It seems like most of our mass shootings are perpetrated by people who are both mentally ill and obsessed with playing first person shooters.
A curious compromise could be agreeing to defund and dissolve both the ATF and ICE. Constitutionally, both are "unnecessary" and infringe on the rights of citizens.
For The Children TM
The sample size of the study in the article is way too small in my opinion to apply to the whole US population, I wish they didn't put it behind a paywall because they still might have some interesting insights on the local/regional scale :(. They mention the only city used in the study is "a large north-western city". Doing some back of the envelope math I just used Seattle as an example.
- Seattle has ~800k people today and ~610k people 10 years ago. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/seattle-wa-popul... - Today there are ~2.5 billion gamers in the world. ~27% of those gamers are under 18 (all genders) so ~650 million kids play video games. Source(Not sure how accurate but assuming on the same order of magnitude): https://techjury.net/blog/video-game-demographics/
At best if their sample size was the entire city of Seattle that would be ~1% of kid gamers. Their real sample size is probably at least an order of magnitude less than the size of the city so < ~0.1%.
I am interested in the study though just not $60 interested :(.
Societal violence isn't as simple as neurological desensitization to stimuli. To take Call of Duty for example, the violence is so incredibly unrealistic, the only thing I could imagine it desensitise someone to is the cocophenious stimuli of Call of Duty itself; the actual reality of soldiering is too corporeally miserable to form any meaningful connexion between the comfortable experience of playing a video game. However, Call of Duty creates a very reactionary world where you get to be part of the machinations of a barely legal extra-judicial dark operations. While I do not think it is obliged to do so, it never really comments on the morality of what you are doing, as you are always fighting evil - and this evil happens to be either Russian, Brown, or Marxist. It's not scientific to draw the connexion between videogames (as literature) and violence, but you'd have to be deliberately obtuse to deny that ideas (even within videogames) effect change.
No one today talks about opera as a medium being a catalyst for violence, but opera was a surprisingly common source of riots; sometimes even igniting revolutions. Following the July Revolution in France, the Belgians enthused by 'La muette de Portici' and its nationalist idealism, rioted and occupied the government buildings, and splitting from the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Anyone who claimed it was the soprano's vibrato rather than the librettist's lyrics would be dismissed as mad today. In a way it's similar to claiming that a red pulsating vignette in COD causes bloodthirsty violence. However, it's completely valid to critique games as literature that encourages dehumanisation that leads to violence.
By which I mean enough time will have passed that the primary proponents of the theory have died or no longer have the limelight.
> Author Disclosure Statement: No competing financial interests exist
> Funding Information: No funding was received for this article.
The effort and skill required to play a multiplayer game back then may have been part of this.
‘Who’s got a spare terminator?’
What year is this from where Caucasian is still used? And northwest of what country? I guess US since the authors are from there?
Original article is behind a paywall. -1
It's pretty annoying that so many studies are paywalled.
As long as there is a lot of money in video games, there will be enough scientists whose research budget will be covered by interest groups with representatives from the video game companies... and the research will largely continue to show that video games are good for people.
People used to fill bags with cats, dose the bag in oil, and then light the bag on fire for the joy of watching the cats die from the fire.
During combat sports you are watching two fully grown people destroy their brains and their bodies for your enjoyment. People regularly died from these sports.
Video games have no stakes. Even children understand this. Clicking on a pixelated simulation of a nondescript soldier who always comes back for the next round is Disney cartoons compared to what people used to get up to.
damn. that was unexpected
And naturally, different to a console game, I'm physically pointing the weapon (controller) at the (virtual) target. It's really more fun than it should be ;)
It feels like being a character in a (cheesy) WWII movie.
(Also, I don't think stabbing zombies in the head in 'Walking Dead :Saints and Sinners' will ever get old)
Paper - https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049
It's not particularly compelling to me. Not sure what the formal term is but it's a sidecar study of another project. There wasn't much investigation into how the kids were playing the game, and level of personal aggression was determined by self-survey.
What's the hypothesis?
what they said video games would do to us.
Credit: https://twitter.com/allymayn/status/1328448039497867264
I do wonder if spending 40% of your waking hours playing simulators where you dice people up for no good reason, might contribute a little to that attitude. Especially the kids that already aren't being socialized particularly well (abusive parents that barely talk to them, etc.)
Hell, I'd even be alright if it were games that have loads of violence but with a sense of purpose (e.g., the Half-Life series, or many Bethesda games). The truly aimless violence is what kinda worries me.
Someone who's choosing to ostracize another person within a social group is a bit more covert and difficult to detect. Is this considered "aggressive behavior"? This is one example of a type of behavior that I'd consider to be aggressive and likely not fitting the definition of the study. There are many others out there. And I'm betting some of them are impacted by the games.
Why? Because I'm recovering from gaming/media addiction and I would adopt behaviors and lines from things I played/watched to use in real life.
I'm waiting for the study that actually detects me and people like me. I suspect it'll take about as long as the tobacco industry took to conduct and release studies showing tobacco can cause cancer.
Makes me wonder if any studies have been done regarding that.
Not saying I'm not desensitized to fake on-screen violence (I eat comfortably watching The Walking Dead), I just think horror being scary has nothing to do with violence being scary.
I think cartoon violence desensitizes you to cartoon violence, and real violence desensitizes you to real violence.
I've seen quite some real gore online, similar to many online people. I don't know how it affects my psychology. I like to think it has at least some positive effects, like not fainting and less of a shock if I need to act in such a situation. But maybe real world violence seen through my eyeballs not through a screen is a whole another thing again. Maybe hearing and seeing real abuse is not something you can "prepare for" through gore videos.
Sure, but that’s my problem with this whole thing.
Some idiots and media claimed there was some obvious links to violence and video games to use as reasoning for increased government control... and now the push back is NO NEVER HAPPENS!
But in some people yes, of course it hurts. There are definitely some people who are unstable and seeing hyper-graphic depictions of violent mutilation is not healthy. There are some people in the opposite.
These studies always end with a DEFINITE correlation or lack of. The truth is obviously it’s a scale. And while the result is yes, some people might be negatively effected that doesn’t mean the population at large needs to be “protected” with censorship.
I really hate the black and white of this.
Certainly, games aren't to blame for real killings, terrorism, shootings, etc., but they ARE part of the equation whether we want it or not.
Our society still has a cultural foundation on violence. As the time passes it _seems_ to be diminishing - as we can see by the rejection of violence against woman or other minorities becoming ever more common - but our heroes tend to be aggressive, our tales and stories contains death, killings, etc. Again, less than before, but far from zero.
Studies so far are controversial (to say the least) and it's hard to take sociological statistics at face value, therefore is hard to conclude anything. But it's impossible to believe that spending several hours a week pretending to do violence against ever more realistic cyber impressions of life wouldn't have ANY effect on our selves.
"If video games influenced behaviour, those who grew up in the eighties would run around in dark rooms, listening to monotone music while popping brightly coloured pills."
- Sociological stereotype goes that videogames are mainly popular among those not prone to violence. Therefore most results on the matter might only mean that videogames cannot make people not-prone-to-violence act violently. If they're physically unfit (and not deranged enough to use guns) this may be obvious a priori.
- The data says little about whether videogames increase the likelihood that someone who is prone to violence will act violently.
The real question is ethics and morality in a violent context.
And I don't think that aspect was taken into consideration.
Just remember: were you agitated more after a Tom&Jerry session or after Call of Duty.
With my brother we always were crying 3 minutes after one VHS of Tom&Jerry ended :)
Never after killing 1000 nacis on screen or similar.
In most game, your shots don't hurt bystanders. There are no ricochets and usually no civilians. No one's running away, putting out fires, crying over dead bodies.
Simple fact is we have far more evidence to prove the Earth is not flat and yet there are those that still insist in going against all the evidence in the World. This will be no different.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/belagavi-mo...
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/india-boy-fakes-kidnap...
https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2020/jan/2...
https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/gaming/three-p...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/boy-addicted...
Here's an article of a 16yo killing his parents because his iPod was taken away: https://time.com/138601/teen-kills-parents-because-they-took.... You'd be jumping the gun if you looked at his most played tracks and concluded that Bruce Springsteen or the iPod's uni-wheel interface caused violence, though I'm slightly more open-minded to those ideas.
A similar question worth considering is whether or not violent people are drawn to violent videogames. In my somewhat-informed opinion, they are, and that's significant.
There is nothing pointing to a causative relationship here.
The US military partners with games like Call of Duty and uses them as recruitment tools. I’d be surprised if they didn’t contribute to a sense of dehumanization of our proclaimed enemies.
With possible exception of multiplayer games that you loose too much. Those things can enrage you.
I mean it's hard to say there's "no link" given that the above link is a link.
From that same section of the article.
- video game violence causes real word violence - vaccines cause autism - insert conspiracy theory here
Specifically: https://familylife.byu.edu/ "Provide instruction that fosters commitment to the principles in The Family: A Proclamation to the World."
...and that proclamation is....
"THE FAMILY A PROCLAMATION TO THE WORLD
The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."
What a lunk of crap!
I mean, back then we didn't have 16 Million colors or high-resolution monitors with small fine pixels -- all the games used color palettes of 16 or 8 colors, and they were blocky as hell... like my tank (represented as a block) shot a smaller block (the bullet, use your imagination, work with me here! <g>) into your tank (represented by yet another block of a different color!) and the "explosion" was that the other tank would turn a series of (lame) colors -- and disappear!
So my question is, WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE ACTUAL GRAPHICAL DEPICTION OF VIOLENCE? -- in these early video games?
This is like saying that "Pong" -- made people violent!
It didn't! (Well, unless they were violent to begin with and lost a game of pong, and were prone to violence when they lost various games! But those people are the exception, not the rule! <g>)
You see, that video games cause violence
was a lie back then,
and
it's still a lie today! <g>
I spent my youth playing first person shooters. Now, with a little bit more life experience under my belt, participating in a war simulator feels a bit tasteless.
Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping blocks into place, building a city, chasing and eating ghosts, flying a plane, performing magic spells, or engaging in physical violence.
And there's a never-ending push to make experiences more photorealistic, to make simulator even better. From that I can only conclude that people want to get as close to the experience of perfoming the prevented act as possible.
Chopping someone up is heavily frowned upon in real life, but perfectly acceptable to emulate in someone's living room. Somehow the simulation escapes the taboo. And that escape seems to be absolute: In the range of violent acts you could commit, from a gentle nudge to grisly murder, simulation of the most extreme extent is permitted.
But if that's the case, why is the realistic simulation of some societal taboos (e.g. physical violence to the point of murder) mainstream, but others (e.g. sexual violence in any of its forms) not? They are both very serious offences, but somehow one gets a free pass to let anyone pretend to do it, but the other not.
Is it a reflection on the ultimate limits of those taboos in the society that produces most of these games? Or is my logic broken somewhere?
I think the idea is that guns and bombs and such are cool, and probably lots of people have the impulse to just let loose some destructive volley, blow something up, shoot stuff, run people over, etc - and video games let them do that without consequence. If you saw someone playing GTA and they were running over drug dealers and having shoot outs with the police - that seems like a pretty wild and fun fantasy. Conversely, if they murdered an NPC, then found that NPC's grieving family members and kept dragging the murdered NPC's body in front of them to make them depressed - that would be more atypical.
In other words - if the fantasy you're indulging is being powerful (guns, bombs, using the car destructively) - then that's pretty normal. If the fantasy you're indulging is sadistic, that's pretty abnormal.
The game industry is growing faster every year because the demand for an escape from the dull grind is rising just as fast. The violence is just a peripheral aspect of it.
Another aspect is that it's easier to recognize violence as fictitious. When you are exposed to real-life violence, it feels completely different from anything you've ever experienced in media. There is simply no confusing the two. On the other hand, sexual content tends to be more directly related to the act itself or to complicated emotions around it, even if the material is recognized as fictitious. Sometimes the content IS the act, if we take into account that for a large number of individuals the main draw is the exposure itself.
Unlike with fictitious violence, the tastes of the player/watcher/consumer are in plain view, and we know that these tastes can then easily become behaviors. Much more is revealed than we would care to see. That is why is it considered much more abhorrent.
It is a simulator, so it has the best mechanics. The violence is the only thing missing. Flight Simulator will just display a boring dialog saying "you crashed".
To transpose the argument to reality, a serial killer may see the act of killing as a neutral act pursuant to a goal they consider important. There are plenty of serial killers with manifestos.
Whatever they are trying to achidve, they aren't welcome in society.
Part of the equation is that combat is interesting to simulate. It has clear rules ( live or die ), a lot of different ways you can tweak the game design to differentiate ( swords vs guns vs spells vs karate ).
The most popular games are NOT that violent. They simulate combat, but the draw is the competition created by the simulation, not the blood and guts. I can't name a game where "chopping people up" is the primary goal. I'm sure it exists, but I would find it dishonesty to disparage an entire medium because of the work of some niche game developer.
I didn't grow up during a time when you could go out and wander the streets all day and your parents would be OK with that. You had to be home. Having friends over and competing over video games was a great way to pass the time. The game we played the most? Super Smash Bros. Rated E, 0 realistic simulations of violence, about as bad as any slapstick film.
Are you sure we're talking about the same game industry?
I'll also note that most mainstream action movies and games tend to de-emphasize the goriness and injuries from violence (although gore-flicks also exist, especially in the horror genre). Compare a James Bond movie to a more realistic depiction like Saving Private Ryan. When James Bond shoots unnamed bad guys, they neatly fall over with minimal blood. When he blows people up, you don't usually see any blood or dismemberment. They just get thrown by the explosion and lie dead (but intact) on the ground.
My guess is they do this because the audience isn't watching for the injury aspect of violence, and gore can turn off some viewers. I think the violence in action movies (and games) is more about the protagonist winning. It's the competitive aspect we like. The power fantasy. The protagonist showing incredible skill.
As for graphical realism in games, I don't really know of any that specifically focused on making the killing more realistic (I'm sure some exist, I just don't know them). I've seen games advertise realistic lighting, shadows, reflection, environments, water, faces, gun models, etc. When they make everything more realistic, the violence may get more realistic along with it, but it doesn't seem to be the main focus.
The stories of most of these games are close to a hero fantasy. Having the people you shot scream in terrible agony as their organs fell out wouldn't exactly work with that theme.
Ultimately games and moves are fantasies. But for some reason living out some fantasies that would be very wrong in real life is ok, but others it’s not. I hesitate to even get into the really taboo subjects like for example pedophilia.
Rape on the other hand is mostly emotion.
Remember the controversy around the game "Hatred", where you play some random angry "antagonist" who just wants to kill innocent people? When the "good guy" narrative breaks down this far, society would reject violent video games as well.
There are games that toe the "good guy" line, most notably Grand Theft Auto. But GTA also has some of the most tame looking violence. I cannot imagine a GTA with the "sadistic gaze" of Mortal Kombat's finishers being widely accepted.
This is especially more palatable if non-humans on receiving the violence. There is strong interest in killing aliens/monsters/demons/robots, but I think it's safe to say there is comparatively little interest in having sex with them. I say "comparatively little" and not "none", because Rule 34.
We have a double standard when it comes to imaginary evil that is simply violent and imaginary evil that is repugnant. Make a game about shooting a thousand people and it may win game of the year. Make a game about avoiding prosecution while abusing your virtual pet dog and you'll probably lose your job.
Seems like you're making the OP's point, something is special about sex in your mind.
Also sex is generally taboo way more than just murder. Soldier killin people - good. Even innocent women if it's indirect enough like bombing. Soldier raping people? Oh, no, we can't have that!
Also not all murder is equally safe for entertainment. Chopping enemies on the battlefield - great. Stalking innocent people in the city to murder them... Way more on the edge of what's acceptable. Even gunning down civilians in the airport raised some eyebrows.
As I'm getting older I'm getting softer. Recently I was sad because I unintentionally squashed Jeff in Half-Life Alyx, blind mutant that was pretty much helpless if you were careful about the sounds you make. Game characters cheering totally didn't sit well with me.
One way to look at it is violence in video games is a mechanism for “completing a mission” (neutralize those preventing it), financial ends, or survival (whether your pursuers have good reason or not). Those things are tangentially related to our day to day lives but the farthest end of what most people might consider themselves capable of doing in pursuit of extreme success or survival. Plus, death is a normal part of life, so is death by force. It’s normalized in modern life.
But in terms of sexual violence, there’s no real world corollary of survival or prosperity mapped to something so heinous. The real life perpetrator feels some twisted satisfaction over another person, but that’s it. It doesn’t preserve an individuals life or advance their station in life. So it’s not relatable to the majority of folks, even in the deep parts of their mind on what they’d be realistically capable of doing to just live or survive.
I am amazed that there's so much hypocrisy around different categories of violence in fiction. It's even worse than other manifestations of hypocrisy, because this one seems completely invisible to people — I don't recall having seen this discussed anywhere until I read your comment today.
Case in point: when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serbian_Film came out, there was so much talk about it being immoral and/or illegal, and so many (eventually successful) calls to boycott, censor and ban. I have not watched the film, and I do not think I'll ever watch it, because judging by what I read about it, it seems utterly disgusting and horrifying. Disgusting to the level of scenes depicting the raping of a newborn, and the most imaginative mix of necrophilia, torture, rape, and gore. I think I could not stand it, and if I forced myself to watch it, I suspect I'd have nightmares (literally). So what follows is by no means a defence of this particular work, nor an endorsement of gloating over the most extreme and shocking forms of violence an artist/performer can conceive.
At the same time, there are so many depictions of violence in mainstream film, games, TV and literature. By far, most of that violence is done to male characters (and incidentally, also by male characters). That violence is usually not sexual in nature.
As Vladimir Nabokov put it, art has to be transgressive and shocking.
One more idea to consider: violence (as most things) comes in gradations. Murder > torture > punch > pinch. Rape > harassment. Actual violence > threat of violence. Violence to several people > violence to one. Sadistic violence > plain violence > violence as self-defence > physically restraining an aggressor. Violence committed taking advantage of physical superiority > violence among equals. Etc. There is no gradation, however, contingent on the sex of the victim nor on the sex of the perpetrator: violence towards men ≡ violence towards women.
Why then, it is so controversial to depict rape or sexual abuse, but so commonplace to rejoice in depictions of murder, torture and physical aggression?
I think you're operating under the false assumption that simulating sexual violence is taboo. I'm not sure that's a given: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_fantasy
I don't think that's a natural conclusion. Video games are a form of entertainment (or art). They are pretty young. There's usually a period where an art form gets super into "realism" because it's still a challenge and a way to communicate "high production values".
Then pretty good realism becomes cheap and widely available - and the art form pivots to more expressive works that go beyond chasing "realism". So why are high budget games trying to get more photorealistic? Because it's currently an effective way to communicate "high quality work of entertainment, worth at least 60 bucks". It has little to do with the actual entertainment value.
For example the entertainment media on the one hand say that entertainment does not influence people via depictions of violence, etc., to emulate such things. On the other hand they say that how people are portrayed for positive role models “I could be that person” they are necessary and instrumental and thus the need for representing a cross section of the population. Yet on the other hand they would (with good reason) resist showing only positive plots (ala modified 1950s but contemporary).
I agree though. If sexual violence is a non starter then so should lethal violence be a non starter. Else there is a non sequitur in reason.
Straight up torture - a person who is captive, has already surrendered, etc is not “fair game” in any sense of the word, not even by a stretch. They cannot shoot back, etc.
The same goes for sexual violence. If a character is raping another, the victim has to be incapacitated.
If we were a society of black widow spiders, then I’m sure sexual violence would be fair game because it would be very risky for the male.
Also on the evolutionary side, it was beneficial for us men to deal with violence and agression, to either defend our own stuff, or take that from others.
We're basically still training for when the day comes, we are able to survive. Good thing for most of us in the modern world, that day will never come. And so we can enjoy training in the risk free environment.
I think "simulated" sexual violence (that is to say, real-but-consensual violence, as well as other forms of simulated coercion) is pretty close to just as mainstream, people just don't talk about it as much.
Rick is not a real casting agent, and there is no job.
>Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping blocks into place, building a city, chasing and eating ghosts, flying a plane, performing magic spells, or engaging in physical violence.
I've played a lot of ultra-violent games, puzzle games, adventure rpg games, competitive shooters and mobas and more.
I've become quite skilled in most of them (t500 in OW and GE in CS:GO, to compare to competitive skill levels). I really enjoy "mastering" these games. (for example finished Doom: Eternal on the hardest not allowed to die mode too). This is ultimately what it's about more than the killing of monsters/people. It's about trying to survive impossible odds by skill or competing with other people to be better and get better. Your mileage will vary as this isn't what other people want to get out of games. Some people enjoy managing a farm in games like Stardew Valley, building things in Minecraft, solving puzzles in Portal and enjoy the story and gameplay whilst doing so.
>And there's a never-ending push to make experiences more photorealistic, to make simulator even better. From that I can only conclude that people want to get as close to the experience of perfoming the prevented act as possible.
Making games look better goes hand-in-hand with making them look more 'photorealistic' or realistic in general. We're very much grounded in our own realities. So when you're going for a 3d experience that emulates real life events like wars. You will end up with something that looks more photorealistic. It doesn't however mean that the game feels real. Playing a game like insert recent AAA fps is a very different experience from watching the Christchurch shooting. The latter makes me sick to my stomach, the former doesn't at all. NPCs are ultimately just visual representations of people, the latter actual people.
>Chopping someone up is heavily frowned upon in real life, but perfectly acceptable to emulate in someone's living room. Somehow the simulation escapes the taboo. And that escape seems to be absolute: In the range of violent acts you could commit, from a gentle nudge to grisly murder, simulation of the most extreme extent is permitted.
It's a thought I think almost no one actually has when it comes to murdering people. Hell this might even have the same effect as pornography, namely a reduction in crimes related to it. (Porn availability on a societal level reduces the amount of sex crimes). So a potential murdering being able to 'chop "people" to bits in a simulation' might be a good thing. For me it has no effect, I've never had the thought of murdering people let alone how. At most I've had a "I hope you die" moment, and then regretting thinking that.
>But if that's the case, why is the realistic simulation of some societal taboos (e.g. physical violence to the point of murder) mainstream, but others (e.g. sexual violence in any of its forms) not? They are both very serious offences, but somehow one gets a free pass to let anyone pretend to do it, but the other not.
Though certainly not mainstream, this might also have to do with general taboos on porn, this could become a thing in the future especially with VR. A lot of people have very taboo sexual fantasies the they enact with partners. We know that this is the case, but it rarely gets openly talked about due to the former taboo mentioned.
>Is it a reflection on the ultimate limits of those taboos in the society that produces most of these games? Or is my logic broken somewhere?
I think your logic is indeed a little broken, as different taboos are taboos for different reasons. Hopefully I made some sense.
In a virtual world:
- The gun weights nothing so strength doesn't matter and gravity doesn't slow your aim
- The trigger is a mouse button and there is no right or wrong way to pull it, and it's incredibly easy and identical for all firearms
- The accuracy of the firearm is often perfect
- Holding the gun still is usually only a consideration when sniping and you can just hold down a button to achieve an impossible level of stillness
- When you reload a half-empty magazine the bullets from the discarded magazine usually stay in your overall supply somehow
- Posture is a non-issue
- Recoil never hurts
- You achieve a perfect sight/scope picture every time you shoulder the weapon or raise it up with no practice needed
Basically I am trying to point out that these games are really not simulations. The visuals are just window-dressing for the real game which is determined by the mode. Even the ubiquitous "team deathmatch" is essentially just a modified version of capture-the-flag without the flag where eliminations are not permanent and the game is instead ended by a timer or a score limit.
On an interesting note, I got the game Star Wars: Battlefront 2 recently and I noticed that the game says I "defeated" whoever I just shot which is in contrast with the visuals of the person getting shot and falling down. I see this as an attempt to make the game more friendly to kids by pulling back the curtain on what is really happening through language in order to keep kids from going around talking about how many dozen people they killed in the last game they played. I don't see anything wrong with this but think it should not be necessary for adults. Of course if your game is rated T (Teen) or E (Everyone) then this makes perfect sense.
EDIT: sorry, not western culture, American culture, particularly.
Because there are severe consequences to it, pregnancies and STDs being just the start.
Yes, it is an amazing thing, and it is not overvalued at all. It's one of the strongest drives we have as humans, and it should be controlled, otherwise it will lead to chaos.
The same reason people have been reading horror novels for hundreds of years? A good book and an imagination is a lot more realistic than a computer game, IMO. The reason society gives it a pass is partly because they are entertaining and partly because they are considered free speech, the latter being a fundamental human right.
Compare reactions:
These publications were headline-grabbing, but some of the study design was laughable. The whole state of affairs led me to leave the discipline (which led me to a career as a software engineer). I'm glad that I did, because the reproducibility crisis hit hard within a few years of me deciding to do something else with my life.
Some of the studies that I read made me think that there was a link between frustration (caused by e.g. undesirable outcomes in videogames, or performance issues like high latency) and aggression, but of course the researchers assumed it was the violence.
My favorite was where they used the volume of hot sauce poured into a cup as the measure of aggression.
Hopefully they've come up with some better ways of measuring it since then.
Then the news media just reads the abstract and says "a new study shows videogames make you violent!"
"Lieberman et al. [1999] found that scores on [the hot sauce] paradigm were positively related to both trait and physical aggression scores on the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire, supporting the convergent validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, although to date no study has measured its association with aggressive behavior outside the lab."
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cab/940f9292928a48d57c3752...
They look for a correlation between the "class" of gamer; literally "people who play a lot at younger ages, drop, and then increase", "people who play a moderate amount at younger ages, drop and then slightly increase", and "people who play only a little bit at a young age but increase" and report no correlation between those classes and the aggression assessment based on the questionnaire.
I admire the fact that they didn't do more work to p-hack their way into a correlation; they went with one methodology and showed that it didn't produce a correlation, and reported that. But even though I agree with the article's conclusion, I don't think the data support it in any meaningful way.
Yes, they use an off-the-shelf diagnostic tool. No, that does not make the methodology sound. They use a word like "aggression" which has a qualitative meaning and attempt to assign a quantitative metric to it. To assign a meaning to it, I would have to go to other studies to find out how this links to my various qualitative notion of "aggressive": incidence of violent crime vs. cutting in line vs. correcting people's grammar.
You may say "this is impossible, the bar you are setting means that social science papers can't even use the word 'aggressive' to describe quantitative results". And yes, that's true, they can't. They can say things like "convicted of a violent crime" which we can at least agree means something objective that vaguely correlates to aggressiveness (although this has limits). The media can report this as "aggression" and that's fine too, so long as we know what is actually being measured.
What surprised me is what happened when I didn't intervene: a few times the older one completely dominated and got his way. But more often than not the older one displayed empathy and tried to apologize and give kisses and give the younger one additional toys.
Maybe this is an unoriginal idea but it bears repeating: I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having.
I asked her about this later in life and her answer was and she laughingly told me "I knew you two were well aware of the fact that it was a fantasy. I never saw it influence any unhealthy behaviour. Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys."
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protectio...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...
https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/adhd-and-video...
As someone who grew up with violent video games I think this issue is taken way too personally by most of us. The idea that video games will necessarily make you violent is absurd and not being proposed by anyone (that is mostly a straw man used to dismiss the idea). The question is whether violent video games can push some kids over the edge -- kids who are already predisposed to violence. Imagine an abused kid with no farther figure who would probably be a violent teen anyways. Will playing violent videogames numb him to the idea of killing, give him neural pathways that make the repetitive action more likely and start him with some bad ideas? Could it be the difference between him getting in some fist fights and indiscriminately murdering schoolchildren? The answer looks like "yes."
The case made in the book On Combat is very interesting. That book is considered one of the definitive secondary works on combat psychology and he spends significant time on this question. I strongly recommend the book.
Is someone who played COD more likely to support military action? Or vote for a violent politician? Or join the military? These all contribute to violence in the world as a whole.
Violence, per se, is not as relevant as the context for that violence. The more revelatory question is not whether 'violent video games do lead to agression' but instead whether they could.
If, for example, the protagonist in a video game has an attitude or behavior that is treated as aspirational then it's more likely that players of that game (especially those with less life experience) will themselves ascribe to that attitude or behavior. And if that newfound attitude or behavior persists, then over time it is likely to lead to changes in action.
The study that would be more helpful is not the one that evaluates the impact of violent content due to its mere presence but rather evaluates the impact based on the context in which that violence is presented.
I think part of it is because videogames graphics and animation these day is so realistic(and it will keep getting more real) All the blood and gore and violence and how you kill someone are realistically depicted. Or maybe its objective clashes with my identity and values(I'm not okay running around and killing people in real life, of course)
Note that I can "kill" hundreds of infantry in Dynasty Warrior game (which is much less realistic) and doesn't feel a single thing.
I believe that what you consume, whatever it is, effect you one way or another, despite "researcher" tell you otherwise.
When it come, I can see many people will face with depression because whatever they consume is too immersive.
This study didn't conclude that the media you consume had no effect. It merely reported observed effects and concluded that playing a lot of violent video games as a child is a poor predictor of aggression later in life. That's it.
Just don’t let the media see this, because that’s when it will blown out of proportion :P
Why would I want to spend my leisure time experiencing that? How is that entertaining?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/23/the-15-best-vi...
It can’t be denied that our society is obsessed with violence. Americans have been like this for a while but recently produced movies and TV shows in Europe and the UK feature much more graphic violence than they did two decades ago. Why? Is it a reflection of a more ruthlessly competitive society or are there other reasons?
I tend to agree, and the "rekt/gore" threads on 4chan strike me as particularly low-hanging fruit.
While it probably doesn't directly incite violence in well balanced individuals, it does in my opinion trivialize war and glorify armed combat.
I'm reminded of that French soldier who "cosplayed" Ghost from Call of Duty while on duty in Mali.
I guess it's not really new, literature always told stories of war and it's an extension of that, but a book and a game are not the same thing.
I wish that was what the discussion was about, instead of this dumb tabloid-tier "Doom creates serial killers" narrative.
Of course, that didn't translate to any real life loss of empathy (I don't think), but it was interesting how quickly the game desensitized my regard of fictional humans so that I stopped seeing them as anything of value but rather an enemy/monster to be unquestioningly destroyed.
Guns and mental health problems had already been present in America for decades before mass shootings started happening. Video games are the only new ingredient I can see. I can't take seriously any full dismissal of their role until that timing is explained.
> [the] group with low initial violence “was no higher [don't they mean no lower??] in aggressive behavior than the high initial violence group at the final time point.”
leads to their conclusion
> adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age.
(words in square brackets added)
Even if (war) video games were to be made “gorier”, bloodier, more brutal one still doesn’t experience losing someone, re-building a life in a country that has been bombed to ruins, or dealing with the aftermath such as physical wounds or mental trauma.
The entertainment is designed to make you feel good and make you feel like soldiers are overall good heroes.
This submission, on the other hand, is a link to some kind of gaming news website, which links to an abstract for an article in a Cyberpsychology (?) journal which costs $60 to access, and there is widespread and uncritical agreement with its supposed conclusion.
I think this isn't an issue because a healthy person can not confuse fantasy and reality.
I can see how these kinds of activities can give ideas, but you would have to be already dysfunctional in the first place.
But that's true for more than just multiplayer video games. Sports come to mind. Basically anything involving intense competition and taunting is going to cause a temporary increase in aggressive behavior.
Personally, my take on this is you were seeing and effect; not a cause.
As a kid you MAY have had a common issue expressing loss or disappointment. The game MAY have brought this up, there was always a loser every match. So, your parents MAY have considered this the cause of your inability to properly handle it.
I MAY be wrong. I have no idea about you. But that fits ME perfectly.
I found the thing that brought me out of that was stressful singular competition, fighting, shooting, chess, performance, etc. Things that you excel on your skill not anything you can blame someone else for.
I learned the value in making a plan, executing it, and learning when and why if it didn’t work.
Now as an adult, I find myself more ready to deal with stressful things like dogs fighting on walks, medical emergencies, criminal activity, and things I just see other adults completely lock up on. I think this comes from an inability to process loss and stress.
If does not study at all the actual issue most of those who lived with excessive gamers (whether kid or adult) have. Meaning, annoying aggression right after playing and verbal abuse toward household members because they dare to exist if same flat where he lost the match.
This isn't a simple thing to measure. Players of violent video games have diverse environments, social supports, and other factors. These mitigate the effects of playing these kinds of games; in other words, while the games may encourage violent behavior, person A with a stable environment and strong social supports may not be effected in the same way (or enough to measure). Person B with a different environment and fewer supports may exhibit violent behavior. Some studies may claim to account for these, but that should be met with skepticism and rigorous discussion.
This "kids need adult supervision" is a relatively new thing, we used to be sent out to play as kids for HOURS (be home by dinner) and ran the woods and parks or played murderball (soccer with tackling) and other forms of roughhousing, all without serious mayhem. Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.
Funny story. my 4yo was playing with the neighborkids around the same age. the neighbor girl came to me to tattle, saying they weren't sharing. I told her you need to work it out with them, use your words and manners. Clearly not the result she was looking for, she turned and yelled "He said you have to share!" I clarified with the other kids "that's not what I said! Work it out!"
And now days the school calls the police for minor fights and kids end up with records that can drastically alter their lives in a negative way. I almost wonder if this zero tolerance mindset creates an all-or-nothing mentality in kids when they realize they aren't allowed to defend themselves. And if this mentality (equivocating criminal record and expulsion with the end of one's opportunities and life) leads to more extreme behavior - hey, if the cops are going to be called for punching my bully, why not take it further?
I am forever thankful for a childhood like that - but letting my kids run amok in this day and age for hours brings me a lot of anxiety. It is an interesting paradox that makes me a bit sad.
edit: for the record, we have them in wrestling / jiu jitsu - so their plate is still full re: physical activity and social interaction.
In one case, it ended up with older boy consistently bullying smaller sibling. By the time parents started to intervene, it was habit and it took months to be stopped. The younger kids still somewhat dislike brother, altrought he treats her much better now.
Other cases I have seen were roughly similar. Work it out may work out may not. But pretty often it amounts to enabling bullies - and even blaming the victim if the victim does not defend itself in perfect magical non noisy calculated way.
This is the same argument that anti-vaccine people make... we survived as a species for thousands of years without vaccines, we don't need them now!
Yes, we survived as a species but a lot of individuals did not survive.
Every safety and health improvement we make can suffer the same argument (we survived for years with lead paint! Asbestos has been used in a ton of buildings and we are still here!)
Of course, not every safety improvement is worth it. Some risk is acceptable when the gains are high. I just think it is important to be realistic about the risks when we are talking about the benefits.
The problems is that as parents we often just group all kids together in how we treat them. They think it's either one way or the other for all kids rather than treating them as individuals with different experiences and different minds.
The one thing I have seen to be true amongst all my peers children is that if you talk to them and treat them like adults, they are much more likely to act like adults at a younger age. That is to say, take into consideration their experience and feelings any time you want to intervene or have an interaction.
*not parenting advice, just imho. apply as you see fit.
I used to teach kids for many years, and I noticed the "helicopter parents" tended to have more mischievous children, presumably because these kids rarely feel intrinsically motivated to do anything (it's always coming from the parents).
It turns out their society started looking after their weakest and made decisions based on consent.
Meanwhile, the book just confirms everyone's beliefs not only about children but mankind itself, namely of a Hobbesian/Darwinian/Randian rule-of-the-strongest being the natural state of affairs.
At 5, now they mostly get along fine. Unless they get in her toys. Then it's bodyslam time.
I was quite surprised because her normal play involves taking care of her baby dolls.
That your children do this I think speaks more to your aptitude as a parent and nurturer than human nature in general.
and less so, more peterson spam, as it were.
Almost all games/sports are microcosms for wars, football, basketball, tag, hide n seek. Both kids and adults love these microcosms of war.
They don't pretend to be narcos because they like toy guns. They do it because they aspire to a quality of life they will never get via a normal working job.
Post-freudian hydraulic metaphor of emotions. That one's about as outdated as psychological views get.
We have experimental data that punching things when you are mad doesn't make you less mad, to give the most straight forward example.
> Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys.
This is one of the standing theories why the influx of those types of games in the 90s coincided so perfectly with a drop in crime. A closely related one is games in general, as "gives them something to do instead of go out and cause trouble".
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii45/oversaturated/2r6ns4...
My kids play video-game, I play video-game, and I have nothing against it. However an excessive exposition is a pattern that i can relate to ADHD.
Medication could have that effect but I experience quite the opposite. It almost makes me feel "bad" that I am playing a game and doing something more productive. That's generally how these meds work, they "stress" you into doing tour work, so you don't do it the day before you have to turn it in.
But I guess it's different for a professional gamer. It maybe doesn't feel unproductive when it's your main source of income.
Another thing is, the H in ADHD stands for hyperactivity. To play a game however, you have to sit still.
I do still play some games, but only those that are non competitive and casual. For example, I really like playing Stardew Valley, it's very calming and because it is open ended, there is no FOMO.
In my experience, there's definitely negative and positive correlations to my mood, curiosity, patience, and productivity.
People are too quick to say "causation/correlation" but often times there is overlap. One can encourage the other.
As another commenter above noted, it's a form of wish fulfillment and imaginary transgression, which is particularly appealing to teenage boys, since virtually all forms of actual aggression are off limits. Sports are the only arena where boys are allowed to be physically aggressive in real. Other than that, we have an entire group of young people who once would have been learning to hunt and kill and defend their clan but who now have to sit around and do very little besides read, write, and stare at computers. Arguably it's a positive thing to have less violence, but it leads many young men to wonder why the hell their bodies are strong and powerful. In video games, they at least get to pretend that there is some utility to being able to be forceful.
In the case of video games, there are some that are mindless violence, but The Last of Us Part II is an example of a game that reflects on those and show the real outcome of what people can do to each other and how evil and pointless it can be.
Why do people enjoy spending their leisure time experiencing that? It's not a rhetorical question.
> [...] How is that entertaining?
I know what you mean. I have the same feelings, but restricted to depictions in my native language of people hurting each other in psychologically realistic ways.
I'm not bothered with any physical violence especially voiced with English dialogues. They somehow seem cartoonish to me.
But I pretty much have to avoid all Polish movies because they often use those really unpleasant themes.
They are made because they have audience. I have friends who love those movies and themes.
I tried to find out, what exactly appeals to them in those themes and best I could get out of them was that those brutal themes are somehow more 'real', that they expose how people 'truly' are. And that somehow has a value for them.
Probably morbid fascination pays a part in this too.
So the problem is that the weapons be realistic?
I've always noted that rather extreme violence has always been a case of children's entertainment — in something such as Looney Tunes, the characters are frequently the subject of violence that would surely kill a man. Is this acceptable because it's not realistic?
It's something fairly unique to videogames too. Imagine the outrage if some American propaganda war movie à la Black Hawk Down showed American military personnel engaging in 360 noscope kill streaks, trying to rack up headshot combos.
I havent seen this personally, but isn't this more of an American tendency than a general western thing? On the American side media violence is penalized less (in terms of adult ratings) than nudity/sex while across the ocean you see the opposite trend.
Can anyone with more exposure to European (or Aussie/Kiwi) media confirm/deny this? I'm curious to hear the reason why if true.
Also, even though we're not quite as prude this side of the Atlantic ocean, we still have to abide by American cultural rules when we use Facebook, Twitter and similar services that have strict no-nudity rules. Similarly, any media produced over here that ambitions to enter the American market will also have to follow these guidelines.
American culture is very pervasive.
Same reason a study with positive outcomes about coffee/alcohol/gay parenthood/gender reassignment/<insert issue> are not criticized as much as a study on the same topic that had negative outcomes. We want certain things to be true so we (consciously or not) avoid criticizing studies bolstering what we want to be true and harshly criticize studies we want to be false.
I like to think science always prevails in the end (like with tobacco), but it can take half a century or more to converge on the truth.
If you have a friend group of 10 people, 4 of which regularly work out. You will probably notice that those 4 friends have less body fat and are more toned than the other 6. At that point, if a study came out saying that working out had no impact on body physique, you'd reflexively question the results.
That might sound ridiculous, but lots of people here grew up playing "violent" video games through the 90s-00s, and had large friend groups who did the same. And it's pretty likely that, for most of us, none of our friends ended up with violent or aggressive tendencies.
Anecdotes are not scientifically rigorous, but they aren't completely useless either. If violent video games caused measurable increases in aggressive behavior, people who were around a large cohort of people playing these games would notice this fact in action. Just like they'd notice that friends who eat a lot of cake tend to be larger than the one who don't.
But any place with “votes” has such effects.
My rule for analyzing social science articles is pretty simple: If the study contradicts your intuition or understanding of human behavior, it is likely that it does not support the conclusion because of extensive methodological errors or statistical skullduggery.
If, on the other hand, the study confirms your intuition or understanding of human behavior, it is likely that it does not support the conclusion because of extensive methodological errors or statistical skullduggery.
When there is such heavily biased review of social science papers, it calls the legitimacy of all of them into question.
The simple fact is that I cannot ever think of any solid methodology to investigate a “link” between these two things and that the man who devises it would deliver a rather groundbreaking idea.
How would a study such as this even work?; it's all Quatsch.
So since we have learned that violent song lyrics does not cause anti-social behavior in teens, nor that of violent movies, it seems as a good default stance that neither does violent video games. I would also default the same stance to porn consumption, based on the same logic.
I would prefer if we got a final study that gave a definitive answer if consumption of fiction causes anti-social behavior. It seems to me that fiction is simply an medium for which people can safely explore cultural norms, but in terms of causing anti-social behavior we would need to look at social environment and biochemical triggers for social behavior.
It's very hard to argue video games and crime are linked when the curves are:
https://i.imgur.com/hSHDyoH.png
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/190000/191219-blank-355.pn...
Of course it's possible that the link is small and other factors overpower it. But it's unlikely, and given the everyday experience with people who play games and people who are violent - there's very little evidence of any link.
So indeed we fail to the confirmation bias. Or, said in other words: "ordinary claims require very little evidence".
The literature on pornography is more mixed and contentious, though. On violent video games and "gaming addiction", there seems to be less and less going for the hypothesis that they cause violence or aggression.
However, from what reading I've done, you will find that longitudinal results in porn and video games are dissonant with experimental results in lab settings. This suggests that while there are effects, they do not persist to the level thought. More complex models (such as the confluence model in porn effects research) which try and explain apparent hidden variables are also gaining steam. There are actually only four or five major contemporary figures in porn effects research; Wright and Tokunaga finding that porn has negative effects on everyone; Hald and Malamuth finding that the main or only worry only lies in those low in agreeableness and predisposed to aggressive behaviour.
To a bunch of gamers and porn-users (including myself in both of those categories), these things are either things we spend a lot of time doing (for a portion of HN, I suspect their entire leisure time is taken up by video games), or they are very personal and private. Nothing is more personal than what we get off to, so any analysis of porn tends to be taken as an assault on sexuality itself (though interestingly, much as with advertising or propaganda, the very same sexuality cultivated by porn consumption).
I've tried discussing the literature on video games, porn, violence, aggression, and morality before on both HN and Reddit, and the discussion is either ignored or shot down with downvotes because any discussion at all feels like a personal attack.
I'd recommend for anyone interested in the topic of video games and aggression or behaviour, and indeed the hot topic of "video game addiction" to check out the papers by CJ Ferguson, who has a positive view on video games. At the same time, check out the people he replies to and the people replying to him. It's ridiculous to draw any conclusion from a study that happens to reach the top of HN.
I think you're seeing an important difference between acceptance of a conclusion versus agreement with it. I doubt this study is changing anyone's minds.
Besides: claims of a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior was never backed by anything other than assumptive moral arguments, much less studies (or even coherent reasoning and valid logic).
Thise leaves bias from confirmation of existing beliefs along with more anecdotal evidence not directly connected to videogames, such as decreasing crime rates over the period of time that videogames have become more violent. However relying on that correlation alone is a post hoc ergo proper hoc fallacy.
In short, we simply don't know enough about the study to overcome comment with substance, at the same time that the study corresponds to conclusions based on similar research. I'm hesitant to declare "confirmation bias" though when it does ostensibly confirm other research, though it's not really a replication, so I'd withhold final judgement.
For one fun field, look at the level of criticism papers in parapsychology (the study of the paranormal) and compare it to if they get more criticism or not than the average paper in psychology. There is a particularly fun study (which I do not recall the name of) where two scientists teamed up, one who thought parapsychology was a true field and one who thought it was fake. They worked together on the same experiment and each produced results that agreed with them, but neither could find a flaw in the other's methodology or results (other than they disagree with their own results).
Design this game with negative stereotypes and see how many people suddenly flip on how they think about the influence of the in-game social and anti-social aspects.
"Mike Splechta of GameZone questioned the game's timing and how it could become the "next scapegoat" in a climate that already held video games responsible for school shootings and other violence."
I both do not know any violent criminals personally, and have witnessed a rather staggering amount of acceptance of violence in our culture.
I’m reminded here of when the director of communications at Lockheed Martin responded with the following when asked about a possible connection between Columbine and the manufacturing of Triton missiles just down the street (Lockheed being a major employer of many parents in the area):
“I guess I don't see that specific connection because the missiles that you're talking about were built and designed to defend us from somebody else who would be aggressors against us.”
We also accept violence in the criminal justice system even to stop non-violent crimes. We also support wars, see it’s approval rating of post 9-11. I’ve had many a person tell me the solution to some Perceived racial problem was to “wipe them out” and only one of them physically assaulted me.
So it seems to me that we are okay with violence but often do not like carrying it out ourselves in personal disputes. Yet this may only be detoured but the treat of violence being carried out on us if we were to. Unless of course we are in the military and have been told/trained to carry out violent activities with impunity. All in all I am not convinced we are a peaceful nonviolent civilization, quite the opposite. Nor am I convinced that seeing accepted violence everyday on your T.V. Screen, be it video game or otherwise, does not affect this pervasive psychological mindset, agin the opposite.
Reminds me of the Dungeons and Dragons moral panic of the 80's [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/us/when-dungeons-dragons-...
Video games do not make people violent - and based on my observation of at least several thousand peers - it actually has the opposite effect. The truth is video games are a healthy outlet, as well as self train an individual to deal with defeat over and over and over again.
I bet if you took groups of individuals whom played sports for X hours a week, and compared them to an equivalent number of individuals whom played video games for X hours a week, the sports group would have more violent tendencies. This isn't just hyperbola, after observing as many humans as we have in both these activities, it's practically self evident.
Yet we get to the effect of ultraviolent gun-worship games, and the reaction is swift to absolve them of any role in our society.
Still smells like "the preciousssss" undercurrent on pot legalization. Which I'm in favor of only because of the failures of the drug war, especially in destabilizing Mexico and Central America into narco mafia states.
America has radicalized around guns and gun violence, to the point they are religions. Sure, go ahead and say there are no effects from violent gun games, then go talk to your kids about the school shooting drills. Sure we can argue that gun manufacturers and partisan wedge politics have elevated gun worship and not 25 years of shooter games.
I get there aren't smoking gun game studies. But we are way far from the days of cartoon Doom.
If you've played the Last of Us 1 or 2, you know what I'm talking about. If you saw it, it would affect you deeply. But actually doing those things hits so much harder. Is it possible that has a deeper effect on us compared to a movie? I don't know, but it's not a ridiculous proposition.
Also, you could just as easily transpose it to something tame in reality. Kids like to put on capes and swing sticks around like swords, not because they want to kill stuff, but because it's fun to play pretend. Turns out grown ups like to do this too, we just call it cosplay and video games.
1.) You underestimate how uncomfortable and annoying resulting environment is for everyone in the household.
2.) "My brother and me fought" typically have consistent aggressor and removal of game is often action design to protect the consistent victim.
3.) Removal of game is logical consequence. If parent simply tolerates asshole behavior in that situation, the kid has no motivation to even try self control. It amounts to enabling where parents see issue, but tolerate it and the issue grows and grows.
Organisms can become more fit by carving out a specialized niche for themselves where they don't have to compete. Or by becoming more cooperative as a species.
The association with ruthless domination of others can be misleading.
I don't think anyone's watching the show specifically for the unpleasant scenes, it's just that the unpleasant scenes enhances story/drama aspect.
Presently we are seeing significant alarm raised by media over the content, not bugs, within Cyberpunk 2077; accusations have been raised by major outlets that it includes bias in support of law enforcement, a transphobic setting, and bog standard sexism.
But despite its severe bugs and missing features, it's enjoyed three solid weeks as a top seller on Steam and easily made back its expenses through PC pre-orders. For all the flak it gets, the game has an enormous and happy fanbase.
What I see happening is a bifurcation in game players: those who reject the gamer label and reject moral terpitudes, and those who embrace the gamer label and tolerate or enjoy moral terpitude.
I expect that in ten years we'll see an industry with healthy diversity in players and content; divided into their separate groups and with stores that have adapted to cater to specific groups.
A hundred years ago there was the Bay and Sears, and now those have been superseded by a large variety of clothing vendors. I don't expect to buy a cardigan and leather bdsm mask in the same store, right?
In case of gaming, people in the same householde are getting that despite not having much choice. It is also much more frequent - dedicated gamers play hours and hours every day.
Another aspect with soccer is that really only few people can do overnight, so again, the bad behavior due to sleep deprivation is less likely to happen. If course it can happen if you party while night or something.
These logistical differences can make big difference in terms of how annoying the hobby is for those who have to put up with people like your friend.
> till proven otherwise
It's still bullshit even if proven otherwise. If I roll my magic dice and determine that it's going to rain tomorrow, and it ends up raining, this in no way validates my methodology.
Hacker News users aren't smartly, we just type good
Reminds me of the GP comment... Also aligns with - murder is so out there that we can joke about it, rape is so common that we can't.
You're correct, use of such a tool doesn't automatically validate their methodology, but it does shift a lot of the focus of any criticism in the direction of that tool and its implementation, which is not a discussion I've seen in the comment thread. Criticizing or affirming the results of the study are pre-mature without that.
But I'll say that my priors lean heavily towards the idea that most surveys, even the standard ones, are less meaningful than they appear, for reasons explained here:
Yes, perfectly acceptable. But garbage for the reasons I described above. You can probably tell that I don’t have a high opinion of social science studies, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be convinced that this is one of the vanishingly small number of studies that I’ll concede has any validity at all.
It’s garbage because it tries to assign a quantity to an English word that already means something. They are piggybacking the formal (which is limited in scope and meaning) on the informal (which is deep and reflective of human experience). If Jane Goodall makes an observation about aggressiveness in social situations it’s a judgement that I can easily accept. There’s great value in trying to obtain a detailed qualitative understanding of behavior.
On the other hand it’s one of the great mistakes of the social sciences to assume that quantification is necessary for engaging in science; this results in “metricism” or “scientist”, which cargo cults the trappings of the physical sciences without any of their insightful power.
Of course the conclusion of the article is correct, but I would not consider this evidence for that conclusion. If they had reached the opposite conclusion I would also have dismissed it entirely, so it’s only fair I do the same even though it lines up with my personal beliefs and experiences.
*hyperbole, though my autocorrect also tried to screw me.
I'm not sure about this comparison though, as there seems to be a connection between concussions and violent behavior. Comparing track members to video game players would be somewhat interesting.
When I was a kid in the 90s, Oprah claims that Dungeons and Dragons caused Satanic worship and Grand Theft Auto groomed children for larceny. That's where our culture is coming from.
Since it's not part of the mechanics: as you point out, it's not (frequently) done. That seems to support the claim that it's not about seeking violence.
E.g. in Kerbal Space Program I often "reset" bad airplane flights by crashing into the ground as fast as I can, or one of the space center buildings if I'm nearby. I could just hit esc and reset and be back faster, but then I don't see an explosion, nor have a chance to see messed up physics breaking the universe. I've also coordinated orbital collisions to do the same, but there it's more because it's extremely challenging to achieve at any reasonable velocity.
I have no desire to crash real planes or blow up space stations though. The closest that gets to the real world is "I like fireworks".
I am not saying I WANT or would play said game, but that level does not exist in these games.
Star Wars the Old Republic (the KOTOR MMO) gets pretty dark if you roll dark side. There's also torture, shooting innocents into the void of space, and a few of the class stories let you kill a lot of people for no reason other than that they're no longer useful to you. It's a bit campier than GTA but I can't think of any other RPGs that model being an real asshole quite so well. SWTOR is actually kind of an interesting example because it has EA and Disney behind it, even if the latter joined on after-the-fact and invalidated the canon the game is based on.
Spoiler alert, but one of Far Cry 3's endings sees you murdered after climaxing during sex, all in first person.
Hardly chaste, if you ask me.
Yeah I would describe GTA as pretty tame compared to those movies some of which have broken through to the mainstream. The average horror movie is more violent and gruesome than even the worst we see from video games.
The Witcher and Mass Effect? Those are adult games with very lame sex scenes all of which are consensual. I don't see that as particularly scandalous.
1. more games being produced because the industry is larger and the barrier of entry was reduced
2. more and easier ways to access them: free-to-play models, relatively stable $60 top-end price even after 2 decades of inflation
3. more socially acceptable and includes more than the nerdy kids from ~20 years ago. You could get bullied for playing EverQuest when I was a kid.
4. streaming platforms complements it and probably encourages playing games more often
5. more "addiction innovation" through game mechanics
6. maybe a long shot, but both parents often working now means less time spent with kids
Because we have tons of companies peddling and researching how to create addictive games, without much regulation. Several of them even hide gambling (lootboxes) within games.
I played Hearthstone quite a bit in the past. The loading screen is literally the screen of a slot machine!
Something else is going on. There is a positive feedback loop of some kind, and it seems apparent if you follow the money.
I think VR may be an interesting test case in the near future as it is immersive enough to potentially be more traumatic and more unsettling... but that still doesn’t mean playing GTA or Doom increases your odds of going on a shooting spree.
The fact that you can make potentially more impactful stories using more modern media seems neutral to me. But to be frank, you really desperately do not need modern technology and fancy graphics to make an incredibly emotional, impactful game. Just look at indie games like Undertale and Celeste.
And there have been many film-inspired murders. the mass shooting inspired by the Dark Night. John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Reagan ( inspired by Taxi Driver ).
John Lennon’s murder was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye!
Here’s a link to some:
https://www.newsweek.com/nine-horrible-real-life-crimes-were...
And remember, not all such incidents are famous. So doubtless there are more.
There are sick people in the world who are indeed influenced by all sorts of media.
this was the key idea behind A Clockwork Orange.
Whether such media influences “healthy” people is another question.
People can be “inspired” by a film or a game to do something illegal, but it’s impossible for us to tell if they were simply likely to do it anyway, so individual cases don’t say very much.
Some of us may be driven to violence by video games. And maybe those people aren’t included in these studies.
Perhaps. But does it mean you're more tolerant of violence? And that others such as yourself eventually aggregate to have a collective impact on the broader culture? And what about 10 or 20 years from now, will your non-desire to shoot people still not exist?
Neuro-plasticity effectively dictatess we are what we consume, we are what we do. I'm not disputing your self-diagnosis. But there is science that does.
No, which is the entire premise of the linked article we're discussing.
> And what about 10 or 20 years from now, will your non-desire to shoot people still not exist?
Perhaps, but it will have considerably less to do with video games than other life factors.
> Neuro-plasticity effectively dictatess we are what we consume, we are what we do
This isn't what neuro-plasticity means. It means your brain can perform a task with less work, not that you "become" something because the pathways are optimized for a task.
The brain is a result of how you "exercise" it, or not. It's the result of what you feed it, or not. It's not static.
Neuro-plasticity enables stroke victims to recover. And the depth and breadth of that recovery is a function of how much or not the brain is forced to rewire.
Has the collective impact of multiple violences been studied?
Put another way: Will a mouthful of soda do you in? Not really. But multiply that exposure to sugar across different drinks and processed foods multiple times per day and before you know there's an obesity crisis. But the mouthful of soda is proven to be safe.
We are what we consume - physically, emotionally, intellectually, and so on. That's been confirmed time and again as well.
Everyone likes some intrigue and mystique. James Bond will always have more of it than a claims adjustor.
What looks more exciting for a kid? Seeing your narco uncle on your birthday with a PS4 gift? Or your banker 8am-8pm uncle with a hot wheels as a gift?
If you are not from Mexico it will be hard for you to understand this issue.
For example, the last time I was in a real physical fight was in kindergarten. If I watch/play violent media, it can't affect the way I fight because I do not fight. Sex is something I might actually do though, so overexposure to twisted versions of it could actually color my real world experience.
I still tend to think that most healthy adult minds can easily make the distinction between reality and pretend though.
Violence is a part of life. May be shooting a gun isn't a part of life but violence is definitely a part of everyday life.
And anyway, if actual physical violence is a daily or weekly occurrence, the supposed bad influence of video games is probably the least of your worries.
"Have you ever driven in traffic, seen someone arrested, PAID YOUR TAXES?" (emphasis mine)
What the heck are you talking about regarding taxes? Also, traffic accidents don't really count as "violence" in the context of this discussion. Arrests are something that generally happen for a reason, so again not a normal part of life for most people.
You should also try writing with less question marks, it's condescending, especially when you completely missed the point of this whole conversation.
As the study above points out, violent videos games don't make you more violent but I'm pretty confident sexy media (games, movies, music, etc) make people more horny and therefore more likely to seek out sex. Also, since sex is something people do in the normal course of their lives (vs violence which is not a normal part of someone's live) the media they consume is more likely to influence their behavior. It's a manual for something they hope to participate in vs violence, something they don't hope to participate in.
You can google "using porn to get in the mood" to see other people certainly get horny watching sexualized media.
Do Europeans consume large amounts of violent media? As a European, I can tell you the answer is yes. I don't know how much compared to the US, but I basically grew up on violent video games and I have a large number of friends who love horror films that depict far, far worse than anything in a game I ever played. I suspect the media we consume is pretty similar to the media in the US. And yet, less violence. So, an obvious hypothesis is that the tendency to enact violence comes from elsewhere in culture than media.
The best suggestion I've come across is from Pinker's History of Violence book. He suggests that levels of violence correlate with an "honor culture" - as in, godfather style "you disrespected my mother now I gotta kill your brother", to varying degrees. In the US, especially ex-confederate states, an honor culture still persists, while in Europe and northern US states we have progessed to a "law and order" culture with correspondingly lower levels of violence. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading the book. It gives a much better description of this topic than I can here, and once you've spent some time thinking about it, hopefully, you'll come to recognize that blaming media for violence is shallow thinking. Communities and culture cause violence, or prevent it. Media is just fantasy.
- What of the USA's willingness to use war as a proxy for foreign policy? Is not war a collective "enforcement" of violence? So much so that the masses have become numb and/or blind to war? Why is the USA _so much_ more violent? Because we have more guns? Point being, let's be clear, violence takes many forms.
- What if there are long term effects? What if the children of a player of violent video games are more effected? Maybe the parents are less likely to discipline for acts of toddler violence? What happens when that child grows up?
- The study looked at a particular group of kids, _10 y/o and up_. In terms of development, that's relatively late. The affect of violence on say 5 y/o's could be different, perhaps very.
- It's important to note that this "study" made no mention - at least in the non-pay material available about sample size. How they assessed violence vs non, and so on. The data collected also appears to be self-reported. Read: red flag. But confirmation bias runs strong on HN, yes?
- That said, the article does say:
"Participants were assessed through various behavioral characteristics such as aggression, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and prosocial behavior."
To be clear, the study doesn't connect violence to video games for the sample. However, it also fails to mention whether there are other less positive outcomes (e.g., increase in depression, obesity, or something else).
Exercising your brain causes structural changes, whereby neuronal circuity is "rewired" to create more optimal paths. Stroke victim recovery is functional, in which parts of the brain take over responsibilities for what was damaged (but it's not "transferred", you still need to learn it all over again).
Neither, however, somehow magically define you as a person just because your brain decided some optimizations would help with repetitive tasks or worst-case decided cortical remapping was necessary to recover from injury.
That is, what you "feed" your brain will manifest itself physically as paths in the brain. Full stop.
When you develop a habit of consuming violece - and enjoying it - those paths are real. Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them magically disappear. Confirmation bias works that way, the science does not.
Furthermore, human behavior is often learned for the collective. That is, for example, given a group of cigarette smokers, the more who quit smoking, the more likely others in the group are likely to quit.
Put another way, going in the other direction, humans naturally gravitate to broader norms. That is, the more I see others with excessive weight, the more likely others will join that club. So yes actually, you are what you eat. Literally.
Now please explain - not being snatky - how that's nonsensical.
Except that's exactly what is up for discussion, and so far there is no evidence that this is the case. There's a big difference between muscle memory, neuroplasticity, and playing the piano than their is for sitting on the couch and consuming violent media.
> Pretending they don't exist doesn't make them magically disappear.
Saying they exist doesn't make them magically appear.
> Furthermore, human behavior is often learned for the collective
Yes, that's also how morals work. The more people are exposed to something, the more morally acceptable it becomes.
> Now please explain - not being snatky - how that's nonsensical.
Short witticisms like "you are what you eat" or "you are what you learn" are shallow and vastly underestimate the subjects at hand in exchange for a quick nod. Such as "we are greater than the sum of our parts".
Eat crap. Become crap. Brain may still work ...but on a deformed body
I mean I do agree that kids need to learn to navigate conflict, but adults should ideally be monitoring and should definitely get involved when power differentials get out of hand.
there's refusing to engage when its friends squabbling over toys. Its another whole level when battery comes in... Pretty big difference.
Very good qualifier that the toy is not hers. Maybe mention that and that you don't have any authority over their toy.
> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.
That is a good thing to have. My knee jerk reaction as having had absolutely no guidance on how to resolve social conflicts where I was say getting bullied to this comment initially was it might be an overuse of "just deal with it", but I realize that was not your intention :)
If someone breaks into my house and tries to beat me to death, I'm not going to try to reason it out with them, I'm calling the police.
Kind of strange, though, isn't it? We live in a safer time than any before (have regressed slightly in the past few years), but many, many people have an intrinsic gut reaction that things are getting worse.
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt." - Horace, ~20BC
The local woods by you may indeed be worse than it was during your childhood, but overall as a society we are doing better.
crime is lower across the board compared to 15-20 years ago
ignorance was bliss, for you
And the fact that crime has dropped like a rock, with a ~20 year lag, after leaded fuel was phased out.
I'm not trying to say the theory is wrong; just that correlations are really tricky to study, it's hard to control for all confounding variables, and it's hard to know for certain when a correlation is due to causation.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
A) There are easy marks everywhere.
B) Which crimes did your mind gravitate towards? Were those crimes ever major parts of all crimes committed? Does the presence or absence of children materially change any of that?
Anxiety because of what the kids may do or anxiety because of what other adults may do?
Even with statistics about danger being down across the board, in still pretty worried about my kids getting hit by an automobile. The raw statistics are even one area where danger is rising- fatality numbers are back over the mid 90s.
Anecdotally, I see a lot more obviously mentally ill people on the streets than when I was a kid. Crime in general is more prolific in my area than when I was a kid (Sonoma County, CA).
I'm not saying my anxiety is rational, or that the stats back up my anecdotes - I am merely stating my perceptions.
So the brain and mind work a certain way...except for video games and violent?
Did you read the Abstract on this "study"? FSS you can drive the planet Jupiter through the holes.
If we're going to discuss evidence, there's no evidence anyone reasonable would read that abstract and put their credibility behind it. HN is such a funny place sometimes. But I trust you can read the article or abstract and see the question marks. But if not, LMK and I'll break it down.
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/suppl/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049
"Therefore, it is determined that adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age."
The idea that consumption of violent media changes pathways in such a way that the expression of violent behavior is more common, is null and void. There's zilch, nada, zero evidence to support this including decades of prior research on film and television influence.
Maybe the pathways being trained have less to do with aggression and violence, and more to do with hand-eye coordination and other motor reflexes involved in the process.
This lead to me being punished more than normal for the rest of my public schooling. Once you have a "record" if you so much as dare to be 5minutes late to a class they just send you to "in school suspension" as a bad kid for the entire day. There I met kids doing much worse things than me, and almost all of it was escalated by administration getting police involved. Police would hang around these kids to arrest them again and again, never teaching them anything.
Granted this was in a rural area, which seems to be a bit slower to adopt those newer policies. I mean, we still had kids bringing their guns to high school in their cars to go hunting in the evening.
> "allowed to defend themselves"
> "punching my bully"
...and this is what most bullies would say. No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place.
Bullying needs to be stopped by the school - and without calling in armed bullies to stop the bullies.
As someone who has punched multiple bullies into the face, I can tell you it does stop it quite efficiently.
Two of them basically instantly switched to never again daring to acknowledge that I even exist, for the remaining >5 years of being on the same school. The remainder wasn't smart enough to stop instantly and thus got multiple beatings. There's always the one kid who needs to touch the hot stove multiple times until they realize it hurts ;)
Would I recommend it to children now that some decades have passed and I am an adult? I don't know.
But it does work, ideally if applied without prior threatening and in quick succession. People really don't like having multiple fists in their face when they didn't expect it to happen.
I'd argue that the number of bullied people who could give a bunch of bullies "multiple beatings" are.... few.
Please avoid the patronizing tone. Your experience is not universal. I've personally witnessed victims escalating the conflict into much worse situations.
How do you think that works if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally, essentially preventing the victim from defending themself? And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
I never said that. Please don't make up strawmans.
> And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I never said that.
> I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
Funny how I only hear the "stood up to bullies succesfully" story and never the other ones. See my other comment.
Sorry, I don't really understand your point. eeZah7Ux seemed to me to be saying that the victim should run and report it to the school. I don't see how a zero tolerance policy would punish the victim in that case.
I don't want to victim blame, because they are victims... but it's often enabled by their own character traits. They'll be greatly helped throughout life if they acquire the ability to defend themselves.
There's always enough kids from abusive or neglectful households to make lots of conflict in schools. It used to be (I have heard) that schools and teachers were extremely well respected such that a parent wouldn't go against something a teacher said. So in a way the teacher could help actually parent the kid. Nowadays school is more like having a personal childcare service and parents act like they're paying customers and control every aspect of their kids interactions with it.
I do agree that there are still many easy marks. I think the advancement of the aforementioned technologies and the parent comment's point about parents in general being more cautious removes many of the opportunity for certain crimes, or at least to get away with them.
I use the word choice here, but the right to defend oneself is really a natural right.
I'm sorry, I did not mean to sound patronizing, but rather enabling for people in similar situations to be aware of the choices they have.
> I've personally witnessed victims escalating the conflict into much worse situations.
Of course punching someone in the face can always result in them falling in a really bad way and just being dead right away!
My experience comes from a schoolkid age where body weight and muscle strength were still low enough to make that rather unlikely I would guess. Even if something bad had happened, I was still below the ago of criminal responsibility, so while neglecting the emotional and physical consequences for other people, consequences for me would have been a slap on the wrist.
On a side note, depending on the state and the specific circumstances, if a bully utters fighting words, one could be justified to get physical if there was an imminent threat to violence. Of course, law and school policy are different.
https://www.tctimes.com/news/why-bullying-has-become-so-prev...
Plenty of lives are saved every day by those that aren't police, but have the ability to intervene.
Please don’t read words from me that aren’t there.
The harm by lead occurs in the first 3 years of life. High blood lead in early childhood is not detected later in childhood [0]. The New Zealand study uses blood tests performed ten years too late. This flaw makes the study almost useless.
Additionally, only 30 of the children in the study had low blood lead, <5 ug/dL. This is because the blood was collected in the 1980s and New Zealand only banned leaded gasoline in 1996. Look at Figure 1 in [1], and notice that at 5ug/dL, the damage is already done.
[0] Caito, S., & Aschner, M. (2017). Developmental Neurotoxicity of Lead. Neurotoxicity of Metals, 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-60189-2_1
[1] Nevin, R. (2000). How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. Environmental Research, 83(1), 1–22. doi:10.1006/enrs.1999.4045
I'm not sure if the paper you linked measures the correlation between blood lead levels in the first 3 years and crime rates because it's behind a paywall.
Now the scenarios I've been talking about are where the bullying has become physical. Most schools that have a zero tolerance policy will punish both people who were involved in the fight/pushing/etc regardless of who started it, again it's mostly due to lack of proof, but the policy expressly forbids any violence. So even if someone punches you first and continues to attack you, the policy means that if you punch back you are in violation too and will be punished. So if you are in a corner and can't run away, the policy says you just have to take it without fighting back or get punished for defending yourself.
So the same will be for your scenario of running and telling the school. For one, you have to escape that bully and hope you're faster than them (before you get trapped/ tackled and it turns physical) or you both end up being punished. Then you have to have some sort of evidence that shows you were innocent and the bully person was unprovoked. Incidents without proof generally result in no action from the school due to that lack of proof, so the bully will continue tormenting you.
You have this same problem with fighting back. You have to hope you're a better fighter, if you're not you will be pummeled. The benefit of running is that very quickly you will reach other people, so you don't have to run very far. With fighting it could continue for a long time and you might get fatigued before the bully. When I took Taekwondo, my instructor said the best thing to do if you're about to get into a fight is run.
How many scenarios at school are there were 2 kids are alone and no one can see them or is in earshot? One technique that might be good, is to teach kids who are worried about being bullied that they should try to stay in a group, or within earshot of others, so they can call for help if they get attacked. And to be aware of surroundings and the environment so that they always have an escape route, they don't get stuck in a corner. Avoiding being stuck in a corner could also help if you're fighting, it gives you more maneuverability. This advice would help weak kids too, not just strong kids.
>Incidents without proof generally result in no action from the school due to that lack of proof, so the bully will continue tormenting you.
What if you create a diary with times and dates of each incident?
Also, what if you can record proof? Start an audio recorder (and inform the bully if you're in an all-party consent state).
It doesn't need to be only 2 kids. The zero tolerance policy has made it so that bystanders won't get involved because they will get into trouble too if they are physically breaking up a fight.
A diary won't really mean much. It's still your words, but now they're just written down.
Recording could be good. It depends on the state laws as well as school policy. You might not have to inform them in some all party states, because many have exceptions for recording if you believe a crime of violence is likely to occur. The bigger problem is if that exception doesn't exist and there are other people around, you need to inform them or get their consent. If they aren't around, the bully knows you're recording and may take the device from you to destroy the recording.
That's not a strawman, that's the definition of zero tolerance policies in schools - both parties in a fight get punished the same.
"And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever."
'I never said that.'
What you did say is that victims can't solve bullying and that school policies should. What we clearly see is that bullying is a growing issue under zero tolerance policies because the victim is given disincentive to defend themselves - it becomes a vicious cycle that protects bullies. It also is at odds with my personal experiences.
If the zero tolerance policy isn't the school policy you were speaking about, then what is? You imply that school policies should prevent bullying, but we clearly don't see that.
"Funny how I only hear the 'stood up to bullies succesfully' story and never the other ones. See my other comment."
You do hear of the other stories - kids committing suicide or shooting up a school because they are trapped in a failed zero tolerance system that leaves them with seemingly all-or-nothing options. You also witness kids just "taking it" if you are observant enough.
So far you seem to be just trolling - offering neither arguments nor facts that support zero tolerance systems or refute the facts that I, and many other on here, have presented against those systems.
> If the zero tolerance policy isn't the school policy you were speaking about, then what is?
There is extensive literature on the topic in pedagogy and it often applies to adults surprisingly well.
- hire psychologists instead of cops
- fire any teacher that sees bullying and ignores it on purpose
- require teachers to talk about the problem. Silence and "boys will be boys" bullshit is a huge enabler.
- teach teachers the basics of psychology to spot patterns in students at risk
- encourage students to talk to psychologists
- require teachers to walk around the school and don't leave areas where teachers never go
- teach students de-escalation. Yes it's as skill and it can be learned like other skills
The policies you are listing are already in use! Why hasn't the issue been solved?
The paper you linked by Nevin seems to be doing the same thing as the paper by Reyes. They didn't test the lead levels in individuals studied, but looked at the total lead released by vehicles at the time.
For example, I have a group of 10 friends. All 10 of them (including myself) got covid, and we all agree it is no worse than the flu. I mean, yeah, we couldn't smell or taste for a few days, but we all recovered within a week. Therefore... I should reflexively question covid studies saying how dangerous it is because in my own experience it's not even worth making a fuss over?
Maybe to some degree, but the fallacy I committed by relying on my anecdote to guide my intuition is that me and all my friends are young, fit, healthy people. My group of friends didn't include the elderly or immunocompromised or morbidly obese, etc.
In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reasonable assumption that naturally violent people are more likely to play violent video games.
If the effect was even 0.01 with growth by 10000% we would have noticed.
It's also a reasonable assumption that people who naturally want to avoid actual violence play violent video games instead.
This paranoia against violent video games was obviously fake from the start, and such a typically American thing - in line with the American puritan view that blowing up people in films or broadcasting police car chases is a-OK but (female) nipples or saying "fuck" is a big NO NO.
There's a lot of violence in society. There's even more violent media available. From news broadcasts to internet forum posts to books. Perhaps violent video games aren't particularly worse at that than all of the other media that portray violence? The news tends to have stories that are more gruesome than the things that happen in video games. The violence in video games is usually toned down or limited.
In a community like HN there's also kind of a "meta-anecdote" that emerges. If there was a link, you'd expect to see at least someone posting an ancedote about how their friend got into violent games and then became violent themselves; instead it's mainly the opposite.
I'm still not arguing this observation is scientifically rigorous in any way whatsoever, merely that multiple ancedotes can be more useful than a single one. There could be other reasons such as those that are violent or hang out with those that are don't post on HN - but that also hints there is something more to it then just or even the violent games themselves.
>multiple ancedotes can be more useful than a single one
Sure. But that meta-anecdote based narrative can be highly biased based on the community that forms it.
A forum with an large respresentation of hospital doctors and a forum with a large representation of convenience store owners are going to have completely different meta-anecdote based narratives on whether packing heat is good or bad.
People will trust their anecdotes because in general they are right to. They don't need a double blind study to figure out that placing their hand on a heated element is a bad idea.
The question is whether the Bayesian confidence an individual places on their anecdotal knowledge is appropriate or not. In this case, plenty of people have a ton of personal experience with the subject matter, a ton of friends and colleagues with experience, and little to no evidence to suggest the contra factual is true.
Does that mean they're certainly right? No. But it certainly lowers the bar to evaluating yet further evidence of the position already held; why waste the time? If a study was released that was solid evidence that games did cause a significant uptick in violence, then examination would be warranted.
I know a bunch of people are going to take a contrarian position, but we operate in the real world with the same time complexity restrictions as the machines we work on. You don't need a double blind study to determine how to position your head while tying your shoelaces in the morning.
Should you question them? Yes.
Should you let your own experience and that of a few people around you override what you see to be a rigorous statistical study because you questioned it and looked into it? No. If you look into it and have serious questions about the rigor of the study? Maybe. Is that the case in the Covid studies? Probably not.
Whether this is about Covid or anything else, the important thing is to be able to asses information as it comes in and reassess your position based on the data available to you. Anecdotal data is invaluable and used by everyone every day to make decisions prior to receiving good outside rigorous data, because for many things we don't have good outside rigorous data.
In the case your examples, we already know that the CFR is lower than 10%, so a sample of 10 definitely is nowhere near enough to tell us anything useful. Now if the CFR was 50% and you had 0/10, maybe it'd be worth looking into it.
I'm curious though, have any of your friends had longer term effects? longer term smell/taste loss, brain fog, heart issues, memory issues, breathing issues, etc? The early reports on long term impact are at ~10-20%, so you may have 1 or 2 in your sample, but again your sample is small enough that you very easily could've had 0 too. Again, it depends heavily on what you're trying to disprove and what the rate of it is.
If there was a causation then the reduction in violent crime could be muted by a small factor due to games, while the net decrease is (as before) caused by an even larger independent factor. In other words, the net decrease could have been larger without the presence of games.
What it does instead show is a maximum plausible effect size, and that it likely isn't worse than the activities which it is replacing.
I think that rather than asking ourselves "does this have a negative impact?" we should ask "what can I do that has a positive impact?".
Personally, I would never work on a game with significant violence. From my point of view, there are so many other things a human being can contribute towards the well-being and progress of humanity, and I would not feel happy with myself if I limited my contribution and my creativity to making another shooter.
The published studies (two so far) support their effectiveness. It's not easy to get the word out though without the funds for a publicist, advertising, etc.
That's part of the point of this essay that was on HN last year: "Fortnite and the Good Life," which seems relevant here.
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-convivial-soc...
And yet gamers remain relatively docile on the whole. And while they may get heated their debates about PlayStation vs XBox are about as likely to result in fatalities as the programming community's vim vs emacs or tabs vs spaces debates.
In some situations being able to keep a cool head in a crisis or in an area where something like this might occur could actually prove to be a benefit, as you are less likely to enter a panicked state (such as working in an environment where you may witness excessive amounts of blood/gore, eg paramedic)
I think that the vast majority of people (teenagers included) are more robust than we give them credit for, and can distinguish fantasy from reality.
I can think of 2 incidents in the gaming community off the top of my head which led to fatalities. The SWATing of Andrew Finch, and the Jacksonville Landing shooting (that was an NFL game convention though, so it's debatable whether the game was violent). I certainly haven't heard anything like that about text editors or coding styles, but then maybe the number of gamers is higher than the number of programmers.
That said, at the end of the day, the life was lost not because gamers were being violent due to a violent video game. None of the gamers involved so much as ever saw one another. Instead, an entirely innocent third party individual got erroneously targeted by a known type of hoax and, upon moving his hands wrong, was shot by a law enforcement official.
This was intended to be a case of gamer-on-gamer harassment over something that likely was spurred on by events in a violent video game (which is woefully common, though rarely to this degree). But the only violent act committed was by a police officer. And that's an important distinction.
(I assume we can elide the Jacksonville event as that happened during a Madden tournament; unless we want to make the case that football is more like Grand Theft Auto than it is baseball...)
Otherwise, we have to wonder how much Doom was played by Jack the Ripper or Ian Brady.
There is evidence of gamers doxxing, and even worse, swatting.
Does that make those other things toxic? On a purely comparative level, gaming is probably less 'toxic' if you go just by the worst things done by its fans.
No, don't twist my words: I'm against the culture of pushing the burden of defending oneself onto the victim. Because it's literally victim blaming.
I'm also against punishing the victim in case they defend themselves, because it's also victim blaming.
This is nothing new. Most legal systems treat adults crime victims with a similar principle.
Then why did you respond the way you did? I never blamed victims. My post was that zero tolerance policies prevent a victim from defending themself. You said that victims cannot stop the bullying and that the school needs policies to do so, but without the police.
Depends on why you need to trust something. If the failure state is multiple nukes going off, sure throw money and time at it until your systems are bullet proof. If you've purchased new shoes and need to design a study to figure out which foot you should start with when lacing up, maybe you're going too hard. What about something more chemical in nature; say you have a family recipe you and your family love. You might tinker around with it, but do you stop making it because you are upset by the intellectual sloth of not running double blind studies on Grandma's Famous Cumin Chili? No. Unless something slaps your Bayesian priors in the face, like a news report that says Chili recipes using Cumin might cause cancer.
Again, the idea is that we all come into this with Bayesian priors. You don't need (and will never get) 100% certainty to operate in the real world. I don't need to spend a few hours and $60 to go from 99.5% to 99.7% on this issue and I'm betting you don't either.
We will be, and largely are wrong about a ton of things. And in the majority of cases it doesn't matter one tiny bit. Like here. This is a study about a political flogging point that is 15 years past the point it conceivably could have been made into legislation. The study will be dated by the time there's a political push for the issue to be re-examined.
This is shoelace study v.2.0. We have more pertinent, more complicated and more impactful problems to study both on an institution and personal level, so why devote our limited mental processing time to this? Because you want to be "right"?
Have you ever read a recipe you've done before and thought to yourself "I really shouldn't make this, because I haven't presented this foo
Not if you live in a country where firearms are strictly regulated and self defence isn't a justifiable reason for a firearm permit.
"External intervention is violating my right to defend myself" is not a argument in favor of external intervention.
Going back to streamers and video games, Twitch has definitely had its share of toxicity:
https://gamecrate.com/how-twitch-now-holding-streamers-respo...
Alcohol is real.
Games are not.
You might read the actual tale of Little Red Riding Hood. It is very much meant as a guide for young girls in what to expect and watch out for in life.
- I'm not making the claim that video games lead to violence, I'm just saying that we should apply the same level of analysis to studies supporting views we already have that we do to supporting views we do not already have. If this study was well done, great! If it was poorly done, then it is appropriate to call it out. If the study truly wasn't able to find any correlation (positive, per my hypothesis, negative per yours), then either there really isn't any correlation (meaning all of the potential forces that would cause a correlation happen to be perfectly balanced (which would be surprising to me), or there is something wrong with the study.
- To be clear, I don't think there is a causal relationship between violent video games and violent behaviors.
- There are likely correlations between video-games and ADHD, as well as single-player video games (actually any solitary activity) and depression. There are links between both of those and violent behavior, particularly self-harm.
Not only. Eg in Germany there's long been an enormous stigma against violent video games. I haven't talked with German gamedevs for some years so maybe this loosened up since. But basically, if you worked in gamedev you preferred to tell your neighbours and acquaintances that you work "in IT". If they would find out you work on video games they'd pretty much fully cut you out of their lives.
(Note, to my anecdotal experience this is a purely German thing. I don't know other European countries where the same stigma exists)
- Anno Series (I just picked up Anno 1800 yesterday)
- Fugger / The Guild 1-3 / Patrician etc
- The Settlers / Die Siedler
- Games set in the Dark Eye (role playing framework similar to D&D but more popular in Germany) universe.
It's really only valid if the person in question or his family have abuse or suicide issues.
About USA: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-mos...
In France where weapons are relatively rare except for hunting : https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2017/10/05/quels-est-le-...
I disagree. If possible, call the police immediately. Barricade yourself in a room and if it comes to it defend yourself. I don't fancy my chances against someone armed and motivated so it's a last resort.
This is based on the advice from the Police Service in my country.
I'm not saying don't barricade yourself. Just that if you have an attacker in your house who is intent of killing you ("beating you to death") and an average police response of 5 minutes or more, they can get into any room in a typical house. You can barricade the door, but anyone who knows about construction knows drywall is easy enough to get through. Most interior doors are lightweight wood and newer ones are practically cardboard. So usually it's much harder to get into a house from outside than to get to other internal parts of the house due to material differences.
I think most people have no idea how insecure their homes are. Mostly because these types of scenarios are statistically rare and people always think it will happen to others. Plus, it could be hard to sleep at night knowing just how easy it is to pick locks if someone actually wanted to.
That French page is not very useful - total numbers of firearm deaths is not as important as looking at suicide rates. Suicide rates between the US and France are 13.7 and 12.1 respectively (WHO 2016 data). That doesn't seem like a very big difference, especially if you consider the large difference in guns per 100 people (US 120, France 19, suggesting weak correlation). You also see developed countries in that data which have low gun ownership and higher suicide rates (Sweden, Japan, etc). This seems to point to factors other than gun ownership driving suicide rates.
The New York article is looking at short term reduction studies. We see that suicides drop temporarily after a prevalent method of suicide has been removed. If we follow the rate over time, it will increase as people learn of new ways to kill themselves. In the US, we have recently seen an increase in teens gassing themselves with household chemicals. It just takes time for societal knowledge to perform that shift, so you end up playing a shell game.
The best way to reduce suicides is to focusing on getting at-risk individuals treatment. The starting point is to destigmatize the subject and educate people on the options. Addressing the root problems are more effective than addressing the symptoms, which just ends up going down a never-ending rabbit hole of banning the next method to replace the last. There are a number of mental health workers who agree.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-brain/201607...
I think the main issue with firearms and suicide is the easyness and effectiveness. For sure someone very sick and determined may find other methods. I don't know if it's easy to compare suicide rates and weapons usage among various countries. Perhaps with fewer guns USA would get a lower suicide rate among males. Perhaps not.
So yes it's your choice. From my perspective, having a easily accessible gun is not worth the risk for me and my family considering the data and the likelyhood of needing a gun for self defense.
I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far. I've also haven't seen any definitive evidence against it, only suggestive stuff.
There are some states with restrictive gun laws that show a slight decrease, but others seem to be unaffected (continue to increase). Just as there were less restrictive states that show the same mixed behavior. (CDC data referenced by both sides)
One thing that I saw in the CDC data was that suicide rates have risen over the past 30 or so years for all states. Non-firearm suicides are 27% more common since the 80s, but it didn't look at why firearms are decreasing as a percentage. RAND says the number of homes with at least one firearm has stayed fairly consistent over that time (40% -/+ 5%). So it seems that there isn't a substantial reduction in suicides based solely on gun control laws, but it seems it's also impossible to say if the number would have been higher without those restrictions. The fact the ownership has stayed the same, but firearms are a lower percentage of suicide cases could just be demographic or preference issue, but we don't know.
One interesting thing I observed which I didn't see studies about (because both sides are focused on just confirming their positions on pro/anti gun policies) is the correlation between mental healthcare service ratings and suicide. This is just rough, but I found these two maps appearing to be more correlated than the gun ownership and suicide maps/studies. Just something I found interesting and would need an actual study to look into it.
https://www.mhanational.org/issues/ranking-states
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/...
(I'm not trying to say that violent video games cause real life violence, but the numbers you describe don't offer any type of compelling evidence without other data being considered as well. )
Have shootings not gone up? Has no one noticed it.
It’s counter intuitive to think that games that simulate practicing shooting people would have zero influence on people this inclined.
I tend to agree and I can confirm with anecdotal evidence from all around real life. Take traffic for example where road rage is always directed at other people no matter how small their trespass, while far more damaging incidents where no other person was involved are met with some swear words (getting 2 flat tires at once, seeing a tree fall on your car, etc.).
It's other people and their perceived trespasses that cause the buildup of frustration and violence.
The former is probably obvious so here's some points for the latter:
Public debate centers around "assault weapons" high powered rifles and mass shootings.
- 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides (usually with handguns)
- The vast majority of gun homicides are with handguns
- The broadest definition of "mass shooting" I could find was 4 or more victims (excluding the shooter). That puts mass shooting deaths on par with accidental gun deaths; about 1% of total gun deaths and single-digit percentage of gun homicides.
Now, I'm not saying ending mass shootings is a bad thing, but it's as if everyone worried about traffic fatalities in the US was informed by watching "The Fast and the Furious" and wanted to ban forced-induction sports cars and was super worried about deaths from underground road races.
>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?
Yes.
>> Could be easy enough to go into the attic (either with access or by force) and come down in the room in under 5 minutes.
Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes.
>>Still, are the interior doors more durable than the external doors?
"Yes."
I doubt this. They might be equal, but I doubt the exterior door would be weaker than the interior one. It's simply not logical.
"Locate the entrance to the attic. Then the room I am in, despite not knowing the layout to the house. Then smash a hole in the ceiling. Then climb through said hole without getting stuck. Without me noticing. In under 5 minutes."
Who said the entrance had to be located? If you can smash it down, why not up? (And who said smash? If their motive is to kill you, they may have brought tools, as I said before.) Who said you wouldn't need to notice?
The point is that there are weaknesses in any house. Maybe houses in your area aren't drywall, but attackers can adapt their tools and tactics to address whatever is common in that area. It's really not as hard as people think.
It's very difficult to compare US data from before 1999 because the method of coding changed.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a11.htm
> Because coding of the mortality data changed to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) beginning in 1999, analyses by year and race/ethnicity were conducted for 1999--2007 to examine rate changes during that period.
> I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far.
There's a few natural experiments that are relevant: limiting pack sizes for paracetamol in the UK; change from coal gas to natural gas in the UK in the 1960s; change to cars with catalytic convertors.
I'm aware of those examples. Those examples were before the internet, meaning people commit suicide they way they know how. Socially, you couldn't just ask someone how to commit suicide with an alternative method, but now you can look it up on online so you don't have to ask anyone.
The coal gas example does show a reasonable reduction (18-13). But after the conversion process was completed, you see it's still creeps back up to 15 just within a couple years.
The paracetamol example might actually go against your argument. We see that the suicide rate overall is very steady after the package size change, which suggests that people found other methods.
With 2.4 billion gamers we should have seen increase by 2.4 million violent crimes per year in last few decades.
It's very unlikely that data hides such an increase, especially given the fact that in different countries game adoption and crime follows slightly different curves so it should be possible to separate changes caused by other factors.
If there's any link it must be negligible for the data to fit.
We have roughly 380 violent crimes per 100k people each year in the US. Just to keep it simple, let's assume they are committed by unique people. Half of adults play video games and about half of those play violent video games. (Very rough numbers but the right ballpark.) So in 100k people, you have 25,000 who play violent games of some sort. Of those violent video games, if only a certain type can create violence, you may be looking at only 10,000 people or fewer (per 100k people) who are playing the games that could cause violence. It also seems likely that the ability to cause violence would be tied to genetic and environmental issues in the person playing the video games. On top of that, for the violence to manifest itself, the person would need to find themselves in a circumstance where it could manifest. (Being bullied at school, etc.)
It seems very likely that by the time everything that might have an impact on violence is considered, you might be only dealing with 1,000 people out of every 100k who would be in the at risk group. If the effect for the at risk group is very high, say 1 out of 1,000, you are talking about one more violent crime per 100,000 people.
It would seem that an increase like this could easily be hidden due to other programs to reduce crime like cleaning up lead pollution, or better training teachers to to identify at risk students.
(And please understand, I'm not saying that there is a link. Just pointing out how it would be likely to show up if there was.)
The outrage was mostly about children and permanent damage to their brains caused by games. Almost all children play games, and certainly more than half of all games (weighted by popularity) are violent.
> very high, say 1 out of 1,000
That seems the opposite of high. High would be 1 in 2 or 1 in 5.
If the effect of everyone playing video games is 1 additional crime per 100 000 people I don't see the problem TBH.
Allowing things like "teabagging" without instant ban for the user, even building dedicated humiliating moves in a game, or emphasizing some animations like slow motion kill cams when a certain score style was achieved are the reason I have a hard time respecting the gaming industry or taking e-sports seriously (purely because of games' design decisions, not the player).
Comparing the tea-bagging that occurs in online Halo play with the rules in place in the NFL is silly. Better to compare online Halo or Call of Duty with beer league hockey.
Throughout my comment I made a few things explicitly clear. That I don't blame the gamers, rather the game devs for including the option and the leagues for choosing to play games that have this. And that many games are fine. You chose to ignore that when making your case.
To your point, plenty of games exicitly have such behavior built-in via fatalities, takedowns, executions, or some signature move and slow motion kill-cam to be shown to the victim usually, all with animations that go beyond "I defeated my enemy" into "I humiliated them". There's only one reason to include such mechanism in a game and that's that they want gamers to use them. A league promoting those games regardless of whether it punishes using that feature still endorses them in their entirety. Those are the ones I'm having issues with.
The gaming and e-sports industries don't do enough to call the offenders out on this behavior. At best they turn a blind eye while still playing and promoting such games. I'm sorry but this is like having Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein at your birthday party and thinking it's ok because they didn't harass anyone while you were in the room.
The fact that I still have to explain this already speaks volumes.
Maybe you're referring to the locks in which case you have a point. But exterior doors in my area tend to have big glass panels on them.
>> If you can smash it down, why not up?
Are they bringing a ladder as well?
>>Who said you wouldn't need to notice?
Because then you would know exactly where they are and you could escape more easily.
Locks, sure. But those don't mean much if you have doors and door frames made of wood and they aren't either extremely heavy or reinforced.
"Are they bringing a ladder as well?"
A ladder or chair from your own home should work fine. You might be suprised at how often burglars use tools they find in the target house.
"Because then you would know exactly where they are and you could escape more easily."
Not if they're making entry to the attic right outside the room you're in so they can work on that and watch the door.
You're really derailing the entire conversation with trivial what-ifs that aren't even related to the original point. None have offered any evidence refuting the point that if someone wants beat you to death, the police will be too slow to save you.
In my opinion there's several factor contributing to this differences in cultures:
1. starcraft match usually takes about 15 minutes. Dota game takes about 45 minutes.
2. you are expected to surrender in starcraft when you recognize it's over - playing to lose condition is disrepectful; you cannot surrender in dota in practice (abandoning the game is harshly penalized by the matchmaking system)
3. there's more than 10% chance you'll be stuck playing a lost game that you have no influence over for more than 30 minutes in dota. This never happens in starcraft - either you surrender or you think you can win.
4. the culture of starcraft is influenced mostly by Koreans. Showing off isn't considered cool. Fountain diving is common in dota.
I don't think it's multiplayer games that are inherently toxic. I think highly competitive team-based multiplayer games played with random people with no way to surrender are :) And even then I'm yet to see an example of dota player becoming violent because of the game. If any game can do this it has to be dota.
My first question is, which games, which mechanics, and which e-sports organizations are we talking about here? Because from my perspective, the biggest e-sports in the world are LoL, CS:GO, Dota 2, Starcraft, and maybe WoW. Not one of these has any purpose-built game disrupting humiliation mechanics like the ones we’ve talked about. And as far as I know, the organizations that run the largest tournaments for these games are often, even usually, not the same organizations that run tournaments for other games.
So you have trouble taking all of e-sports seriously because some org runs tournaments for some games that happen to include mechanics that encourage highly unsportsmanlike behavior. Do you have trouble taking all of wrestling seriously because showy costume wrestling exists? Riot games doesn’t get to tell indie Street Fighter tournaments to shut down because they’re making e-sports look bad, nor would that if they could, because people who actually care about e-sports don’t assign Street Fighter’s problems to LoL.
The “gaming and e-sports industry” doesn’t act as a unit any more than all of cable television does.
So, call out your offenders, if you feel they aren’t being called out. But first, ask yourself: did that game developer even intend to make a game whose primary purpose was being a sport? Or are the tournament organizers just trying to make it work as one, despite it having some features that have to be disallowed? And why is that a big deal?
Still, it is possible that games with such mechanics--or graphic violence generally--may amplify bad behavior elsewhere. My guess though is this can never be conclusively proven true or false as there are just so many confounding factors.
> That seems the opposite of high. High would be 1 in 2 or 1 in 5.
I guess I'm thinking of how we'd view a side effect in medicine. If 1 out of 1,000 people who had the problem the medicine was supposed to cure were likely to die or cause a death when taking the medicine, it would seem like a high number of deaths. You'll routinely see side effects of things that happened 1 in 50,000 cases being listed as possible side effects of medicine.
> If the effect of everyone playing video games is 1 additional crime per 100 000 people I don't see the problem
Whether this matters probably depends on what violent thing they do. If it is an additional Columbine type event for every 100k people, that would be much less acceptable than one additional instance of verbal abuse by someone in a disagreement at a bar.
This would be like saying "this drug might kill 1 out of 1000 people who also have this rare gene which only 1% of population has".
LOL why ddo you assume that I'm the latter and not the former?
You can live in your own reality. Clearly talking to you is pointless.
In addition, please don't do personal attacks. We ban accounts that do that.
