, Hirsch said EMTs had to treat a Super Mario Bros. player who thought it would somehow benefit him to eat a random mushroom for what he called “a power up.” Unfortunately, the toadstool turned out to be a poisonous/psychedelic Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, mushroom. “They had to strap the kid down in the hospital,” Hirsch recalled, but not before the man had crushed four box turtles by jumping on them near his home in Northwest Woods.
To combat the problem, the HPD has a new, court-approved license to monitor all video game usage within the Hamptons, on consoles, cellular phones and arcade cabinets. Hirsch said he could not reveal how they would achieve this level of surveillance, noting, “All I can say is, watch out, we’re looking to make cases that will prove this research true.”