I think that footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan or something similar would have been better for this purpose.
I still applaud what was done here though.
I still applaud what was done here though.
Jimquisition: Desensitized to Violence
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
I read the warning and I thought it might not be that big of a deal because, what could possibly be that horrible for that short of time? I've seen some real horrible shit because of the internet, but while watching that my mind was yelling at me to look away, and that footage bothers me. I don't think I will ever get that image out of my head.
I've been playing games for a long time, and yet I can't deal with actual violence and I can barely handle tension in a room, so it boggles my mind when there are people out there that say games make you violent.
Very gruesome video there Jim, but you made your point and my respect for you has grown like crazy.
Thank you Escapist for allowing this, and thank God for you Jim!.
I've been playing games for a long time, and yet I can't deal with actual violence and I can barely handle tension in a room, so it boggles my mind when there are people out there that say games make you violent.
Very gruesome video there Jim, but you made your point and my respect for you has grown like crazy.
Thank you Escapist for allowing this, and thank God for you Jim!.
I already know it's bollocks (don't really want to talk about my own personal experiences of how I actually knew it was bollocks, and that lone is probably a powerful sign about how I haven't been desensitized), but still, nice to see someone with this much influence stand up and call these assholes out on it.
That's all I can think of to say. That was a pretty fucked up video clip.
Besides the fact that the suicide footage might not let me sleep tonight, I love you Jim. So far i have respected some of your opinions, but with this you have won me over.
I used to think you were a little shallow, but right now, i find your incredibly well articulated video to be the proof that i was wrong to think so shallowy of you.
Kudos man.
Captcha: Don't murder me
....Wait what.
I used to think you were a little shallow, but right now, i find your incredibly well articulated video to be the proof that i was wrong to think so shallowy of you.
Kudos man.
Captcha: Don't murder me
....Wait what.
Dark is the nature of the human hart as much is the fear we rally to when that mad nature escapes.
Guns aside people have killed people throughout history, terrible murders and madness without logic or justification are common in many points in history. There will always be murder we just need to offer less options for those intent on it to exact their madness, more guns cannot be the answer.
The video tells a sad story and the point is fair as yes games are in some ways an outlet for pent up agression and not 'real' lets hope it doesn't continue to be the scape goat to US gun issues.
Guns aside people have killed people throughout history, terrible murders and madness without logic or justification are common in many points in history. There will always be murder we just need to offer less options for those intent on it to exact their madness, more guns cannot be the answer.
The video tells a sad story and the point is fair as yes games are in some ways an outlet for pent up agression and not 'real' lets hope it doesn't continue to be the scape goat to US gun issues.
As part of a criminal photography class I was taking my teacher showed us photos and footage of real crimes, and crime scenes to see if we could take it, to see if we were able to handle the true fucked-upness of the profession. I saw pictures of the dead, people burned up, shot that kind of thing, and finally he showed us this one video of a man blowing his head off with a sawed-off shotgun, so he wouldn't go to prison. I play "violent" video games for hours each day, pretty much when I'm not reading, or working, and I hardly watch TV. Video games are pretty much my leisure time. One thing that I am is a gamer, one thing that I am not is a crime scene photographer like I wanted to be at one point, because during that class I was the only one who yelled.
My first post on the Escapist despite being a long time fan.
While I must heartily agree with you Mr. Sterling I think that rather for time or content a second aspect of the debate was missed.
Games, as an art form, can and do represent violence in our culture. However, despite the trend of entertainment oriented fictional violence being nearly exponential with what Hollywood and game designers can imagine to shock being less limited by CGI and photo realistic graphics, the national rate of violent crimes has been declining steadily since the eighties with only a recent statistical tremor.
The facts do not back up a causal relationship between interactive media and violence.
Finally, I ask only that you take my word as a ten year veteran that even the most brutal, personal depictions of violence in games like Spec Ops: The Line or Manhunt pales in comparison to reality.
There is no achievement in death, and there are no respawns in life.
While I must heartily agree with you Mr. Sterling I think that rather for time or content a second aspect of the debate was missed.
Games, as an art form, can and do represent violence in our culture. However, despite the trend of entertainment oriented fictional violence being nearly exponential with what Hollywood and game designers can imagine to shock being less limited by CGI and photo realistic graphics, the national rate of violent crimes has been declining steadily since the eighties with only a recent statistical tremor.
The facts do not back up a causal relationship between interactive media and violence.
Finally, I ask only that you take my word as a ten year veteran that even the most brutal, personal depictions of violence in games like Spec Ops: The Line or Manhunt pales in comparison to reality.
There is no achievement in death, and there are no respawns in life.
Thank you Jim. This has been the most sensible video I have seen on the subjest.(PERIOD)
Thank God for you!
Thank God for you!
They don't have much room to talk because it wasn't more than 6 months ago Fox News aired a suspected car thief killing himself on their very own broadcast.Ickabod said:
OT: Great video Jim, as always you are 100% correct and I'm glad to see you call out CNN as well as Fox News for their predatory coverage of the shooting in Sandy Hook, as well as other past shootings.
That's how I felt about Jim's video. The actual moment of the shot was just so quick and simple. It wasn't until the blood started rolling out that I had a chill up my spine.TheIronRuler said:
I have an even harder time watching suffering. My driving class in high school showed one of those Red Asphalt-esque movies with real people in real pain, missing limbs and impalement and all. I had nightmares for a week.
All of the necromorphs, xenomorphs, locusts, lambents, flood parasites, Promethian Knights, zerglings, zombies, slendermen, elderich abominatinos, Pyramidheads, Reapers, demons, Sha manifestations, Sweet Tooths, dragons, or Vaases combined are nothing compared to the disturbing terror I felt from hearing the quiet and under-spoken "pop" of that gun; and the aftermath that came after it.
I'm desensitized to violence, Mr. News Media? No, I'm not the one desensitized to violence.
You are, News Media, you are. You're the ones who glorify it. You're the ones who seem to jump for joy whenever a mass shooting happens. You're the ones who are desensitized to violence. After all, you just can't shut up about it. You're the ones I'm worried about.
I'm desensitized to violence, Mr. News Media? No, I'm not the one desensitized to violence.
You are, News Media, you are. You're the ones who glorify it. You're the ones who seem to jump for joy whenever a mass shooting happens. You're the ones who are desensitized to violence. After all, you just can't shut up about it. You're the ones I'm worried about.
Interesting video.
The footage didn't really disturb me on a deep level. In fact, I gave it a shrug until I saw the blood, then it was a brief eye-widening moment.
But the realization hit me when I saw the contrast. When he showed the montage of things that he DIDN'T need any kind of clearance to show. That entire segment, I found myself smiling.
It was all so... entertaining.
The suicide? That was not entertaining. So I didn't smile, or laugh, like I did with the wanton carnage of video games.
This is probably a good thing. I'm not mentally unstable. I know real death sucks, and my games aren't turning me into a time bomb. That's just silly.
Thanks for this! I really needed the contrast.
The footage didn't really disturb me on a deep level. In fact, I gave it a shrug until I saw the blood, then it was a brief eye-widening moment.
But the realization hit me when I saw the contrast. When he showed the montage of things that he DIDN'T need any kind of clearance to show. That entire segment, I found myself smiling.
It was all so... entertaining.
The suicide? That was not entertaining. So I didn't smile, or laugh, like I did with the wanton carnage of video games.
This is probably a good thing. I'm not mentally unstable. I know real death sucks, and my games aren't turning me into a time bomb. That's just silly.
Thanks for this! I really needed the contrast.
Sorry for the length, but, I felt that this topic deserved a certain degree of detail.
Couple of things. First, I fundamentally agree that videogames doesn't desensitize people to violence the way that it's portrayed in the media and have no interest in censoring them for a variety of reasons. Also, I have little respect for the NRA's blatant attempt to shift the scapegoating from guns to games. It's not an intellectually honest position. However, I have some bones to pick with you, Jimothy.
It's a little difficult to parse what sections of your shows are hyperbole and what sections are "straight talk." So, regarding your offhanded comment, "every sane civilian is going to be terrified of guns," is at best ignorant, and, at worse, quite offensive. On the one hand, you may just be suffering from a false consensus. You have a fear of firearms. Your fear of firearms leads you to avoid them, so, you never get over your fear. Since you've always had this fear, you presume most other people do as well. This is a common logical fallacy and everyone falls prey to it at some time or another. Succinctly, just because you feel one way doesn't mean that everyone else does or should. You need a logical argument. The alternative is that you're honestly saying that the roughly 80 million legal gun owners in America [citation needed] are crazy and just didn't bother to give the argument behind it. As a gun owner, I'd like to tell you to bite me. People who have been taught how to use a firearm tend not to be afraid of them. Certainly, there's a healthy respect for them (there are no accidental firearm discharges, only negligent firearm discharges) but, that's not fear. And the notion that a qualification for sanity in your mind is sharing your phobias is offensive to me, and I presume quite a few others.
Now on to the part that's really going to upset some people.
Videogames do make it easier to kill people. Please read the entire argument. They do not make you more likely to kill someone, but, all the evidence I've ever seen shows that shooters are actually murder training simulations. Again, I don't believe in censoring videogames, in much the same way that I don't believe in banning guns, but, the evidence is pretty strong. I direct you to the book, On Killing, by Lt. Col Grossman (ret.), an Air Force psychiatrist who wrote the work on the psychological effects of killing another individual. I will summarize this theory.
Almost all humans naturally resist killing someone. Alot. As in, they physically won't and if they do, they suffer extreme psychological trauma. You can become acclimated to it, but, it's not easy. 2%-3% don't have this psychological aversion to killing others, and they're called sociopaths. Sociopaths are not intrinsically bad people, they just don't have the same innate hangups. Anyway, throughout history, research has shown that wars have been far less bloody than they should be. We have good data about the Civil War, how quickly regiments could fire, reload, and fire again, etc., and they found that the really bloody battles of that war should have been over in less than an hour, because, everyone would be dead. And, it's not accuracy either, mind you, the tactics had taken that factor into account. The implication is that most of the soldiers chose not to fire, or deliberately shot at a nonhuman target (the ground, the air, whatever). Indeed, many guns have been found on Civil War battlefields loaded several times, as if the soldiers loaded, pretended to fire, and reloaded. This is corroborated by research done after WW2 in which soldiers admitted to the same and has been reproduced since. BTW, much of the deaths of these bloodier wars come from artillery, bombings, etc., indirect killing systems that make it much easier to psychologically kill someone than to put the knife in yourself. Distance helps the psyche. Easier to shoot someone than it is to beat them to death with a baseball bat, and it's even easier to fire a cannon at a distant huddle of people looking things and even easier still to shoot at a set of coordinates that you can't see. Clearly some soldiers overcame their aversions and shot to kill (and some didn't have any) but, they were certainly in the minority. (There are also racial, authority, and group dynamic driven elements that help as well)
However, by the end of the Vietnam War, this was no longer the case. Lt Col Grossman states that up to 90% of US combatants in Vietnam fired their weapons at an enemy. Why the monumental shift? Because military training had changed between WW2 and Vietnam in subtle but powerful ways. Marksmanship training moved from shooting at bullseye targets to shooting at man shaped silhouettes that would pop up and then get knocked down. similarly, the Pavlovian rewards for success on the range of medals, etc, and the punishments associated with failing, were more clearly defined. The act of see man-target, acquire man-target, fire, receive reward, became ingrained by repetition so that when in the field, servicemen would do exactly that, without actually thinking about what he was doing until after. This relates to the stories you hear about police shooting incidents, usually with innocents as victims. The officers see a suspect reach for something that could be considered threatening, training kicks in, and a few seconds later, their magazine is empty, and they're staring at the body in front of them wondering what happened. Indeed, this same effect could very well be tied to why servicemen in Vietnam suffered much higher rates of psychological injury than previous generations. More of them actually tried to kill someone, and though they had been trained better, there wasn't a psychological support network for coming to terms with that. We're better about that now, but, still probably not enough.
I strongly suggest you buy the book if you want to know more.
So, videogames. Shooters share a lot of the qualities that made the post WW2 training so much more effective. You're rewarded with scores and achievements for quickly and accurately shooting many moving man shaped (usually) targets. Decades worth of research on killing people suggests that this helps individuals to overcome the psychological aversion to killing, at least enough to commit the act. Logically, videogames makes it easier to kill people. Make no mistake, they're no more likely to. In the same way that the aforementioned sociopaths are not intrinsically murderers. Most are good, decent, law abiding, God fearing people, like the rest of us, because, that's the people they were taught how to be. (Far less than 2% of the population are actually violent criminals) Most people who own, use, and train with guns do not go out and kill people with them. And so, videogames don't cause you to kill people, either. It doesn't desensitize you so that the thought of killing doesn't hurt you, deep in your soul, it just makes you more capable of it, should you so decide. Incidentally, in these mass shootings, the assailant seems to have run into difficulty/ been stopped, when their weapon jams. Military personnel are well trained in dealing with jams (tap, rack, bang), and to a lesser extent, gun enthusiasts, but, when was the last time you had to clear a misfeed in a shooter? This is my own theory, but, I suspect there's a correlation between those two items.
Succinctly, there's a lot of evidence out there, I recommend that you go look it up. I'd start with On Killing.
Couple of things. First, I fundamentally agree that videogames doesn't desensitize people to violence the way that it's portrayed in the media and have no interest in censoring them for a variety of reasons. Also, I have little respect for the NRA's blatant attempt to shift the scapegoating from guns to games. It's not an intellectually honest position. However, I have some bones to pick with you, Jimothy.
It's a little difficult to parse what sections of your shows are hyperbole and what sections are "straight talk." So, regarding your offhanded comment, "every sane civilian is going to be terrified of guns," is at best ignorant, and, at worse, quite offensive. On the one hand, you may just be suffering from a false consensus. You have a fear of firearms. Your fear of firearms leads you to avoid them, so, you never get over your fear. Since you've always had this fear, you presume most other people do as well. This is a common logical fallacy and everyone falls prey to it at some time or another. Succinctly, just because you feel one way doesn't mean that everyone else does or should. You need a logical argument. The alternative is that you're honestly saying that the roughly 80 million legal gun owners in America [citation needed] are crazy and just didn't bother to give the argument behind it. As a gun owner, I'd like to tell you to bite me. People who have been taught how to use a firearm tend not to be afraid of them. Certainly, there's a healthy respect for them (there are no accidental firearm discharges, only negligent firearm discharges) but, that's not fear. And the notion that a qualification for sanity in your mind is sharing your phobias is offensive to me, and I presume quite a few others.
Now on to the part that's really going to upset some people.
Videogames do make it easier to kill people. Please read the entire argument. They do not make you more likely to kill someone, but, all the evidence I've ever seen shows that shooters are actually murder training simulations. Again, I don't believe in censoring videogames, in much the same way that I don't believe in banning guns, but, the evidence is pretty strong. I direct you to the book, On Killing, by Lt. Col Grossman (ret.), an Air Force psychiatrist who wrote the work on the psychological effects of killing another individual. I will summarize this theory.
Almost all humans naturally resist killing someone. Alot. As in, they physically won't and if they do, they suffer extreme psychological trauma. You can become acclimated to it, but, it's not easy. 2%-3% don't have this psychological aversion to killing others, and they're called sociopaths. Sociopaths are not intrinsically bad people, they just don't have the same innate hangups. Anyway, throughout history, research has shown that wars have been far less bloody than they should be. We have good data about the Civil War, how quickly regiments could fire, reload, and fire again, etc., and they found that the really bloody battles of that war should have been over in less than an hour, because, everyone would be dead. And, it's not accuracy either, mind you, the tactics had taken that factor into account. The implication is that most of the soldiers chose not to fire, or deliberately shot at a nonhuman target (the ground, the air, whatever). Indeed, many guns have been found on Civil War battlefields loaded several times, as if the soldiers loaded, pretended to fire, and reloaded. This is corroborated by research done after WW2 in which soldiers admitted to the same and has been reproduced since. BTW, much of the deaths of these bloodier wars come from artillery, bombings, etc., indirect killing systems that make it much easier to psychologically kill someone than to put the knife in yourself. Distance helps the psyche. Easier to shoot someone than it is to beat them to death with a baseball bat, and it's even easier to fire a cannon at a distant huddle of people looking things and even easier still to shoot at a set of coordinates that you can't see. Clearly some soldiers overcame their aversions and shot to kill (and some didn't have any) but, they were certainly in the minority. (There are also racial, authority, and group dynamic driven elements that help as well)
However, by the end of the Vietnam War, this was no longer the case. Lt Col Grossman states that up to 90% of US combatants in Vietnam fired their weapons at an enemy. Why the monumental shift? Because military training had changed between WW2 and Vietnam in subtle but powerful ways. Marksmanship training moved from shooting at bullseye targets to shooting at man shaped silhouettes that would pop up and then get knocked down. similarly, the Pavlovian rewards for success on the range of medals, etc, and the punishments associated with failing, were more clearly defined. The act of see man-target, acquire man-target, fire, receive reward, became ingrained by repetition so that when in the field, servicemen would do exactly that, without actually thinking about what he was doing until after. This relates to the stories you hear about police shooting incidents, usually with innocents as victims. The officers see a suspect reach for something that could be considered threatening, training kicks in, and a few seconds later, their magazine is empty, and they're staring at the body in front of them wondering what happened. Indeed, this same effect could very well be tied to why servicemen in Vietnam suffered much higher rates of psychological injury than previous generations. More of them actually tried to kill someone, and though they had been trained better, there wasn't a psychological support network for coming to terms with that. We're better about that now, but, still probably not enough.
I strongly suggest you buy the book if you want to know more.
So, videogames. Shooters share a lot of the qualities that made the post WW2 training so much more effective. You're rewarded with scores and achievements for quickly and accurately shooting many moving man shaped (usually) targets. Decades worth of research on killing people suggests that this helps individuals to overcome the psychological aversion to killing, at least enough to commit the act. Logically, videogames makes it easier to kill people. Make no mistake, they're no more likely to. In the same way that the aforementioned sociopaths are not intrinsically murderers. Most are good, decent, law abiding, God fearing people, like the rest of us, because, that's the people they were taught how to be. (Far less than 2% of the population are actually violent criminals) Most people who own, use, and train with guns do not go out and kill people with them. And so, videogames don't cause you to kill people, either. It doesn't desensitize you so that the thought of killing doesn't hurt you, deep in your soul, it just makes you more capable of it, should you so decide. Incidentally, in these mass shootings, the assailant seems to have run into difficulty/ been stopped, when their weapon jams. Military personnel are well trained in dealing with jams (tap, rack, bang), and to a lesser extent, gun enthusiasts, but, when was the last time you had to clear a misfeed in a shooter? This is my own theory, but, I suspect there's a correlation between those two items.
Succinctly, there's a lot of evidence out there, I recommend that you go look it up. I'd start with On Killing.
Not going to lie, I don't always see eye to eye w/ jim. Especially when it comes to the subject of publishers or developers.
But this one hit home pretty well. I'll admit, despite being an avid user of the internet, I didn't go looking for shit like that. I knew about it sure, I knew about sites like rotten where you could go find real footage of some fucked up shit. I wasn't interested.
So Jim, you've officially popped my "has never seen a real death on the internet" cherry. But in doing so, you did prove your point pretty damn well. I was starting to even wonder myself how I'd really react to the notion of another person dying. And now I know, I'm not a desensetized gun porn junky like the media thinks gamers are. I'm not hiding under my bed or crying for mommy mind you, but I did flinch a bit. So thank you for the reality check. The human race needs it sometimes.
But this one hit home pretty well. I'll admit, despite being an avid user of the internet, I didn't go looking for shit like that. I knew about it sure, I knew about sites like rotten where you could go find real footage of some fucked up shit. I wasn't interested.
So Jim, you've officially popped my "has never seen a real death on the internet" cherry. But in doing so, you did prove your point pretty damn well. I was starting to even wonder myself how I'd really react to the notion of another person dying. And now I know, I'm not a desensetized gun porn junky like the media thinks gamers are. I'm not hiding under my bed or crying for mommy mind you, but I did flinch a bit. So thank you for the reality check. The human race needs it sometimes.
Whoa. I hadn't seen that footage before. You've got some mangoes for testicles buddy. Nice work. Very insightful analysis of the current situation about "violent videogames" too. I don't know if the cartoonish violence found in videogames is damaging to young minds. I just don't know. Maybe an argument could be made that by trivializing violence in videogames young, impressionable minds could be adversely affected. To that I would say, "where are the parents?" I'm pretty sure that many of the kids I hear cursing and using racial epitaphs in COD got their copies of the game from their parents. The games say "M" for a reason. Kids aren't supposed to be playing them. Those parents made a choice to give their kids those games. If the kids got those games from an anonymous source like Amazon or somewhere else online or their friends, why aren't the parents monitoring what the children are playing? Why aren't parents taking those copies of "M" rated games away from kids once they find out the kids have them? I wasn't allowed to have CDs with Explicit Lyrics when I was growing up. My mom took my copy of "The Predator" by Ice Cube and broke it in half in front of me when she found it under my bed. She kept my Sega Master System in a locked closet and I had to earn time on it by doing chores. I'm sure a lot of parents do something similar. Sure I got away with stuff. I still have a TuPac CD I managed to hide all through my youth. Kids will do what they do, especially if both parents work, or if there's only one parent etc. I understand that. How to keep bad stuff away from kids is an old question. I don't really have an answer. I think that question is answered individually by each different family involved.
The situation with today's media is terrible. I totally agree. How the living fuck can "news organizations" like CNN or MSNBC or Fox possibly justify their outrageous coverage of these little cowardly pricks and their terrorism? How do we as a society choose to ignore the damage this kind of coverage causes? It directly affirms and supports terrorism. Stick a flag pin in that you shitbags. Some asshole will undoubtedly do this again, because these media outlets have glorified their "acts of infamy" instead of treating them like the sniveling little shits that they are and totally ignoring them. Good on you Jim.
The situation with today's media is terrible. I totally agree. How the living fuck can "news organizations" like CNN or MSNBC or Fox possibly justify their outrageous coverage of these little cowardly pricks and their terrorism? How do we as a society choose to ignore the damage this kind of coverage causes? It directly affirms and supports terrorism. Stick a flag pin in that you shitbags. Some asshole will undoubtedly do this again, because these media outlets have glorified their "acts of infamy" instead of treating them like the sniveling little shits that they are and totally ignoring them. Good on you Jim.
I think what confuses (or inspires) a lot of the accusers is that continued exposure to violence in movies and video games actually does desensitize us to violence... in movies and video games. Each one is an experience unto itself that one can grow accustomed to after a while. Your subconcious is able to collect all of the peripheral information that you would consiously ignore that distinguishes them from each other(like the blood-splatter Jim was referring to).
The gut reaction I had to watching that video was similar to how I felt the first time I saw a body torn in half on film, or the first time I saw a head explode in rendered graphics. Nowadays I can watch Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive", or melt a guy in "Spec-Ops", without batting an eye.
The video in question is the type of thing I don't make a point to see, so I haven't really been desenstized to it yet. If I were so inclined, however, it probably wouldn't take too long to get used to it by seeking out more of the same. Even still, seeing a video of real violence is experientially different from actually being there, meaning even a level of comfort with the video that one might find disturbing is still not the same as being desensitized to real-life violence.
For most people, there probably isn't even such a thing. It would be evolutionarily retarted.
The gut reaction I had to watching that video was similar to how I felt the first time I saw a body torn in half on film, or the first time I saw a head explode in rendered graphics. Nowadays I can watch Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive", or melt a guy in "Spec-Ops", without batting an eye.
The video in question is the type of thing I don't make a point to see, so I haven't really been desenstized to it yet. If I were so inclined, however, it probably wouldn't take too long to get used to it by seeking out more of the same. Even still, seeing a video of real violence is experientially different from actually being there, meaning even a level of comfort with the video that one might find disturbing is still not the same as being desensitized to real-life violence.
For most people, there probably isn't even such a thing. It would be evolutionarily retarted.
I played violent video games since I was about 5 years old. I watched horror movies since I was around 3 (my first rentals ever were A Nightmare On Elm Street series alongside Granzort anime - circa year 1990.). I tend to like all sorts of horror movies and even some fake snuff stuff. I shot down numerous birds, beheaded and plucked live chicken and killed and skinned rabbits - wasn't pleasing stuff, but was done for food. I even have squeeze to death with my bare hands mice and rats that stick into the glue traps around the house (not very fun, but better than leaving them to slowly die in the dumpster).
Still, I always get the same awful feeling of disgust and dread when seeing live or recorded real violence. I still get the chills every time I see someone holding a gun or a rifle out, even if it's unloaded or being stored away. I can't get myself to kick a dog or a cat in a non-more-of-a sliding-away manner. I have never punched first in a fight, even though I knew I'd get my ass handed down to me if i don't and I never hit someone if I had them in a defenseless position (I only had like 5-6 fights in my life, mind you, and none in the last 6 years). I may have gotten a bit of accustomed to reacting to violence without panic as of result of being exposed to it and may have "trained" me to react properly twice in my life when all people around me were frozen in fear (accidents when people needed help).
When some officials from the government or the media or religious groups condemn video games for their use of violence I get some conflicting emotions as I cannot really decide should I be angry because they're using it just as means of self-promotion, or I should be sad for their lack of understanding and knowledge. We had those witch hunts quite up there on the TV and in the newspapers here in my country in the mid 90's, when the Sega Genesis was all the rage here and the civil war was at its peak. It was just as superficial and pointless as it is now. Bottom line is - extreme violence comes from extreme mindsets, and those aren't created or even helped by mere exposition to violent content in their entertainment.
TLR - Great episode Jim, one of your finest to date !
Still, I always get the same awful feeling of disgust and dread when seeing live or recorded real violence. I still get the chills every time I see someone holding a gun or a rifle out, even if it's unloaded or being stored away. I can't get myself to kick a dog or a cat in a non-more-of-a sliding-away manner. I have never punched first in a fight, even though I knew I'd get my ass handed down to me if i don't and I never hit someone if I had them in a defenseless position (I only had like 5-6 fights in my life, mind you, and none in the last 6 years). I may have gotten a bit of accustomed to reacting to violence without panic as of result of being exposed to it and may have "trained" me to react properly twice in my life when all people around me were frozen in fear (accidents when people needed help).
When some officials from the government or the media or religious groups condemn video games for their use of violence I get some conflicting emotions as I cannot really decide should I be angry because they're using it just as means of self-promotion, or I should be sad for their lack of understanding and knowledge. We had those witch hunts quite up there on the TV and in the newspapers here in my country in the mid 90's, when the Sega Genesis was all the rage here and the civil war was at its peak. It was just as superficial and pointless as it is now. Bottom line is - extreme violence comes from extreme mindsets, and those aren't created or even helped by mere exposition to violent content in their entertainment.
TL
R - Great episode Jim, one of your finest to date !
After seeing the scene I immediately stopped the video to search for the context on wikipedia.Jimothy Sterling said:
I did not know that such a thing ever happened like that,
and despite the fact that I did not find the footage disturbing in itself,
knowing about the background surely saddened me.
Despite what people say, I think it was the right thing to show reality as it really is, a thing which should never be concealed.
I'd have to disagree somewhat, seeing violence in video games movies news, television has somewhat numbed me to real violence that and the fact that I work at a hospital in a large city.
As for the video I downloaded it back in 05-06 and showed it to my friends and even till this day they remember it even though they saw it maybe 1-2 times. Seeing what a gun can really do to human tissue gives an appreciation of just how dangerous they are in addition other weapons like swords, clubs etc.
As for the video I downloaded it back in 05-06 and showed it to my friends and even till this day they remember it even though they saw it maybe 1-2 times. Seeing what a gun can really do to human tissue gives an appreciation of just how dangerous they are in addition other weapons like swords, clubs etc.
Has a study been done that proves that shooting virtual people by pressing a button on a controller has the same affect of desensitization to shooting as being taught to do it in real life with a real gun? The last paragraph about games seems to be mostly assumptions. Personally I would never touch a gun.abell said: