In a stellar display of peak clown world logic, the Philippine government has decided that the best way to handle a tragic school shooting is to declare war on mobile phone pixels. Following a rare and devastating shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City that left three dead and 20 injured, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) did what bureaucrats do best: they panicked and pressed the ban button on a mobile game called GoreBox. Because obviously, banning a sandbox app is much easier than solving actual crime.

The suspects, a pair of 14- and 15-year-old grade 9 students, are currently in custody. According to local police, the kids were severely bullied and decided to seek retribution. But instead of looking at why these kids were pushed to the brink, or how they managed to get their hands on actual firearms in a country flooded with unlicensed guns, the authorities hyper-focused on the fact that one of them played GoreBox. The game, developed by F2 Games, is basically a virtual playground with realistic rag-doll physics and cartoonish dismemberment. It has over 10 million downloads, meaning millions of kids play it daily without resorting to real-world violence.

Enter CICC Undersecretary Aboy Paraiso, who delivered some classic boomer-tier quotes about how we "cannot ignore possible online influences." Paraiso claims the temporary ban will let authorities assess if the game "played any role" in the suspects' actions. This is, of course, a massive cope. The scientific establishment has studied this for decades, and the consensus is clear: there is no link. A massive 2020 meta-analysis of youth aggression found the long-term impact of violent video games is literally "near zero." But hey, why let science get in the way of a good regulatory power trip?

Not to be outdone in the academic buzzword department, the Department of Justice is also chiming in. They announced they are investigating whether the shooting is part of a trend of "nihilistic violent extremism"—which they define as committing extreme violence without any actual coherent ideology. Translation: they have absolutely no idea what is going on, so they are inventing fancy sociological terms to describe alienated, bullied kids who snapped.

Meanwhile, actual physical violence is popping off in schools across the country without any help from mobile apps. The Commission on Human Rights noted they are "alarmed" by two separate stabbing incidents that occurred in the same week at Cavite National High School and Bethel Academy of General Trias. Last time we checked, people don't need a high-end physics engine or a smartphone to swing a knife. But sure, let's keep blaming the code instead of looking at the breakdown of basic school safety and social stability.