Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

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?

someone on twitter made the point that if video games could turn someone into a mass shooter then you'd see these mass shootings carried out by QAs (whose job is to play video games, usually joylessly so, for over 40 hours a day); similarly, there have been many articles about content moderation farms and the traumatizing/desensitizing effect of watching rapes and beheading all day, and yet while this has made people violent, to my knowledge none of them have done these ideologically driven, white supremacist mass shootings

I gotta say Fortnite scares me more than most - adding the sassy dance moves and LOL memes to the hunt-and-kill gameplay, seems to be pitching and normalising firearm killing to tweens. Your Calls of Duty or whatever are obviously for people who have some interest in a combat situation, but Fortnite is like "hey guys the party's over here, we're shooting some folks btw but you can choose your costume and do a lil dance after".

whatever role video games have played in this ongoing nightmare pales beside the active obfuscation, pandering and faux naiveté practiced by our rightwing career politicians

(xp -- I wouldn't be surprised if one eventually does, but probably because these kinds of jobs tend to draw in tech-savvy people who haven't had much luck finding better employment -- a group of people that overlaps significantly with 8chan posters, hence the NEET meme)

If I had a son (I have daughters who dfag) I wouldn't let him play these game

(is this gamer dude code? Don’t ...fuss about games?)

Wtf are we talking about video games? Last time I checked other countries have video games too

Anyways don’t mind me. I’m drunk on vacation and really shouldn’t be looking at this kinda thread atm

srsly tho, otm

xp in most other countries when a kid puts down the console there is not an actual arsenal of the same irl weapons in the next room

anyway why does this topic keep tipping into this zero-sum thing like anybody here is actually suggesting vdeo games are even fractionally as much to blame as actual fucking guns

sic I don't get yr question

The problem is that's precisely what some prominent voices in the US are in fact suggesting. So swooping in to say "you know what? Maybe they have a point." is inevitably going to cause folks on here to get their backs up.

xp

....prioritisation?

guns

opiates

mental health treatment

tbh video games, movies, rock music etc etc are all such classic obfuscatory tropes that kickback against raising any of them- even in a zero-sum context- is surely to be expected

xp as stated

They took prayer out of the schools and now....
(Fill in the blank)

xxp I know, I feel like Tipper Gore up in here

anyway sic I am saying that if I had a son I would say nope I don't think that's healthy, play FIFA or your guitar or jerk off instead

I am trying to make a distinction btw these games and this specific technology—how they work on the brain, what gets triggered, what makes them addictive, the reward system, etc.—as a category apart from "Violence in media" playing Ozzy backwards or watching Portrait of a Serial Killer but this seems like a massive challenge

It's clearly important to you, but maybe this isn't the appropriate time or place

lol yes, now is the time for mourning not politics

but ok, this last:

we've generally come to agree as a society that overexposure to a certain kind of porn can harm ppl's ideas/attitudes/expectations around sex and treatment of women...why is it so triggering to wonder the same about spending too much time pretending to riddle people with bullets?

Wtf is your problem?

(sic is making a joke because you wrote dfag instead of dgaf)

ahhhh

xp huh? I was taking your point abt it being a dead horse

sorry for appending another thought that got cross-posted in the interim? don't shoot!

or I don't know Moodles maybe you are srsly offended by that thought

clearly I have crossed some avid gamers, I'm out

I'm not a gamer, but yes I'm offended.

now is the time for mourning not politics

This is a bullshit POV to throw at me just because I don't want to engage in a video games argument. It is absolutely time for politics, and arguing about games is a distraction from that.

why is it so triggering

Fuck off with this shit. No one is "triggered", in fact I don't think anyone is even trying to say video games are perfect on here. I, for one, am very annoyed that after 30 people were killed you are sucking up oxygen on here with a topic that is very tangential to stopping this plague of terrorism.

it wasn't meant in earnest, chill out. You happened to use a GOP talking point almost verbatim, I think unironically, and I built on it for you.

Distraction from what? Did I just prevent you from hurrying to the chamber to cast a deciding vote? Are you picketing Smith & Wesson?

Anyway there's a poll now, take it out over there. Holy smokes.

Fox News did to our parents what they thought video games would do to us.

— Ryan Scott (@ryan_scott) August 3, 2019

<<< rejoins ILX plan to put an end to plague of terrorism >>>

Jesus Christ, you're an asshole

dude

easy

OMG, can't believe the discussion in here today. I don't even know how many thousands of people I've murdered in video games. IRL, I've been in one legit fight ever (in eighth grade), I detest guns, and I deplore violence. I guess I just need to play GTA a few more times until my psycho spree killer mode unlocks.

I don't think violence in media is necessarily a net positive (particularly with respect to its potential unsupervised kids and people with an inability to differentiate reality vs. fantasy) but it's not the cause of any of this.

Impact, not potential. Sorry, video games have rottened by branes.

yesterday a disturbed 17-y-o threw a little kid off the Tate Modern in London. hard not to imagine how things might have been different in the land of the free.

I blame it on the 'This is Sparta!' meme.

The 6 year old could have shot him first.