The worst part about this next post is that I am absolutely serious.

Some wackadoo hit the Gamefaqs.com message boards to pose a question to the assembly–should I go out tonight and burn down a church and school? I wonder what the second choice was, stay home and bake cookies? But anyway, apparently, said wackadoo got sufficient support from the Gamefaqs community (who in all likelihood thought he was joking) to go forth and torch his targets.

Later, said wackadoo came BACK to the Gamefaqs community with pictures of his crime from his camera phone, and posted them, bragging all the while.

In a world where psychotic lawyers can accuse the proprietors of a huge online gaming charity of being a front for racketeering, hope is dim for us. And the last thing we need is evil slime like this kid going out and BURNING CHURCHES! As a gamer myself, this enrages me. Not only for the obvious reason–this kid burned down a CHURCH, for crying out loud, not to mention a school–but also for the lesser reason that this damages the entire community. The rest of the world already looks at us as though gamers are nothing but a collective of ticking time bombs who are only one “fatty-fatty-fat-fat” away from gunning down a bus stop.

The upshot of all this, such as it is, is that said wackadoo is now facing felony charges for his little fire adventure–and it’s due largely to the help of the Gamefaqs community that held the evidence. But man, does this make the entire gaming community look bad or what? Just what we all needed right now, a dyed-in-the-wool monster going forth to torch churches. We all know that unstable personalities like said wackadoo (I’m not giving the little bastard publicity by mentioning its name publicly) exist in every community, but in the gaming community, anything less than a saint drives us all down.

And today, we’ve got another black eye to live down.

Thanks a lot, kid.

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