Video games and 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