I Blame GTA

I've just been checking and re-checking the grades I entered, and have found that due to a spreadsheet error, a whole class have a grade of around 3% less than what they should. I mailed the class and told them to wait a few days to get their revised results before submitting the inevitable petitions (students here love to petition grades). Naturally I also apologised for the error, adding "I blame GTA".

Well why not? People blame Grand Theft Auto for lots of other things. If it can make kids steal cars or go on the rampage with automatic weapons, why can't it make teachers enter wrong formulae in spreadsheets? I should buy a GTA Made Me Do It T-shirt.

A possible objection to the GTA defence is that I didn't actually start playing GTA until after I had entered my grades. That's the really terrible thing about this game, though: it can corrupt retrospectively. Let's look at an analogous case. Some kid is in court for armed robbery and says that GTA made him do it. Lawyers for the games industry point out that he has a list of petty criminal convictions and school disciplinary infractions going back to kindergarten. Aha, but the thing is that GTA corrupted him so deeply, it also corrupted his past. In the alternate universe in which he didn't discover GTA at the age of eighteen, he was a model citizen and an outstanding student, who would go on to medical school and eventually discover a cure for AIDS.

I rest my case.