Video-game victors: Why so angry?

On Monday the Supreme Court ruled California’s 2005 law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors unconstitutional, and the Internet cheered.

But a number of video-game activists who opposed the law in the first place were more angry than celebratory.

A Reddit post breaking down the Supreme Court’s ruling with conversational recaps, links and commentary dominated the front page of the social news site. The news—and people’s opinions of it—filled feeds on Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr, the microblogging site, got in on the action in text-snippet form, sharing excerpts of articles and passages from the court’s ruling.

The online video-game distribution site Steam displayed the ruling on its front page, while the online news giant Huffington Post relegated it to a minor mention. On YouTube, there were video news reports by media outlets, websites and blogs, as well as goofy celebratory videos.

Some seemed enraged that California passed the law in the first place. YouTuber yewles1, who describes himself as “the homeless gamer”, said with very animated arm movements “that idiotic, moronic, sickening legacy of the likes of Jack Thompson is dead and buried” in his response video. (Jack Thompson is an anti-video-game activist and disbarred lawyer, known for trying to link school massacres to violent video games.)

Magusx1 also called Thompson an “idiot” in his video. Even as he admitted the Supreme Court’s decision was the right one, he continued to curse breathlessly in every sentence of his 12-minute video rant.

Chris Pirillo, the popular Internet broadcaster who maintains the Lockergnome site, screamed “video games don’t cause violence, violent people cause violence!” in his “Violent Video Games are Protected by Free Speech” video.

Guys, why so angry? Maybe you should lay off the violent video games.