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Violent Video Games Lead To School Massacres

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Awor Szurkrarz said:
Overweight Manatee said:
If anything, playing video games = nerd = more likely to be bullied = more likely to :codexrage: after 10 years of having his shit kicked.
This. I think that the whole anti-violence ideology (pacifism, turning the other cheek, etc.) has a much greater chance of creating school shooters than most violent of video games.

the main problem is that people don't take the matter seriously enough until someone gets pissed of enough to go fuck all on the rest. Boys will be boys after all, lol.

Regular bully lashes out daily = poor thing has daddy issues, leave him alone

Nerd lashes out after years of torture = monster who couldn't contain himself is a product of violent vidya
 

SerratedBiz

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There is kinda a small difference between stuffing a kid inside a locker and running into a building with a gun and shooting people inside. You can *almost* understand how public reaction to the latter tends to be a little bit less sympathetic.
 
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^see, that's what I meant. The kids that do that sort of things usually weren't just a freak on a bad day, they suffered through almost-harmless-stuffing-in-locker for years, and no one gave a shit because boys will be boys lol it's harmless lol I bet he likes it lol

shit's bound to pile up eventually = kid freaks out and then oh my god how could anyone possibly have seen it coming
 

Luzur

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Clockwork Knight said:
shit's bound to pile up eventually = kid freaks out and then oh my god how could anyone possibly have seen it coming

more like "he had Doom and Wolfenstein 3d installed on his computer."
 

Longshanks

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School shootings? Nothing to do with video games. It's just more American decline.

Video games are far less realistic than their movie counterparts (double-edged sword: reaction to violence not as well depicted, but actual violence is cartoon-like in comparison) and less interactive than cowboys and indians in the playground.

Does danger to young minds increase with more realistic graphics? Possibly. But, I'll guarantee that when we have graphics that don't look like shit, talking particularly character models and animations, the number of games primarily focused on violence will have dramatically decreased, as more complex person to person interactions will have become more viable.
 

Felix

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If you want to see somthing take violence seriously and done right, read/watch Monster.
 

Coyote

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DraQ said:
Black Cat said:
"Violence is much harder in movies and much much more realistic since it is filmed with real humans. Why isnt the focus on that then?"

Interactivity. In a videogame you are not watching someone kill people regardless of how realistic or not it is, it is you doing the killing, having the intention to do the killing, and getting pleasure or relief on it. I do think they totally exagerate it, though.

On the other hand, when both a game and film show some killing in positive light, the film evokes stronger drive to imitate, because in a video game it already was player who did it.

The vast majority of scientific studies on the concept that were around a few years ago when I was interested enough to look into it either demonstrate longitudinally that exposure to violent media - be it games, TV, movies, the news, whatever - is associated with increased aggressiveness or demonstrate in controlled conditions (i.e. a lab) that exposure to violent media increases aggressiveness in the short term relative to control subjects or those exposed to non-violent media (there are probably a few long-term studies out these days, I should look it up sometime). Aggression has many forms, though, and violence is only one of them; psychologists can't ethically attempt to incite violence in scientific studies, so they tend to measure aggressiveness in terms of things like reactions to social cues and the content of conversation if they're using behavioral measures (instead of, say, questionnaires). There are also real-world observational studies, but they're generally not very good for showing much besides support that observations made in the lab apply in the real world. So pretty much any article saying that scientists have proved that violence in some form of media causes real-world violence is bullshit, because it would require an experiment that would never pass an ethics committee. (Never mind the distinction between "proving" a theory and "providing support" for it, and the fact that demonstrating causation in a lab isn't the same thing as demonstrating causation in realistic conditions.)

It seems likely that exposure to violent media increases the amount of violence in the world, because aggressiveness in one form is associated with other forms of aggressiveness - there's a reason they're grouped together under a single construct. (Besides which, aggressiveness on the part of one person can elicit aggressiveness from others). So, many investigators believe that it does cause violence. But again, it's difficult to support directly via experimental studies due to professional ethics. So it's entirely possible that exposure to violent media may increase some forms of aggressiveness (such as the aggression one displays in a conversational setting) without increasing others. For example, if the popular folk theory among gamers is true and enacting violence on-screen lets you "get it out of your system", it could increase verbal aggressiveness while reducing the tendency towards violence. (I'm skeptical of this due to findings on processing fluency, but it's certainly possible.)

And then there's the problem with psychological experiments in general, which is that they are used to make predictions about individuals based on tendencies within groups, and there are almost always exceptions. In all likelihood, playing violent video games makes some people act more violently and makes others act less violently, and games may cause people to act more violently in some situations and less violently in others. And hell, maybe it depends on the game in question. You can go back and try to get at what causes those exceptions, but that's not done most of the time, and even when it is you can rarely draw all-encompassing conclusions because there are thousands of variables that contribute to how we act in any situation, and at any given moment psychologists are just looking at a few that tend to contribute a helluvalot more than others. You can make pretty accurate predictions but will never be right 100% of the time on an individual level. So regardless of whether media exposure to violence increases real-world violence in general, trying to ban/censor violent games, movies, etc. is kind of like trying to impose restrictions on access to alcohol because it makes some people more aggressive: using the law as a substitute for self-control, limiting the choices available to everyone because there are some who will make bad choices.
 

SerratedBiz

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Clockwork Knight said:
^see, that's what I meant. The kids that do that sort of things usually weren't just a freak on a bad day, they suffered through almost-harmless-stuffing-in-locker for years, and no one gave a shit because boys will be boys lol it's harmless lol I bet he likes it lol

Maybe we should institue a zero-tolerance policy; shoot locker-stuffers on sight.
 
In My Safe Space
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Codex 2012
From my experience, fighting (beat em up) games and movies are the only ones that increase my aggressiveness.
Maybe kids that get stuffed in lockers should be forced to play fighting games?
 
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SerratedBiz said:
Clockwork Knight said:
^see, that's what I meant. The kids that do that sort of things usually weren't just a freak on a bad day, they suffered through almost-harmless-stuffing-in-locker for years, and no one gave a shit because boys will be boys lol it's harmless lol I bet he likes it lol

Maybe we should institue a zero-tolerance policy; shoot locker-stuffers on sight.


See, this is the retarded thinking that leads to that sort of shit happening. "What, do you want to do something against that? It's harmless, lol, don't be dumb".

you'd think people would pick this up after the second, third time a school shooting happened. Alas, man is not a learning animal.

hmm, these kids were made fun of / bullied for a long time until they snapped. D'ya think we should do something about it so it doesn't happen again?

...

Naaah, Im sure it won't ever happen again. It's all good fun, rite?


38_Paradigm_of_Humanity.png
 

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