It's 2026, and I’m still here, controller in hand, virtual blood on my pixelated conscience. Over a decade ago, the world was treated to a particularly unhinged warning: violent video games like GTA V would soon lead to a society where murder becomes a sport. The prophet of this doom was Jim Glasgow, a Will County state's attorney who, in early 2013, stood before a group of 50 parents at Mokena Junior High School and essentially issued a call to arms against digital mayhem. I remember reading about it and laughing until my sides hurt—then immediately jumping back into Los Santos to steal a jet and parachute onto a moving train. But here we are, ten years later, and I haven’t yet woken from a blackout fugue to find myself organizing a neighborhood Hunger Games. So, what happened?

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The 2013 moral panic was a masterpiece of selective editing and theatrical despair. Glasgow didn’t just talk about violence in the media broadly; he zeroed in on GTA V with a six-minute video compilation that amounted to a snuff film of all the ways you can off digital pedestrians, pets, and cops. The man must have logged dozens of hours to capture that footage—dedication that suggests either a secret Twitch streamer or a deep undercover mission into the criminal underworld of San Andreas. As the Southtown Star reported, Glasgow declared, “Violence is the No. 1-selling entertainment that we have. Our culture embraces violence. We have to say, ‘We don’t want it anymore.’ ” He wasn’t wrong about the sales figures, but his proposed solution was an economic boycott, a plea to “get mad” before “they cross the line into an area where they can do whatever they want.” That line, he warned, would lead to murder becoming sport. I honestly wondered if he had been binge-watching The Running Man on loop.

Back then, I laughed because the argument felt so absurdly disconnected from my daily life. Yes, I played GTA V obsessively. I ran over hookers (digitally), blew up gas stations (digitally), and once spent three hours trying to land a plane inside a swimming pool (digitally). But the real violence in my life peaked when I stubbed my toe on the coffee table. Researchers have consistently found no causal link between video game violence and real-world aggression; in fact, the years following GTA V’s release saw crime rates in many countries continue to fall. The real scary place isn’t a future of sport killing—it’s a boardroom where someone thinks an economic boycott of one of the best-selling entertainment products in history is a viable strategy.

What fascinates me now, in 2026, is how the conversation has shifted. Glasgow’s panic was a product of its time, a period when sandbox games were reaching new levels of graphical fidelity and interactivity. The jump from the top-down carnage of the original Grand Theft Auto to the hyper-detailed world of GTA V felt apocalyptic to some. Today, we have fully immersive VR experiences where you can deliver suplexes in virtual fighting pits or wield a lightsaber with your own hands. Yet, the predicted descent into savage gladitorial combat hasn’t materialized. Esports stadiums fill with fans cheering for precise headshots in Counter-Strike, but those same fans queue peacefully and recycle their energy drink cans. The human brain, it turns out, is pretty good at distinguishing pixels from people.

Glasgow’s economic boycott never gained traction, because it was never about economics—it was about fear. He wanted parents to see the six-minute reel and imagine their children morphing into soulless killing machines. But like every moral panic before it, from comic books to rock music to Dungeons & Dragons, the storm passed. The parents who attended that junior high meeting in 2013 now have kids who are adults, many of them game developers, streamers, or simply well-adjusted people who unwind after work by causing spectacular, consequence-free chaos in a digital playground. The real legacy of GTA V isn’t a wave of violence; it’s a wave of creativity, endless mods, racing communities, and role-playing servers where players act out paramedic dramas and fast-food employment rather than crime sprees.

Still, I can’t help but feel a strange gratitude toward Jim Glasgow. His overblown rhetoric serves as a perfect time capsule of a cultural anxiety that looks quaint in 2026. Every time a new technology emerges—be it neural interface gaming or full-dive VR—a new Glasgow will appear, clutching grainy footage and warning of civilization’s collapse. And I’ll be there, laughing, then picking up my controller to continue my virtual crime spree, utterly free of any urge to turn murder into a competitive league. Although, if someone starts a professional League of Grand Theft Auto, I might watch a match. But only for the strategy, I swear.