Bad example using the Budd Dwyer video, frankly I wasn't shocked at all because Jim drilled us with 3 minutes of warnings saying "you have been warned!!" and when I actually saw it the first thing I thought was "...huh. So that's it."
Now hear me out. If I had actually been present at the scene and witnessed Budd doing it, I would have been shocked out of my fucking mind. The image would have scarred for the rest of my life, someone blowing their brains out right in front of me.
But unfortunately it was a video, a video on my monitor. And after ~10 years of surfing the internet, my brain has basically come to the conclusion that nothing shown on my monitor is truly going to shock me (other than maybe Amnesia, or Condemned). So watching Budd Dwyer blowing his brains out automatically registered as a scene on any other action movie, a rather poorly done black & white scene where the loud bang and splashy effects were missing. It looked less "real" to me than the movies/games, because I've only maybe seen an actual person getting killed on video one or two other times! This was back in high school when Muslim jihad demonstrations were on everyone's phones, the pure reality of the gory violence was actually being shared by the teens because it was taboo lol. Isn't that strange? I hope people understand where I'm getting at.
For another example, a shotgun is one of my favorite weapons in video games. It nice to use up close, it sounds like God slamming someone's face with a car door, it makes big holes into everything you point it at, etc etc.
...and then I had the experience of going clay shooting, using an actual 12 gauge pump-action shotgun. Holy CRAAAAAAAAP. I'm not exactly a small guy, but the first shot threw me back and I was hearing bells in my ears for the next 5 minutes. (I also completely missed the clay pigeon
). I don't enjoy the aspect of firing that weapon repeatedly, never ever.