Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

Dayton shooter appears to have killed his sister and her boyfriend prior to this attack.

he really showed 'em

really? everything says right now that they were all in the same area.

Very scary right now. I think about this fairly often, more than anyone should, when I'm in movie theaters. That's been there to varying degrees since Aurora, but now you've got the copycat effect or whatever, one has to imagine the Dayton shooter felt scooped by El Paso or something- not that he wasn't prepared, but fuck me, are we going to go a week without another one?

Video games are to blame

At least Mitchy fractured his shoulder today. Some good news

Maybe he broke it while shrugging at another mass shooting. https://t.co/KaOZwiVrUq

— Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) August 4, 2019

smashmouth otm

https://66.media.tumblr.com/214f488112523af6e49d35ffdda44514/5a262c4af85bc3d9-47/s1280x1920/51ec4ebad787cf91df82af2be6b5fb686a74b4f3.jpg

It's also important to remember that in any average 48-hour period we generally lose at least two days. This is important data which is totally on par with random acts of mass homicide.

hate this but smug fuck so much

In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.

On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose…

500 to Medical errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via Handgun

Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 4, 2019

probably should just recognize that the flu is going to kill us all, why take vaccines

I never paid him much attention, has he always been such a turd?

FUCK OFF!!!! There's your data!!!!

— Smash Mouth (@smashmouth) August 4, 2019

Sorry, should have read further up the thread.

Wow smashmouth otm

I don't know whether anyone's made this point but the "it's video games' fault!" argument is especially disingenuous because both the fox news types making it and the channers it is supposedly in reference to know that neither has any serious beef with the other. if this wasn't clear before it became crystal clear when jack thompson decided to support g*mergate

that's why I'm not overwhelmed with that 'gamification of mass murder' article posted upthread. sure some random channers made bodycount 'high score' comments. of course they did (and the first one in the article is so vague it looks like it's open to other interpretations). ironic gaming references are part of the entire culture and partic that part of our culture.

re Tyson, basically anybody pushed on the USA by PBS sucks shit

even big bird!?

ESPECIALLY big bird

xp -- right and it misinterprets the "digits" thing (to be fair it mentioned the correction, and the actual interpretation is still white nationalist shit)

The people trying the video game line are the same assholes who complain that kids (or... boys) don't play soldier and shoot toy guns at each other.

I'd like to think I'm not an asshole.

I don't believe, of course, that a lack of gun controland regulation isn't the obvious problem. I also believe that in people with a predilection for violence, prolonged and repetitive first-person shooter gaming risks desensitizing people to shooting other people. Comparing these games to "playing soldier" (something children used to do with neighborhood kids, not adults holed up in their living rooms all day) is ridiculous. First person shooter games build in a reward system that is not taking place in the imagination, but visibly/audibly via third-party validation, with attendent pavlovian sound fx and body counter, dosing users with the same little neurotransmitter hits that has ppl hoooked all day on Facebook, Instagram etc.

I know this is major controp, but I am baffled at how "these games are fine" has become ideologically sistered to gun control. These games are not fucking fine. Maybe you play them and that's cool. And I'm not arguing for censorship. But it doesn't mean there aren't millions of *other* men whoae brains aren't getting warped by PRETENDING TO MURDER PEOPLE ALL DAY.

If only studies were done on the matter, then we'd get to the bottom of this

The problem is video games exist in other countries that don’t have mass shootings

I agree tbh I mean the human brain is very malleable and people have had their brains turn toxic just from watching people talking dumb shit all day or seeing idiotic memes all day long, why wouldn’t they potentially turn toxic from playing stupid first person shooter games all day?

Tyson tweet is epically stupid for burying the highly relevant data that guns are killing Americans in all kinds of ways

Nobody ever said violent video games have *zero* negative effect on people. It's just a helluva long distance from acknowledging minor effects like temporary desensitization to linking it to the crimes.

Mass murder predates games by several millenia

xps if only an accurate study of something like this was possible, a legit study wld require a control group of incels and 8chan short-fuses.

Easy access to guns in this country is the main difference of course

Most of the negative effects stem from "sitting in one place for ten hours, getting angry at teammates and not blinking"

Video game community, on the other hand, is the axis of evil

nah, come on man, obv nobody's saying that

the problem is that by acknowledging, "oh yeah that's probably not helping either" the left is afraid of validating Wayne Lapierre. There are a bunch of factors I'm sure slotting in WAY behind the proliferation of semiautomatic weapons, I just don't get how ppl can say video games are defintely not among them

I wouldn’t say a culturewide exposure to acts of violence in the media is a temporary desensitization, I mean i do indeed love action films and the like but I also recognize that my familiarity with violence in the media and its depiction as an instrument of justice is p lame. I think ppl are almost wholly desensitized to the notion of violence in society when it should be shocking, guns should be rightly considered ugly instruments, and lets face it many ppl revel in the imagery of violent fantasy all the time, even ppl who would never actually kill someone.

Who is doing that, though?

The conversation is started by gun fetishists looking to deflect blame and suggesting violent video games, in a bizarre interpretation of chicken-egg, is a primary cause of spree shootings and gun culture/white supremacy don't factor in.

So we respond to the ridiculousness of that. That doesn't mean all of us think that sitting in a fixed position for 14 hours a day playing Battlefield 7 days a week is a healthy activity or that said games don't have *any* ill effects. But that isn't the conversation being had.

Xpost

Realistic/fantastic gun imagery and the manner in which people use guns and shoot them and how people die when they’re shot is something we’re all familiar with when in actuality how many of us deal with that IRL? Should we know all that? Idk

Idk i mean i am exposed to violence in media constantly but i sure as hell feel revulsion when i see it on tv. Any numbness is replaced by pulse racing.

I couldn't watch the news yesterday cos of the videos of the scene of the crime during the shooting. I think it effects different people differently.

The end of Black Klansman for example, activated my anxiety because they showed the Charlottesville terror attack, which I had successfully avoided seeing until then (though I didn't necessarily think that was a bad thing as that was the point of doing it).

The conversation is started by gun fetishists looking to deflect blame and suggesting violent video games,

this is my point—this has become the primary objection to the argument, which is stupid, letting the NRA dictate the terms

That doesn't mean all of us think that sitting in a fixed position for 14 hours a day playing Battlefield 7 days a week is a healthy activity or that said games don't have *any* ill effects.

but which prominent gun control advocates are actively acknowledging this? Like, why wouldn't that ALSO be part of the conversation? If I had a son (I have daughters who dfag) I wouldn't let him play these games any more than I'd let them juul or hang out on 8chan boards all day. It's stupid behavior that is insulated from criticism on the left because oh no! that wld be agreeing w/ the NRA

xp But Neaderthal you are the subject in question, not the hate-filled kid

also I don't think it's fair to conflate these games with "violence in media," we're talking about a very specific recreation giving the user an immediate sense of agency and identification, w/ no distancing

Xpost These more nuanced conversations happen on days that spree shootings didn't happen.

I mean...of course some gun control lefties are cinderblockheads about it but that doesn't mean nobody seriously discusses it.

^you are NOT the subject in question. whoops

Xpost was just referencing Omar's points. I also did play these games for years, though have not in several

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/technology/8chan-shooting-manifesto.html

Mr. Brennan, who has claimed that he got the idea for 8chan while on psychedelic mushrooms, set out to create what he called a free speech alternative to 4chan, a better-known online message board. He was upset that 4chan had become too restrictive, and he envisioned a site where any legal speech would be welcome, no matter how toxic.

“Shut the site down,” Mr. Brennan said in an interview on Sunday. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there. And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too. They just don’t realize it.”

If video games were a relevant cause, you’d see violent crime rising across the board. You’re not. You’d see shooters from all kinds of backgrounds and ideological viewpoints (because people of all kinds play FPSes). You don’t.

Shooter games may have negative effects - but there’s no reason to leap to a connection here.

Most of the negative effects stem from "sitting in one place for ten hours, getting angry at teammates and not blinking"

― i'd rather zing like a man, than FP like a coward (Neanderthal), Monday, 5 August 2019 00:25 (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ie the same negative effects that any team activity has

no one's saying "video games are the only reason" except people eager to cast blame anywhere but guns...but i mean there are reasons sprinkled throughout society as to why people think guns are these instruments of justice. and obviously ban guns, do what Australia did. will that happen? i'm not holding my breath. maybe if we wind up in a situation where most people are dying from guns, like 50%. maybe then. idk. it depends on what percentage of them are republican.

If video games were a relevant cause, you’d see violent crime rising across the board. You’re not. You’d see shooters from all kinds of backgrounds and ideological viewpoints (because people of all kinds

I'm not following the logic here. Why *wouldn't* subsribers to the demo/ideology which is more more violent to begin with also be more impressionable?

If they're inherently predisposed to violence (which is extremely questionable... and a line that has been used by reactionaries pretty often for nefarious ends) then why are you focused on the games? If the games are capable of creating violence, how has it evaded everyone else - do you think leftist and liberal people are... immune to violent thoughts and actions?

The people who are committing mass shootings are products of external ideologies - ISIS, incel, white supremacy. Was Omar Mateen a gamer?