Video games and violence

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0yjSSCjqKJ/

(that's not an intended slight on ilx or most messageboards!)

I was within a couple months of graduating high school when the Columbine shootings occurred and the dialogue about how the shooters were influenced by playing Doom took an outsized role, and one of them actually had written, "I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy...so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom."

That always read to me as if video games weren't a motivating factor, but a fictional comfort they were trying to hide behind. Perpetrators of violence always dehumanize their victims, but it's seldom that they admit it so plainly or write about consciously forcing that dehumanization.

we can perhaps conclude that video games don't actually contribute to the problem.

I can't. I really don't know. Nobody knows, all this stuff is nascent. We're talking about rapid, massive behavioral changes. The studies haven't proved causation. That's different than saying causation been disproved, much less that FPS addiction like umpteen other things may not be a small contributing factor.

whoops, big xps there

I feel that this imaginary person is also drinking Mountain Dew, can we not fight the real enemy?

also not helping

Who the fuck are you helping?

what? I was agreeing that the Dew is not helpful.

Not you!

jeez

honestly kinda back-footed by the intensity here, I guess it's to be expected given the nightmare we're living in

There are some other practical effects. When I was in my 20s, my anxiety wasn't medicated and i was often depressed or angry, so sometimes I would grab GTA Vice City, mute it, turn on Moroder's "Scarface theme" on repeat,and just run around shooting people and blowing up vehicles for an hour or two.

I do recall hearing the copter sounds in my head after I turned it off, but also when i got in my car, I noticed i was driving a wee bit faster than usual.

It'd wear off quickly, but those are some of the things i think about as effects

Xxxposts

Who the fuck are you helping?

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 5 August 2019 19:44 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

af

where does this rage of yours come from

its bizarre

how bizarre?

I don't have intense feelings about this particular discussion, but I do think it's pernicious to keep singling out tertiary factors when trying to get to the dark heart of why the US has a disproportionately-high level of rampant gun violence.

if you want to know more about video game violence.....

buy the rights

Video games validating violent thoughts vs. inspiring them... thoughts? Same difference?

where does this rage of yours come from

its bizarre

what if it’s.......... video games

😮😮😮

They were avid fans of Doom especially. Harris said of the massacre, "It's going to be like fucking Doom." He also wrote "I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy...so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom." In Harris's yearbook, Klebold wrote "I find a similarity between people and Doom zombies".

Harris named his shotgun Arlene after a character in the Doom novels. Harris said the shotgun was "straight out of Doom". The TEC-9 Klebold used resembled an AB-10, a weapon from the Doom novels that Harris referenced several times.

it's simply not *not* a thing. It might be thing #5 or thing #80, but it's a thing.

thread title to thread

thought this was the safe space for the topic at hand

I did read that wrong, I took it as finger-wagging that I wasn't helping, and my apologies for that - but I also have a lot of issues with Hadrian's tone throughout the thread. But also also I'm on holiday and should go out and enjoy Toronto.

s/tone/approach/

ok I apologize in turn for my tone

probably feeling a little cornered and like I just leveled up and have two dozen ILXors to mow down ; )

FPS isn't really a popular genre these days, for what it's worth. Most people are killing people or monsters in third-person these days.

the bizarre thing about the correlation between video games of twenty years ago and today is that by and far the majority of games back then had fantastical weapons and enemies

now we have games that still have a bunch of ridiculous rules and kludges to differentiate them from reality and make them playable, but with slavish gun fetishization and some actual work with gun manufacturers to portray their products and use their licensing
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/04/29/179853504/a-real-world-connection-between-video-games-and-guns

I think the actual gameplay of video games is less of a threat than the blurring of cultural lines, and video games being mainstream is less of an issue than the mainstreaming of gun advertising and fetishization in video games

while still not really being a major factor put beside gun availability, societal fracture and negligible mental health infrastructure

Overwatch is still pretty popular. But regarding my initial point, games like overwatch and fortnite embrace the fact that gamers don't really care about the setting and the role-playing aspect very much. Those things just communicate the game mechanics. People aren't "pretending" to be a violent mass shooter, hired killer or terrorist... they're playing laser tag. Nobody is watching counterstrike e-sports tournaments and thinking "I am so hyped to see the terrorists successfully slaying those militarized police forces! It would be so cool to be a terrorist, too!" That's the silly thing about e-sports and popular online games. Regular sports don't come with narrative themes and set pieces.

Basically just rewrote my earlier post in the process. Oh well.

I guess that ties back to the second part of Hadrian's quote, there -- a book isn't a video game, even if it's based on one. And it's the interest in the ephemeral part that's driving the violence, not the game itself

It's telling that one of Trump's advisors on video game issues is the same guy who popped up in the 90s, Lt Col Dave Grossman, who's got an... interesting take on things: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xdp3g/trumps-video-game-meeting-dave-grossman

there's this complete social and mental disconnect as he goes around telling police that kids are using murder simulators and that schoolteachers should be armed, when most of these police officers and schoolteachers are probably of an age where they grew up playing these same games

Think maybe the Left gets caught up in the Right's simplistic "everything is black and white" outlook and so are nearly forced into making antithetical black-and-white response statements to them.
So the Right's "video games are a major factor!" gets a response of "video games have 0 connection to real-world violence, and if you even doubt this fact for one second, you're horrible and awful and dumb".

I don't doubt that games where you shoot at things are a cause for more violent literature, talking about guns, etc. but for the few people who are actually prone to violence, the cultural availability of a vocabulary to describe and envision that violence is something I could see as enabling in a way it isn't for the majority of the population

where does this rage of yours come from
its bizarre
what if it’s.......... video games

xp FPSes are still super popular, the annual call of duty game is still the highest selling retail game in the US almost every year

also feels weird to single out FPS right now rather than shooter in general when Fortnite exists

it really is just as simple as games being one of the things that a critical mass of nihilistic young white men congregate around, creating a community that st*rmfront and other far-right types infiltrated.

it's simply not *not* a thing. It might be thing #5 or thing #80, but it's a thing.

I hear they also listened to Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.

right that is exactly comparable

why is it inconceivable that music would have an effect on someone's actions?
maybe it's thing #81, but it's a thing

and on a related note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye_in_popular_culture#Shootings

right that is exactly comparable

the annual call of duty game is still the highest selling retail game in the US almost every year

Sure, and it probably will continue to be. But it's sort of atypical among popular modern titles.

Call of Duty tried to do a battle royale thing because they were losing so much ground to Fortnite/etc.. They might sell a ton of games at retail to casuals but it's the whales who play day in day out and buy all the other shit that really make them money.

fp'd you for using the word "casuals" in earnest

I bet we're going to figure this out

i think someone just did

Rep @GOPLeader McCarthy: “There are no mass shootings in Japan because there are no video games there.” pic.twitter.com/8aHDW6sgHq

— Shomeo (@SassBaller) August 4, 2019

Are they filthy though?

Xposts

I feel like my best catch-all response to questions of this kind is: anything in the phenomenological world has the ability to impact us to the extent that we lack defenses against its impact. An impact against which we lack a specific defense can be offset by strengthening more general defenses (i.e. the ability to recognize and avoid those phenomena likely to impact us negatively). Where defenses are lacking, impact can easily become imprint. There are, I'm sure, unfortunate circumstances that result in people modeling video game violence in real life, but the unresolved factors informing those circumstances are the greater issue.

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