Oversensitive or Desensitized? The Generation Question

[Alorxico]

Another thought questions from my law class that I wanted to share.

My professor showed the class a clip from "Born Innocent" a made-for-TV movie about a 14 year old girl who gets thrown in a penitentiary for trouble girls. The clip showed the girl getting raped by her fellow inmates (if you want details, Google will help you), and before she showed it the professor explained what was going to happen and told the class that anyone who wanted to leave may do so. I had seen part of the scene in the past and it made me massively uncomfortable, so I left class for the three minutes the clip was being shown.

I was the only one who left and no one came out of the class to join me as the clip was played.

Now, I am +10 years older than anyone else in the class, so I thought "Well, it must be a generation thing. I guess, as an 80s Baby, I'm just oversensitive." But then I remembered most of these kids were born in the 90s, that's only ten years after me. Did the culture change THAT much?

What are your thoughts? Are the coming generations becoming 'desensitized' or were previous generations too 'oversensitive'?

 

[Bobic]

Well, you sat through it the first time so there can't be that great a difference. Maybe the others had never seen it before. Morbid curiosity and intrigue can accomplish a lot.

 

[Justforonething]

I think it has.
I myself am under-sensitive. I've seen awful stuff on the internet, but don't really feel affected by it. We're desensitizing to the point where you can see a picture of a man cutting up his own reproductive organs and not feel sickened. A little perturbed perhaps, but not revolted.
Mentally though, I am. Just not viscerally.

 

[kasperbbs]

Fictional violence i don`t care about, I have seen too many movies, played too many games to care, because i know that most of the time these actors are trying hard not to burst out laughing in front of the camera.

 

[ZeroMachine]

You're ten years older? Maybe you've just seen more of the horrors that an event like that can represent. They might just not fully understand exactly how horrible something like that can be.

I'm an 80's baby ('89), though, and I wouldn't have left the room. I wouldn't say it's because I'm desensitized, it's more that it's just always taken a lot to make me uncomfortable when it comes to movies/shows/games/books.

 

[Spacewolf]

carnt of been that graphic if it was on TV and it wasnt actually real doubt i would of minded

 

[Jodan]

dont think of it as a sensitivity issue thik of it as a differnt set of expectancies relating to the rape. these kids had grown up in a world where they wernt sheltered for ideas like violence, sex and rape. by having more exposure to the idea of rape and seeing it in human culture they understand it better. weather they see rape as a horriable thing or a way to get easy kicks also relates to ones expiriance with rape. i understand that rape it wrong but it does happen and ignoring it will only make it worse, that dosent mean that we should be portraying more hardcore rape scences in media. but rape is also used wideley as a plot device, because if the impact it has on a persons mental state.

sorry for my spelling

 

[Justforonething]

I think it has.
I myself am under-sensitive. I've seen awful stuff on the internet, but don't really feel affected by it. We're desensitizing to the point where you can see a picture of a man cutting up his own reproductive organs and not feel sickened. A little perturbed perhaps, but not revolted.

I was just bored.

I was bored in "Two girls one cup".

 

[Justforonething]

I think it has.
I myself am under-sensitive. I've seen awful stuff on the internet, but don't really feel affected by it. We're desensitizing to the point where you can see a picture of a man cutting up his own reproductive organs and not feel sickened. A little perturbed perhaps, but not revolted.

I was just bored.

I was bored in "Two girls one cup".

I threw up (most scat videos make me do that). Although I was undisturbed by Lemon Party.

I don't want to know. That is, I don't want to know what Lemon Party is.

 

[kurupt87]

I'm an '80's baby, I wouldn't have any trouble. Like a couple of previous posters have said, it's fictional. Do you run away from Saw?

Either way I don't see a problem. Things like the pain olympics, 1 man 1 jar and the shock images that were on ED and other such sites are far, far worse; they're real. Even then I physically react very minimally, my mind recoils in horror but I don't freak out.

You could call it desensitisation or you could call it witnessing reality. What you couldn't, or shouldn't, do is suggest that I am now more likely to do something like that due to seeing it.

Those that do freak out, I would suggest, suffer from head-in-sand syndrome. Or that they are the plaything of their own emotions rather than the master.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Kids have always been less sensitive to this kind of thing that those older than them. I use to remember not being able to empathized with characters in a movie and a scene where everyone would cry, i would not. Now, with any scene of sadness i would tear up instantly if im invested in that character.

Wouldn't say its a cultural generation gap so much as the just the age difference. the older you get the more you are able to internalize other peoples suffering. imho

 

[Woodsey]

I doubt anyone was comfortable watching it, but they could obviously detatch it enough that it wasn't impossible to watch.

And you said you'd seen it before, so if they don't know what to expect fully then they can't really judge beforehand.

 

[dark-mortality]

I would say that i'm somewhere around the middle. I'm a sadistic bastard who can picture thousands of ways to hurt/kill a person (I have never killed just so you know), but at the same time, i get a sick feeling when i actually HURT people... (I just hit them softly, but i still hate it...)

 

[MissAshley]

Now, I am +10 years older than anyone else in the class, so I thought "Well, it must be a generation thing. I guess, as an 80s Baby, I'm just oversensitive." But then I remembered most of these kids were born in the 90s, that's only ten years after me. Did the culture change THAT much?

What are your thoughts? Are the coming generations becoming 'desensitized' or were previous generations too 'oversensitive'?

As a person also going to school and being surrounded by people 10 or more years younger than me, I think that indeed culture has changed that much and of course it's due to the Internet.

I had a similar video experience in my Psychology class. We were watching Child of Rage, a documentary following the examination and treatment of an extremely violent 7-year-old girl who was sexually abused at the age of 1. I cried multiple times throughout it, and what I can only describe as academic duty kept me from excusing myself before the end of it.

At the half-way point of the video, the instructor asked for our opinions so far. One 90s baby student said in the most annoyingly insensitive tone "What she needs is a whoopin'," and a few students actually laughed. This incensed me so much that I said very loudly and firmly "THAT WOULDN'T SOLVE ANYTHING!" The kid then had the gall to say "Yeah it would."

From only observing younger people in my immediate environment (at work, at school, and on the Internet), I don't think 90s babies are as desensitized as much as they are insensitive or have an underdeveloped sense of empathy. At the same time, though, I observe a fierce and even irrational connection to those they consider peers or friends, even if only considered so in a casual context. This tells me that the more "real" something feels to a 90s baby, the more likely they are to genuinely care about that something.

A sexually abused child in an old video? Whatever.

A sexually abused daughter of a cousin? Now its tragic.

When I consider this as well as my observations of my age peers as a teen, I think the relationship between caring and distance is very different for 90s babies than 80s babies. 90s babies seem to care much less about things further from them and much more about things closer to them than 80s babies.

Again, these are opinions based solely upon my observations and memories, and I fully realize exceptions exist.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I think it has.
I myself am under-sensitive. I've seen awful stuff on the internet, but don't really feel affected by it. We're desensitizing to the point where you can see a picture of a man cutting up his own reproductive organs and not feel sickened. A little perturbed perhaps, but not revolted.
Mentally though, I am. Just not viscerally.

this

in a nutshell, i would say a bit of both, but its more of a logical way of looking at it, i have seen some..awful videos, and i just logically shrugged it off like it was nothing, although most of my family would probably puke seeing some of those videos

 

[nukethetuna]

Oddly enough, I've noticed that people nowadays are undersensitive to such [SARCASM]trivial and minor[/SARCASM] things as rape, war, death, and the like... but are completely oversensitive regarding important subjects like the newest CoD, Snookie's latest gaff on Jersey Shore, or having their SO say they need a break.

 

[rockso]

I think it is more of an age thing, When I was younger, you want to see that crazy stuff and as you get alder I belive for most, if it is not necessary, you don't go out of your way to see it. The stuff that I wanted to see and hought was funny 10 years ago, has little to no intruset for me now.

 

[Alorxico]

Well, you sat through it the first time so there can't be that great a difference. Maybe the others had never seen it before. Morbid curiosity and intrigue can accomplish a lot.

Actually, no, I haven't seen the whole thing. In a previous psychology class some years earlier, my professor played the same clip and a few others when we studied rape and its affect on the mind. When the girl was forced to the ground (about 10 seconds into the clip, which starts off fairly harmless and quickly goes wrong), I left the class. I have not seen the clip to the very end.

 

[FalloutJack]

What are your thoughts? Are the coming generations becoming 'desensitized' or were previous generations too 'oversensitive'?

This may actually be very confusing, but I think both...at once. It's a simply matter of fact that society isn't an amoeba. There's billions in it. So, here's what I think is going on. People in charge of things are pushing things away in an over-sensitive manner because "Oh my god, that's indecent and not PC!", while there are others who see forbidden fruit and go "Yeah, they think it' bad, so time to eat!". In other words, it's post-modernistic 1950s syndrome.

 

[Bobic]

Well, you sat through it the first time so there can't be that great a difference. Maybe the others had never seen it before. Morbid curiosity and intrigue can accomplish a lot.

Actually, no, I haven't seen the whole thing. In a previous psychology class some years earlier, my professor played the same clip and a few others when we studied rape and its affect on the mind. When the girl was forced to the ground (about 10 seconds into the clip, which starts off fairly harmless and quickly goes wrong), I left the class. I have not seen the clip to the very end.

Ah, fair enough. Desensitization could be to blame then, though I doubt anyone in there was exactly comfortable with watching the clip.