Did you see the recent episode of CSI: Miami in which a bunch of gamers were found to be committing serial murder and robbery in imitation of a video game? Well, I didn't, but Salon's Andrew Leonard did. If you didn't catch it and don't want it spoiled, feel free to stop reading. Anyway, it seems that not only were these fictitious gamers committing the aforementioned crimes, they were actually raping people for extra points, which clearly strikes deep at the core of the actual appeal of Grand Theft Auto--oh, I'm sorry, "Urban Hell Raiser," the rather thinly veiled game featured in the show. But wait, there's more:

To those of us who do live in the real world, as opposed to video game land or the tortured plot devisings of bad TV writers, it might seem unrealistic that a gaming company wouldn't cooperate with the police in such a circumstance. Kinda suspicious. Hey, you don't suppose the gaming company might be involved, do you? It turns out that executive isn't just smarmy -- he's Satan. Not only is the company providing bad role models to the youth of today, but, in an effort to boost sales in a competitive industry, it's also actively supplying college students with Tec-9 automatics and encouraging them to murder innocent people.

The situations described are clearly ludicrous, but it's not difficult to surmise that there are plenty of people out there whose opinions were merely reinforced by way of CSI: Miami. After all, Jack Thompson (coincidentally from Miami) has built quite a name for himself and gathered quite a following, as crazy as it might seem, by making similar accusations as the ones in this episode--except in real life.

Of course, one response in the article's comments section points out, rather plausibly, "Maybe TV execs are just jealous that they are losing out the 18-24 male demographic to Playstation 2."