I guess I didn't get the memo that was handed out to investigative journalists a few years ago that dictates, "Whenever a nutjob shoots a bunch of people, make sure to ominously allude to the fact that said nutjob played videogames." Case in point: The Oregonian, which, to their credit, waits a full eight paragraphs into this blurry profile to detail which games were played by 24-year-old Erik Salvador Ayala, who, on Saturday night, killed two and wounded seven in downtown Portland before shooting himself in the head.

One of the things that brought [Ayala] joy was playing video games such as Resistance: Fall of Man, in which an Army Ranger fights an alien race that is trying to take over the world, or Left 4 Dead, where the object is to slay fighting zombies.

I don't mean to use this tragedy as a soapbox to once again point out how there's no concrete link between violence in videogames and violence in real life. (Do I really need to do that? 'Cause that perceived connection is so tenuous that at this point, it's honestly become a joke.) Nor do I intend to make it sound like this bit of gaming-related news is the most important part of the Oregonian's story—obviously, it isn't.

But that paragraph does play into long-unproven misconceptions, and it does assign easy blame where there doesn't appear to actually be any. Ayala likely played Resistance and Left 4 Dead because that's what pretty much every 24-year-old boy does—and until we have proof that slaying zombies on one's Xbox is the trigger that makes fucked-up people do fucked-up things, including info that implies as much is just ignorant and lazy.