Angry Birds - violent? Never, just innocent, pig-smashing fun

Browsing an article on the web today I feared I was in danger of reading something that was going to get me all hot under the collar.

It involved Angry Birds, one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. The harmless yet addictive computer game that threatens to  dominate the world with its popularity.

I have blogged about this wondrous invention before, and will not hear a word said against it.

The article I  stumbled across hinted there are some who may think a few minutes a day of innocent avian violence may lead to crime.

Here we go – I thought, time to get in my pram and suck on a dummy – nanny is coming.

We were treated like idiots a few years ago when people called for horror films to be banned because they supposedly crept into the minds of children turning them into knife wielding maniacs.

My answer was don’t let them view if they are under 18, but if they do start trying to disembowel the dog after watching Zombie Flesh Eaters – give them a clip around the ear and don’t let them watch any more. But why should the rest of us suffer?

The the frilly-bonnet wearing faction of society also called for video games to be outlawed because shooting baddies with a joystick could prompt teenagers to go out and commit mass genocide.

Call of Duty seems to be the Big Bad Wolf of the video game world. It simulates the violence of World War II and apparently involves a lot of shooting, blood and guts.

I have never played it, I used to think Hungry Horace on my ZX Spectrum was violent, especially when he was eaten whole by one of the marauding maniacal monsters charging after him, or mowed down on the street by a speeding car.

And this brings me to Angry Birds, the iPhone/ iPad game where players hurl birds at grinning green piglets stacked up on layers of scaffolding.

Apparently it can lead to  violence. You have got to be kidding!

Actually – I may have jumped the gun in my rant about the nanny state bursting into my privacy and telling me what I can and can’t do.

The link between mentally-unstable parrots, blue tits and mass murder is only one made tenuously by  Guardian writer Martin Robbins.

His piece - could Angry Birds lead to mass murder - talks about attempts to link last year’s Norway shootings to Call of Duty. He says they were “based on prejudice, ignorance and the selective use of flawed research”.

I must admit I tend to agree. If someone is going to massacre a camp of innocent youngsters, they probably had those inclinations long before the Nintendo Wii came into the world.

He points out that Russian video game Tetris, where players build a wall from falling multi-shaped bricks, ultimately led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Days after the game’s third anniversary - President Reagan, an avid player,  demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall!” 

“It seems almost inevitable that three frustrating years trying to build walls out of misaligned bricks led to the outburst that changed the course of history,” Robbins states in his piece.

As for Angry Birds, there is nothing more satisfying than smashing those annoying pigs to smithereens by firing birds loaded into a catapult.

There is something deeply soothing as they hit the ground in a puff of smoke, and something equally irritating about seeing them grin at you if you run out of birds before annihilating them.

But the precursor to violence? Nonsense!