Video games and violence

"The games are probably harmful and should be avoided"

and yet

can't stop. addicted to the headshot.

single player games probably not, online competitive games maybe

there is no negative effect

the main negative effects of "violent video games" are in the way the military shooters generally serve as american military propaganda rather than any link to mass shootings

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (new, not old) includes white phosphorus as a reward for a "killstreak". That is, if you kill enough, you get the joy of committing a war crime.

Call of Duty and its collaborators in the US state are advertising war crimes. https://t.co/icJLEjA0FN

— ☭ jrbml ☭ (@GlumBird) July 30, 2019

good idea thx Neanderthal

These games probably impact individual aggressive behavior more than we admit

What do you base this on?

(Before your "lol u mad gamer" the only shooter I've played in years was Sniper Elite and I have yet to go out and blow up any Nazi testicles.)

I'm wiped out on this from the other thead but in short: I don't believe there isn't at least *some* desentization to and conditioned pleasure from these playing these games that for gun-owning incels is not a great additive

So basically gut feelings driven by your disconfort with something.

You’re focusing on “might have played a game once” instead of “incels and Nazis with easy access to guns.”

As covered repeatedly: it doesn’t happen elsewhere in the world and it doesn’t happen with leftists or liberals or centrists or black Americans or etc.

nope, nothing abt "might have played a game once"

On kids, nah. People whose job involves carrying a gun, especially soldiers, should be kept well away from these things though.

If there is an impact, it is infinitesimal. It's safer to err on the side of correlation rather than causation.

The problem is a uniquely American cocktail of firearm fetishism, dearth of gun control, nonsensical free speech laws, obsession with pwning, MRA culture and a lax attitude towards violence in general.

it doesn’t happen with leftists or liberals or centrists or black Americans or etc.

Ohio shooter was purportedly a leftist Warren fan. Colorado STEM school shooters were probably on the left.

Virginia Beach shooter was black. Umpqua Community College shooter was mixed. Aurora Illinois shooting (that I had never even heard about) was a black man. 2017 Fresno shootings were committed by a black man.

I don't believe the gist was 'it literally never happens'.

i believe the fair rejoinder is that it happens with american left leaners and american people of colour more often than it happens in other modern countries in toto

notwithstanding that they are small, small percentage of the overall american shooter demographic, iykwim

the important causation question is not per GOP "do FPS games promote IRL gun violence in the average gamer?" because of course not.

The narrower question is are FPS games desensitizing/encouraging gun violence in people already predisposed by ideology to believe that guns can have a positively transformative role in society. "People with guns stop gun violence" etc.

For such people wouldn't these games tick several boxes in Pomenitul's responsible factors^ like "firearm fetishism, obsession with pwning, lax attitude towards violence in general"

i doubt anyone is going to quibble about that, really

its just that its...quite clearly (?) not the critical factor, so much so that it hardly bears discussion rly.

The narrower question is are FPS games desensitizing/encouraging gun violence in people already predisposed by ideology to believe that guns can have a positively transformative role in society.

If you are so predisposed, how much extra encouragement do you need, really. I think most of the work that pushes people to act on this impulse takes place in the increasingly-dissociated mind, not on the tv screen.

If anything, video games more often than not provide a healthy outlet for aggressive behavior. If I have a shitty day at work, I go crash a video game plane into a video game mountain and things don't seem so bad.

Hadrian, if you're trying to make a pedantic point about video games having a sliver of influence on the already sociopathic, I concede it, although I doubt it's enough to spur them to action. But it's a case of seeing the forest for the trees, really, and doubly dangerous in light of its rhetorical cooptation by the political class.

This is the only thing that matters:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/666209430/deaths-from-gun-violence-how-the-u-s-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world

And the only possible conclusion is that nothing short of legally-enforced, stringent gun control will make a difference in the long run.

I dunno, me, I feel like teaching/endorsing empathy and critical thinking skills (particularly to kids) does about eight million times more good than making video games the boogeyman for the eight millionth time. Like you can (and probably should) try but you aren't going to keep kids away from FPS games. Making sure they understand the difference between fantasy and reality and the impact that violence has in the real world can help to greatly diminish whatever impact those games might otherwise have.

Also, yes, throw every last gun in a fucking volcano.

i doubt anyone is going to quibble about that, really

its just that its...quite clearly (?) not the critical factor, so much so that it hardly bears discussion rly.

^otm, and yet...

i doubt anyone is going to quibble about that, really

its just that its...quite clearly (?) not the critical factor, so much so that it hardly bears discussion rly.

― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Monday, August 5, 2019 8:49 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The narrower question is are FPS games desensitizing/encouraging gun violence in people already predisposed by ideology to believe that guns can have a positively transformative role in society.

If you are so predisposed, how much extra encouragement do you need, really. I think most of the work that pushes people to act on this impulse takes place in the increasingly-dissociated mind, not on the tv screen.

― COOL DUDE'S ONLY, NO NERD'S ALOUD (Old Lunch), Monday, August 5, 2019 8:53 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah agreed and w/ deems too

what ppl need is *zero* extra encouragement... and I just feel that in light of this crisis even the most marginal potential factors are worth examining (and can be w/o ceding to asinine GOP talking points) and w/o knowing the answer I'm not comfortable dismissing this one

clearly something is seriously fucking wrong in this country, something politically wrong and yeah, something psychologically wrong

To piggyback on OL's point about catharsis, you would also have to demonstrate that this 'marginal potential factor' doesn't also prevent certain psychos from acting out their homicidal fantasies.

fair

what I'd like to see as part of the gun control movement is countervailing messaging that guns are fucked up, there is nothing romantic or fun about them...if it means looking closer at how guns function in our fantasies I'm all for it

I'm cool with that.

Games are the boogeyman the right and all their bought politicians reach for any time one of these tragedies happens and people start asking questions.

what ppl need is *zero* extra encouragement... and I just feel that in light of this crisis even the most marginal potential factors are worth examining (and can be w/o ceding to asinine GOP talking points) and w/o knowing the answer I'm not comfortable dismissing this one

― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII), Monday, August 5, 2019 8:03 AM (nineteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

But...guns. Just...get rid of them.

Like imagine this discussion wrt any other tool with the potential for mass destruction that was equally widely-available. Like what if it was hand grenades that you could walk two blocks and buy with ease. We could sit around and fret about how all of the movies fetishizing grenade use are responsible for the uptick in unstable people blowing up department stores and churches, or we could maybe address the thing where people who don't make great decisions have easy access to grenades as a shortcut way to solve their 'problems'.

That's the thing: if we're gonna shoot the shit about this on ILX, I think it's totally fair and a discussion worth having. If it's going to take over the airwaves and further dislodge what little discursive pushback there is against the prevailing death cult, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot (apologies for the – unintended, I swear – dual shooting references).

Incidentally, didn't Trump ultimately blame 'the media'?

xp

I'm all for demonizing the hell out of IRL gun use and, as I say, banning them altogether.

I'm a huge fan of the horror genre, ie fictional depictions of all kinds of horrific acts. I don't condone any of those acts taking place in the real world.

xp Yes get rid of guns, yesterday.

The big-picture political hurdle however is the now accepted wisdom even on the left that guns are romantic, a force for good sistered to Manifest Destiny. How to eat into that idea?

By painting gun ownership as cowardice, maybe?

Likely the correct strategy against the majority of alt-right talking points tbh.

the ratcheting up of every conceivable political tension from all sides and the medication (if treated at all) of mental healthcare strike me as fertile ground for consideration here but both of those items are of their nature personalised and polarised to the extent that im not tbh convinced any forum currently exists for the discussion

xp an image encouraged by the NRA and everyone who gains from the easy availability of guns

OL for purposes of this q I'm trying to establish a difference btw "fictional depictions of horrific acts" and 22 hours a week (the average!) of first person endorphin-generating identification with mass killers

I mean I know it's not as simple as 'gun owner = coward', but if you want a paradigm to shift you need to give it a hard shove in a totally different direction. Just like how I don't expect to see a full gun ban in my lifetime but calling for a repeal of the second amendment at least keeps the counterargument from being too mealy-mouthed and ineffectual.

As a side note, the fact that the El Paso shooter will be justice'd out of existence via capital punishment is another piece of the American nihilist puzzle that merits further consideration.

As a side note, the fact that the El Paso shooter will be justice'd out of existence via capital punishment is another piece of the American nihilist puzzle that merits further consideration.

― pomenitul, Monday, 5 August 2019 13:20 (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

😎 we disagree

I think the negative effects of these games have little to nothing to do with the subject matter and more to do with feeding into addictive behavior. I hated FPS with a passion but pretty happily spent several years playing WoW 40 hours a week, which looking back was an insane amount of time to spend on a single game given every other thing I like to do.

OL for purposes of this q I'm trying to establish a difference btw "fictional depictions of horrific acts" and 22 hours a week (the average!) of first person endorphin-generating identification with mass killers

― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII), Monday, August 5, 2019 8:20 AM (fifteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean any monomaniacal pursuit that allows you to retreat altogether from reality for a significant portion of your day is unlikely to result in the healthiest of mental/emotional states. That's kind of a whole separate public health crisis unto itself.

Or what Dan just said.

I probably spent at least three hours yesterday watching Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and now all I can think about is getting back home so I can wax my floor.

Wasn't expecting that, deems. One for the challop thread? Unless you're only quibbling with the implication that there's a connection between these (to my mind) complementary facets of the American Death Cult.

xp OL I'm just supposing for purposes of this q that this is different than just "any" monomaniacal pursuit—that there is some aspect of shooter identification specific to this technology—not watching it or reading it but the repeated, conditioned sensation of pulling a trigger, seeing a fictional person die, and feeling good about it—that can't be helping.

And I'm not looking forward to the day when these games are predominently VR, with attendant real-world spatial relations, and dudes start taking their goggles off and transitioning, holstered, out of their living rooms

The incidence rate of young men doing awful things to other people is higher than it is for other types of people

If you can occupy the time of young men in ways that minimize their time possibly spent doing awful things to others, everyone wins

Ergo let the screens do their thing

Also Yglesias warning but whatever the research backs him up https://www.vox.com/2019/8/5/20754769/trump-video-games-mass-shooting-el-paso-toledo

Universal Basic Income but it's weed and records given to males between the ages of 16 and 25.

That's better than my idea of putting them in cryogenic freeze for that duration.

sex workers is the surest thing

Universal Basic Income but it's weed and records a fucking job given to males between the ages of 16 and 25.

https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/making-commitment.html

sex workers is the surest thing

Because men never do awful things to sex workers?

Hey so I just saw a story about how the Dayton shooter kept a kill list and a rape list in high school so just spitballing here but maybe patriarchal violence is a problem.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Monday, August 5, 2019 7:16 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

indeed. and video games are one of many conduits for that.

oh god the "give nerds free sex workers so they won't shoot us" argument again

Exactly. Give them women's bodies to own and use, exactly like they believe they're entitled to? Fucking disgusting even as a joke about adolescent boys.

I naïvely assumed Hadrian was making a crude joke but otherwise it's FP-worthy.

No I don't think there was any seriousness, I think it was more a reflection on the presumed nature of teenage boys. But that suggestion HAS been made before with some seriousness, like, maybe women should take one for the team, so to speak. And then someone is like, okay not, like regular women, but how about sex workers? As if sex workers also don't care or don't matter. It's an avenue that doesn't get any better the further you go.

Also the problem is patriarchal violence.

Patriarchal violence is a highly significant factor, for sure, but it's one pillar among many. Katherine did an excellent job of explaining how this toxicity festers online and nothing short of a repeal of the Second Amendment will make a serious difference in the long run. Still, there's no question that the role of structural misogyny is severely underplayed in these discussions. Last year's incel attack in Toronto led a few commentators to take it up – and I remember liking Gary Younge's analysis – but this angle seems to have subsided since.

Yeah the thread kind of slept on katherine's posts but she is otm.

And yes availability of guns is what makes toxic masculinity & misogyny so deadly for so many people and of course we should repeal the 2nd amendment. But gun culture is also underlaid by patriarchal violence.

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/192651

The patriarchal paradigm lies at the root of this violence. It teaches that men’s superior physical strength gives them control over the family and places their will above the will of women and children. Even when it’s not imposed through violence – though it often is – society’s standards reinforce this concept, which gives men more prestige, more economic power, more liberty, and more positions in power. Their role is to protect or discipline– never to empower–those who are supposedly weaker. Because of that, the most vulnerable end up seeking protection from the most powerful, who are precisely the ones who present the greatest threat.

The role of the state mirrors this model. Far from a social compact, the capitalist state today foments relationships of dependency, oppression and inequality. The system uses guns as a caveman’s club, to bludgeon the subordinate into permanent submission. From police brutality aimed at African Americans in U.S. cities, to the paramilitaries unleashed against the indigenous people of Chiapas, to the abusive husband with an AK-47 in the closet, the forces of repression disguise themselves as providers of security, even as they feed off the violence they themselves provoke. Militarism proposes that violence must be met with more and stronger violence, which generates a death spiral as it consolidates the domination model and strengthens the patriarchy.

xxxpost apologies if Hadrian said it in jest but I've seen it said in earnest too many times

I naïvely assumed Hadrian was making a crude joke but otherwise it's FP-worthy.

I mostly agree, it's just that there are plenty of hyper-patriarchal cultures (see: Saudi Arabia, or Japan) that are nowhere near as exposed to this kind of violence.

2xp

sorry Hadrian!

Right. The USA stands alone in the developed world with its gun violence. It does not stand alone in the developed world with patriarchal domination or love of video games.

Ban guns.

That Gary Younge article is great btw, thanks pom.

On the one hand, there is the hatred of women, born for the most part from a sense of entitlement. These men do not just resent the fact that they can’t get a girlfriend. They feel women are denying them the sex that is rightfully theirs. They belong to broadly the same demographic as the Gamergate movement earlier this decade, in which male gamers systematically harassed female game developers and media critics, subjecting them to rape and death threats, and publishing details of their personal lives online. ...

These men, wherever they are, now have more political space than they used to. There is considerable overlap with the American hard right. And they have a role model in the White House in a president who was accused of rape by his first wife, boasts of grabbing women by the genitals, makes up sexual stories about women on the internet, and openly disparages their looks and intellect. ...

We don’t know what proportion of these men go on to have abusive relationships or if they enter relationships at all. But we do know there is a significant correlation between domestic abuse and mass murder.

An Everytown for Gun Safety report last year revealed that between 2009 and 2016 more than half of mass shootings in the US were related to domestic or family violence. In a third of the public mass shootings during that time period the gunman had a history of violence against women – domestic abuse is a more common trait among mass murderers than mental illness.

Literally in the NYT right now:

Nanny Asked Ex-Boyfriend to Return Key. He Arrived With a Knife.

Those who knew Mr. Porter are shocked at the charges he now faces. Victor Toro, a superintendent at the Elizabeth, N.J., building where Mr. Porter lived with his mother, said he saw him often walking in and out of the apartment with his girlfriend.

“She was always really quiet, next to him,” Mr. Toro said.

You don't say.

I haven't added all that much to the conversation because katherine and in orbit have said what I wanted to better than I would have.

Every time an incel with a manifesto goes on a murder spree, there are always random assholes that pipe in with:

"Now obviously I don't agree with murder, but can't you put yourself in his shoes? He was lonely and girls wouldn't pay him attention".

The idea that a guy is entitled to physical and/or affection purely by virtue of existing gets sympathy well outside the incel community.

So weird that women might not be drawn to someone with a disregard for the lives of other humans.

xp I think a lot of people make the leap from "everyone needs to be loved," which is reasonable, to "I am entitled to affection" which is not. This is getting off-topic, but I think the moral constructs at work there are worth picking apart.

As for violent videogames, they are an expression of cultural attitudes toward violence, rather than a cause. The important question IMO isn't "do videogames influence violence" as it is "why do we have such violent fantasies to begin with?"

FWIW, I pose that question as someone who enjoys Doom as much as any idiot

I mean it's simplistic as explanations go but we do still have canines. We're clearly still a few hundred thousand years away from purging all of our baser animal impulses.

Video games do not make murderers. If they did, China (which has almost as many gamers as the US has humans) would have constant domestic attacks.

HOWEVER.

Gaming-related media in America is filled with Nazi trolls working hard to recruit children.

— Christopher Keelty 🏳️‍🌈 (@keeltyc) August 7, 2019

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

weird results!

impressive double tie

I voted “more than we admit” because it felt like the responsible empirical choice - we don’t know enough about what playing shitloads of Fortnite or PUBG does to individuals’ personal capacity for aggression.

I’d love to see convincing research that they don’t have any effects on that, though. And I’m still in the camp that says giving bored young men something to do with their idle time that doesn’t hurt others is a net plus.

rare numbers for a poll these days

results kinda otm

Ok boomer:

https://www.techspot.com/news/83623-joe-biden-calls-game-developers-little-creeps-who.html

Biden in "what if you could *talk* to the monsters?" shocker

fuck you biden you handsy senescent i'll noscope you in fortnite anytime

i think the man has a serious point, this is the first time in US history that a major form of popular culture has been saturated with celebrations of violence and gunplay

“And then one of these righteous people said to me that, you know, 'We are the economic engine of America. We are the ones.' And fortunately I had done a little homework before I went and I said, you know, I find it fascinating,” Biden continued. “As I added up the seven outfits, everyone’s there but Microsoft. I said, you have fewer people on your payroll than all the losses that General Motors just faced in the last quarter, of employees. So don’t lecture me about how you’ve created all this employment.

"let me tell you this, jack, the real economic engine of america is our military-industrial complex", added biden, thumping the table for emphasis. "that's why i voted to kill hundreds of thousands of people in iraq and afghanistan and i'd do it again in a heartbeat, you little shit"

going for the gamer vote by promising to shut down EA

lol, touché

Ok boomer:

https://www.techspot.com/news/83623-joe-biden-calls-game-developers-little-creeps-who.html🕸

using actual fucking xbox controllers iirc

not many game developers are in silicon valley

feel like Biden's maybe confusing two different meetings again

xp I knew there was a reason I always liked the PS more, I mean that & Tekken

69 ilxors believe playing video games have a negative impact vis-a-vis violence vs 9 who say they don't

i think probably playing violent video games lowers violence rate bc it keeps young violent men indoors playing games

nice

Vape Store (crüt) at 8:59 5 Aug 19

xp have you ever seen somebody throw a gameboy across the room because they were mad at Tetris?

I called Mario a cunt once, I'm not proud of it

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, August 5, 2019 10:05 AM bookmarkflaglink

still dying at this, a year later

i know this will seem a little dated, but there are a lot of really good points in here

Intoxicating time warp. Every detail better than the last. pic.twitter.com/NXSNwktSsg

— Rob Delaney (@robdelaney) October 30, 2020