Video games and violence

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

not YOU, not ppl itt or 99% of gamers in general, but the increasing number of angry white men already doing this

To clarify, re: capital punishment: the prospect of a glorious, state-sanctioned death is an incentive for some of these 8channers. They want to be acknowledged as enemies in a time of war.

^consistent w/ terrorism in general

I get what you're saying, Hadrian, but I feel like even with something like FPS games, you don't make that leap to actually reifying the behavior unless without a whole bunch of other issues going unaddressed. Like failing to see other people as real or their lives and well-being as worthwhile.

no doubt it's a soup, there's a broader sickness

I don't want my kids growing up here

I voted "There are negative effects, but not significant ones".

It would be a different thread, but if I were to look into the American Death Cult, I would look instead to the place of the car in USA life, rather than to video games.

Any video game can be harmful insofar as there is potential for addiction. I’m inclined to think that Hadrian isn’t wrong. The entire basis of video games is manipulating the player’s brain’s reward system in direct response to their actions.

It probably depends on the person, how much they’re playing, and what they’re doing in between rounds of gaming. (I played Secret of Mana earlier this week and I had to cut myself off because I had the music stuck in my head going to bed each night & waking up each morning.)

ILXors aren’t afraid to call out e.g. songs and films that promote a predatory, nihilistic agenda. Why let video games off the hook?

Definitely a big part of it, yeah.

Voted for the same thing btw.

xp

leaving this country would involve persuading my ex's partner to leave also, to the same place, and in turn his ex—the mother of his kid—to go also, and in turn her partner, ad infinitum, a human centipede of stepchildren and second marriages

single player games probably not, online competitive games maybe

― ciderpress

i think there's some interesting stuff here, how do people playing online shooters behave with each other

there's a lot of toxicity in gaming culture. i actually had an argument with my brother the other week because he was talking shit about gaming culture as a whole and i said that there were good and positive aspects to it. there's this sea of nasty and vicious bros that make it really difficult to game online.

also wondering what the correlation is between violent shooters and playing sports video games. shooters get all the press but are these people also playing like madden?

there's a conversation worth having about games, I don't think anyone could seriously suggest some sort of hard causal link.

but I don't know, people who like games even here, just get really mad at any perceived criticism even here...

I think the Lieberman/Kohl MK hearings were really traumatic, at that point the industry wasn't as established and ever since people view these discussions as existential threats to the hobby. now this stuff is just misdirection and Kabuki theater, games make too much money they won't be threatened

but I don't know, it was always funny, gamers will grasp on to any study that says games improve hand eye coordination, Wii Fit is helping ppl lost weight, but the suggestion that they could possibly have negative effects it's beyond the pale

i guess i just don't see any significant difference between playing through a single player game and watching tv. it's the online social/competitive side of gaming that messes with people's heads

My pet theory is that most of these problems can be traced back to the increasing balkanization of American society on numerous levels, largely facilitated by the internet. We live in an age where you can theoretically exist in your home without ever interfacing with another human being directly. Those conditions can both create and expedite mental health issues. People in that bubble can construct any version of reality they see fit, and to the extent that they're deficient in critical distance or empathy, they're likely to skew towards an unhealthy perspective. You can see an expression of this in any internet comments section, where damaged people approach the most seemingly-innocuous news story or video as if it's further proof of fallen world they've constructed in their minds. Playing an FPS game is only going to lead to real-world violence in an instance where that pump is already primed, any number of other factors could just as easily have been tipping points for someone that close to the edge.

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

change that to championship manager 4, a text based football management sim, and ive fucked full mugs of tea at the far wall, yeah

There's a causal link between these games and violent crime

when you play as spurs, definitely

ever since people view these discussions as existential threats to the hobby

w/o getting pied or anybody itt inferring some greater mutual equivalence (I'M OBVIOUSLY NOT, so please save it): yes, and this^ response is not unlike the reaction in some quarters to criticizing a certain other "hobby"

makes u think

Do I get pissy when I miss a jump for the 415th time in a video game? Maybe swear at the TV? Sometimes. Do I then punch my neighbor or shoot at a passer-by? No. No, I do not. Because it's a video game and it has nothing to do with my real life outside of that video game.

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