Violent Games, The Moon, 9/11

[Frezzato]

I wonder if I should bother asking people to answer honestly. Oh well, this IS the internet after all.
This is regarding the news blurb earlier today about Americans and what they think about violent video games.

*EDIT* Poll corrected.

I'll explain later if I get a decent amount of hits.
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No, I'll explain now.

Spoiler: Please take the poll first

People can believe anything they want. It doesn't necessarily make them right. And YOU, my lovely Escapists, will prove me wrong. Or right. I'm not a glass-half-empty kind of guy. I'm the one who thinks the glass is too close to the table's edge.

 

[DJjaffacake]

I thought this was going to be about a game depicting 9/11 on the moon.

 

[bananafishtoday]

To be fair, the first one is not like the others. You're comparing the fuzzy ways in which media influences/socializes the population as a whole to the location where someone was born, whether a specific person ordered a specific event, and whether a specific event actually happened.

A better analogy might be along the lines of "Did America's economic policy and energy consumption cause 9/11?" or "Did the Apollo Program's focus on discrete, relatively short-term, and incredibly visible goals do long-term damage to the public's willingness to fund NASA's less ostentatious and more foundational programs?"

I ain't saying there's a causal relationship between games and violence, I'm just saying you're comparing apples and oranges here.

 

[Frezzato]

snip

Man, that was fast. I like you. I actually said something similar (not really) on the other thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.401942-Majority-of-Americans-Believe-Games-Contribute-to-Violence?page=2#16574446].

Apparently, six percent of Americans believe the moon landing was faked:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/science/space/14hoax.html?_r=0

Some stuff about Obama and the whole 'birther' ridiculousness:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20056061-503544.html

Unfortunately the sample size wasn't given on either of those surveys, but despite the small pool of surveyed Americans listed in that other thread, just because people believe something, that doesn't necessarily make it true. The reason I chose those options was because they could be proven to a point as fact. Even if a larger sample size was taken, say 1 million Americans, the question of violent video games making violent kids would still just be opinion.

I think the best example of people believing crazy things would be that anti-vaccination doctor [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-05-24/health/autism.vaccine.doctor.banned_1_rubella-vaccine-and-autism-mmr-vaccine-wakefield?_s=PM:HEALTH].

If anything, a potential benefit of polls like the one about violent games would bring a lot of (qualified) people to the table and actually start measuring the effects of games on children. I would hope that hundreds of impartial studies would be done, and until then, we're just being angry people online.

Sorry, this isn't directed at you, I was just waiting for the right time to rant.

 

[Images]

Need to add, "The Moon Landing Was Real, The Footage The World Saw Was Fake". A lot of the lunar-tics now stick to that one.