This week in blind pet-issue apologism: """'Gamers'"""

[tgies]

Every time someone on the Internet goes off on a tirade about The Rap Music and The Hip-Hop Culture and how it is Destroying Our Youth, I ask them if they think violent video games affect children.

The answer has been "no", usually followed by "and what does that have to do with anything", every single time now.

Comments

[caladri.livejournal.com]

I think hip hop and violent videogames have the identical, horrible, problem: they promote a subculture where speaking English well is frowned upon.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the same thing about non-Anglophone countries.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

A STRAY EM DASH BLOCKS YOUR PATH

[tsutter.livejournal.com]

there is no better way to troll nerds than to convince them that violent video games fuck people up

this is why i love luelinks

[tgies.livejournal.com]

they do

it is seriously reeeeally naive to think that constant exposure to sadism as emotional gratification is not going to have some effect on the way an individual marshals their emotions!

pro quote:

A meta-analysis by Anderson and Bushman (2001) found that across 54 independent tests of the relation between video game violence and aggression, involving 4262 participants, there appear to be five consistent results of playing games with violent content. Playing violent games increases aggressive behaviors, increases aggressive cognitions, increases aggressive emotions, increases physiological arousal, and decreases prosocial behaviors. These effects are robust; they have been found in children and adults, in males and females, and in experimental and nonexperimental studies.

--Gentile, D. A., Lynch, P., Linder, J. & Walsh, D. "The Effects of Violent Video Game Habits on Adolescent Hostility, Aggressive Behaviors, and School Performance (http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/study%201.pdf)"

google "effects of violent video games", educate youre self, etc

[tgies.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, but so does face-to-face interaction, I should think. In any case, that's rather beside the point. I'm not talking about video games in general, just violence in video games (and in all entertainment, really). I'm not trying to say that video games are a bad thing on the whole.

To branch off a little bit from the original intent of my post: In my estimation, there is no pressing reason to protect adults from viewing fictionalized violence. I just find the whole knee-jerk "NO, PARTAKING IN FANTASY VIOLENCE COULD NOT POSSIBLY AFFECT ANYONE AT ALL IN ANY WAY EVER" bit annoying. It is a plain manifestation of the inability of fans (of anything) to accept that the object of their adoration might have some negative qualities. No consideration is given to the hypothesis put forth, and no counter-argument is offered, just a load of reactionary "YOU'RE BEING RIDICULOUS AAAAAGH MORALIZING OVERPROTECTIVE ETC. ETC." crap. It does not occur to these people that discourse on the effects of video games in society is not a battle between the video game faithful and those who would take their precious Quake away. This can be generalized for any sort of obsessive fan of anything. People do not like to concede that there is even one fault in something in which they invest so much of themselves.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

yeah

one study i remember looking at: they took a dozen or more people, randomly assigned some to play Quake II for a few hours every other day or something like that, had some play some tame-ass game about puppies or something, and had some play nothing, and then after a year they came back and surveyed the individuals and their families

[yourfaceboingo.livejournal.com]

I find it strange that people complain about things like rap music and violent video games, yet they do nothing to change the situation. Granted, you can't go around banning everything that pisses you off, but you can always offer an alternatives. Besides, the internet is just full of creepy people that don't know each other.

PS Damn you and your taste in catchy French Pop. No seriously. The only thing worse than having a song stuck in your head is have one stuck in your head in a language that you studied for a semester in high school like, four years ago.

[tgies.livejournal.com]

"I find it strange that people complain about things like rap music and violent video games, yet they do nothing to change the situation."

Yes, and this brings up a related thing. The parts that people don't like about rap tend to be the parts where it often describes real problems faced by real people in a real setting which is alien to the usual complainants. People don't like to be reminded of these problems in anything other than a soft-spoken dumbed-down Habitat-for-Humanity-commercial fashion. I don't know that I exactly have the right to demand that someone not base their self-expression on their identity as a product of their reality on the grounds that their reality is too icky. I can denounce them as an artist if their approach is jejune (as it often is), much like I can differentiate between an artful depiction of World War II and one which is played for splatter gore violence death action value, but it would be pretty presumptuous of me to tell someone that they can't write what they know.

"Damn you and your taste in catchy French Pop."

Yeah, I heard "Les rubans et la fleur (http://www.last.fm/music/France+Gall/_/Les+rubans+et+la+fleur)" a while back and had to pick up France Gall's box set, and it all went downhill from there.

"The only thing worse than having a song stuck in your head is have one stuck in your head in a language that you studied for a semester in high school like, four years ago."

I get songs stuck in my head in languages I don't understand more than a few words of. I am reminded me of the time I was singing a popular Finnish song in a music store, and this guy came up to me and was like "[FINNISH]", and I was like yeah I don't know Finnish.

[total-death.livejournal.com]

The real question is:

Do violent video games affect the frequency in which your dad uses the term "teabag".



(A. Yes)

[tgies.livejournal.com]

lmao i missed this comment

OK

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

No, no, you don't understand. Violent video games are mostly made by white people.

[jhskulk.livejournal.com]

white males