Media Expert Worries About Game Burning "Distraction"

[loa]

Burn games?
Are we 70 years ago now?
I guess I don't have to count the ways in which this is deplorable and downright stupid.
This article just mentions 1 of them.

 

[Newtonyd]

While we're burning violent media, why don't we make a bonfire of Bibles and Qurans too? Millions of people have read these books and decided to go kill people.

 

[Innegativeion]

While we're burning violent media, why don't we make a bonfire of Bibles and Qurans too? Millions of people have read these books and decided to go kill people.

Not to mention, no matter how religious you are, you can't deny that some fucked up-level violent shit goes down in the bible.

 

[Sylveria]

I thought Connecticut was one of those upper-class states. Not one that subscribes to the same ideas about the evils of media as the deep, DEEP, banjo playing deep south. Wonder how long till Southington starts accusing D&D players of Devil worship and burning them at the stake.

You know, that is an incredibly sheltered view of America you have there. Analytic thinking and general intelligence is not entirely dependent upon where you live. Also, how is banjo music in any way relevant to one's ability to think rationally? Do I detect a slight hint of prejudice, or just a poorly informed view of that particular part of the country?

Bare in mind, the person that this article is about works at a university in Texas.

I'm more making the point these people are acting as the embodiment of banjo strumming, squeal like a piggy, uniformed hillbilly, southern, stereotype who sees the talking-picture box and assumes its witchcraft. I'm making fun of an exaggeration of a stereotype, one that was often seen in cartoons. I'd dig up the Hatfield and Mcoy Loony Toon's cartoon or the episode of Family Guy where they have to hide out in deep south, but I can't be bothered. It's called hyperbole folks. Look it up.

Some of you southerners are acting awfully sensitive about what should obviously be taken as a hyperbole statement. Did I unintentionally strike a nerve, ya'll?

 

[BoogieManFL]

People have been doing things like this since early recorded history and probably before that. But video games have been around for less than 1% of that time.

 

[Matt Dellar]

Wait, so they don't really think games caused the shootings, but they're still burning them? How do they not see their own fallacy?

 

[mechalynx]

Burn them as much as you please. As long as you pay for the physical copies.

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

What he just said makes complete sense.

Which probably means the people who need to hear it most will not listen because it's not a knee-jerk reaction.

 

[SirAroun]

I thought Connecticut was one of those upper-class states. Not one that subscribes to the same ideas about the evils of media as the deep, DEEP, banjo playing deep south. Wonder how long till Southington starts accusing D&D players of Devil worship and burning them at the stake.

You know, that is an incredibly sheltered view of America you have there. Analytic thinking and general intelligence is not entirely dependent upon where you live. Also, how is banjo music in any way relevant to one's ability to think rationally? Do I detect a slight hint of prejudice, or just a poorly informed view of that particular part of the country?

Bare in mind, the person that this article is about works at a university in Texas.

I'm more making the point these people are acting as the embodiment of banjo strumming, squeal like a piggy, uniformed hillbilly, southern, stereotype who sees the talking-picture box and assumes its witchcraft. I'm making fun of an exaggeration of a stereotype, one that was often seen in cartoons. I'd dig up the Hatfield and Mcoy Loony Toon's cartoon or the episode of Family Guy where they have to hide out in deep south, but I can't be bothered. It's called hyperbole folks. Look it up.

Some of you southerners are acting awfully sensitive about what should obviously be taken as a hyperbole statement. Did I unintentionally strike a nerve, ya'll?

ya'll = You All. Not sure your using that word right way.

 

[Patrick Buck]

Now I support this man, I really do...
But whenever someone who says this kinda thing comes up, we praise him as a god, and say he's done the tests, he's cited science, he must be true...


But when someone from the other side says they've done a test, and found something different, we decry them as a maniac. It just seems a little bias, and god knows I would rather have games exist, but I know we're all going to be a little bias, but can we not react so feverishly?

Also, Book burning = Game burning.
Free speech. It's a thing. You're breaking it.
Good Job, Random overhyped town. -_-

 

[Brainwreck]

Noone goes to a book burning believing they're makings things better.
It's just the mass reaction of a group of ignorant and intolerant people, presumably spurred on by a person or persons.

You can hate anything at all for all I care, but when you decide to recreate the Bonfire of the Vanities, you've pretty much breached the basic human contract that says 'don't be an awful person'.

 

[ResonanceSD]

So can we blame them for the next batch of pyromaniacs?

aren't they already here?

No but seriously, what is it with Americans and burning objectionable media?

 

[Mcupobob]

Wow, games are like 60$ a pop retail talking about throwing money away. I guess they could delete steam accounts that would be more cost effective but less of spectacle. Oh yeah and that guy is absolute correct in everything he's saying just people looking for a scapegoat.

 

[Anti-American Eagle]

I think we should have more of these... just so we can find out who needs to have explained to them why book burning is wrong, immoral, and counterproductive.

 

[Isalan]

We look back at Savonarola and the Bonfire of the Vanities, we shake our heads and we tut at how the world fails to understand art. Saying that, BLOPS 2 probably isn't as artistically valuable as Botticlelli's works, but the feeling is the same.

Maybe, just maybe, we should burn all the sociopaths.

 

[Kahani]

Video games cause violence! Let's form a mob and burn things!

I suspect the people involved may be suffering from stunted irony glands.

 

[Tradjus]

While I don't really care if they burn games, I have to question their logic based on this simple fact.
If you burn games.. they just make more of them.
It's not like you're doing anything that damages gaming in any way, and the only salient point you're making is that you have far too much disposable income, buying things just to burn them.
People like this are going to do stupid things regardless of the weight of logic bearing down on them, so getting angry about it is just beating your head against the wall, just ignore them and be confident in the fact that gaming's day as the popular scapegoat is coming to a close.

 

[Twilight_guy]

First thought:
Yeah sure when you don't agree with someone "must be a delusional idiot" but when they support your ideas "praise be, a sane man" Gamers only question what they don't like, that's as bad as the idiots who cause this mess.

No, they "must be a delusional idiot" because they're ignorant reactionaries who think the proper response to a tragedy is a good old fashioned book-burning. Except with games. This guy is considered sane and rational because he's a fucking scientist who's done actual, peer-reviewed research on this exact matter, who took time out of his day to write a polite and thoughtful letter to these cretinous medieval bunch-of-Baldrics in an attempt to enlighten them.

Also, enough with the "support your ideas" stuff, it's not about ideas, it's about facts; if your opinion is in congruence with the facts, it is correct, if it is not, it's wrong. If the facts are not yet clear because the evidence is conflicted or simply scarce, an intellectually honest person will admit that their opinion is conditional, and attempt to modify that opinion constantly based on the current balance of probabilities. The "games cause violence" issue is not of the latter category; there is currently very little genuine peer-reviewed research which indicates a link between games and violent behaviour, and most of those have serious methodological flaws. If you can't produce evidence in favour of a proposition, then that proposition should be considered false until you can.

So much rage. The Emperor would be proud.


So far I've yet to see that there going to make a bonfire and dance around it. In fact I've really only seen the word 'destroy' used. Burning is an effective method of disposing of things. That's why incinerators exist. There is a difference between doing it as a symbolic condemnation and simply using burning as an effective disposal method. I haven't seen anything that notes how this is going down so we can't assume either way over whether its going to be a book burning or an orderly collection that sends its results to be disposed of.

He's a scientist you say? Well that clearly means he's knows what's what. I mean its not like other scientists have done studies and come to the conclusion that games actually do cause violence (oh wait). This isn't an issue where every single person who's looked at the evidence is on one side. There are people on both sides yet its almost always the case where when a story about violence gets published either the person is a good scientist because he knows they don't cause violence or he's a hack because his study shows they might. The community here has a bad tendency to stick there fingers in there ears if the evidence doesn't support their view.

Opinions are never right or wrong. Opinion's can't be proved. If you say "The sky is blue" its a provable statement not an opinion. If you say "I think the sky is blue" it becomes a provable statement, a hypotheses. Wording problem.

There is no evidence to support that games cause violence and there is no evidence to support the idea that they don't. Studies in both directions have yet to prove anything. Therefore these people could be right or wrong and we have way of ascertaining which is correct (or both or neither if we don't assume the excluded middle). Also, you don't consider a prostitution false if you can't provided evidence for it, you don't assign it a truth value until you can say one way or the other. That's why there are some theorems that have been proven to be unprovable. They aren't false or true.

Yes, this is probably stupid. Yes this is a snap decision that makes implications of the video games cause violence that haven't been proved either way. However they aren't hurting anyone, forcing anyone to do anything, and their only making a stupid move by symbolically condemning games not by actually saying anything. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance, so I think there just stupid and afraid as opposed to being antagonistic. I can't bring myself to dislike someone else for being dumb (at least not here).

The important thing I want to get accost is that for all their pretensions of being smart and high brow people, this community tends to many times fall into the trap where they only question when something differs from their opinion. Any study that shows games don't cause violence, don't question it, studies that show otherwise, must be run by hacks with questionable methods. In order for anything to get done, we must always question everything and not just agree because it supports our existing ideas of how things work. It's your opinion whether or not this story is a good place to put it, but I want to point it out and I feel it can go here.