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Denver, 5:25 PM
Mon Nov 30
39 posts in the last 24 hours
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04/18/09
But my frustration with Sirota, though mild, is familiar. It's the same frustration I experienced in college, toward the end, when I had finally gotten professors to treat me as a more or less equal, and could get them to speak to me as such. And I didn't see, beneath these cumbersome layers of assumed haughtiness for mentor-mentee situations, people who thought the problems they saw in the world would change. Could change. They were people who had seen WHY this group of people wants to kill that group of people, WHY this sect's religious belief made them refuse medicine of this kind and so the illness would keep spreading, WHY x, y, or z.
And despite all the rhetoric about making a difference, following your passion, whatever they feed you--and they feed you! they fed me!--to try and entice you along the field of academia, despite all that, they don't care. They don't think, in their heart of hearts, that anything could or would change. They're not interested in solutions. They're interested in tenure. They want to say what is wrong, and then have people agree with them that it is wrong, and then publish books about it and get a position teaching it--but that's ALL they teach. What's wrong. Not how to fix it. Because they don't think it can be fixed.
And I don't think Sirota believes it can be fixed either. He doesn't think we, as a modern society (going beyond mere American borders, I should think, but that's extraneous to his article) CAN "face this complex reality." And can you blame him? Self-analysis blows. You see shit you don't want to see. So you don't see it. Because this wouldn't be about--in this hypothetical facing-it situation--making crass generalizations about broad tracts of society. This would be about an interior mining. Individually. And there are a whole lot of people who can't handle that, and I don't think it's fare to expect them to. Because it hurts. Because it's beyond us. Because some things just go to shit, and you just hobble through, and it isn't beautiful or meaningful or life-changing. You just survive.
Or you get shot. By someone who couldn't survive. And that's empty too. It hurts you, at the time, and those you loved, ever after, but...do you really think, Mr. Sirota, that people will look into those black holes in themselves and NOT recoil in horror, sometimes taking it out on others? I don't think you do. I think you know we're stuck like this. And you're just hanging on in survival mode, because once you rub away the veneer, that's really all you or anyone has. Me too.
04/18/09
The over militarization of the US has lead the country to have wars constantly so that big weapons manufacturers can sell their product, after all, your not gonna sell me a car if there is no gas.
The US is on a point right now where its confused, they feel their losing their place in the world and that once the economy goes back to normal everything will continue like it was 50 years ago.
Violence in video games is not the cause of many of the US problems, its what happens at home, at work or even on other areas like racial, sexual and religious discrimination. The US must restructure itself not only economically and socially but also culturally, while not everyone is the same a high number of US citizens have very poor knowledge of world history and even their own history.
This leads to xenophobia of other people and their customs, because its human nature to fear that which is unknown. Obama has bright ideas, he seems for once like a wise leader, however too many people in the US want to remain like the country was 50 years ago and it cant go back now.
04/18/09
04/18/09
Its not an anti-anything, and mind you when I say America I do not mean the US, as the word America is the continent as a whole, not a single country, of course you would know that Im sure.
Its true the US a very cultural diverse country, however most countries today have people from all around the world, thats nothing new.
Still, look how easily it is to brew hate based on nothing, before 9/11 would people in the US really care about people over in Iraq or the Middle East? I don't think so.
It was surprising and disappointing to see a 14 year old on Xbox live with hate speech towards people over at Iraq. Where do you think this kid heard or saw about this?
This is exactly my point and how it is associated with the school shootings, people want to blame video games for many of societies cancer's, just like in the 50's comic books were seen as the cause of many of youth's problems (drug addiction, violence...) eventually a psychiatrist wrote a book titled Seduction of the Innocent pointing out what I wrote above. This lead to the creation of the Comics Code Authority which in turn made go downwards in the 50s and 60s.
The problem is not video games, or movies or whatever other thing people want to point out to, its the society we live in, which is toxic and violent. We are fed bad food, we breath bad air, we don't even have a health care program for all citizens which countries like Canada among others do for their people.
04/19/09
1) Using the word 'American' to describe people from the US is no more ethnocentric than using 'mankind' to describe humanity is sexist. It's just a linguistic quirk of English.
2) You can't judge a society based on its Xbox live playing 14 year olds. The vast majority of Americans are not xenophobic and do not hate Iraqis or other Middle Easterners. There are millions of Muslims in the US, many of whom are originally from the Middle East, and there is very little religious or racial discrimination against them.
3) I agree that video games are not the cause of school shootings.
4) What do fast food, pollution, and health care have to do with school shootings? Germany is another hot spot for school shootings. Germany's government is the opposite of the US government in regards to those specific things.
5) It seems like you're saying "society" is to blame for school shootings, but specific things in society that you enjoy (like video games) are not to blame, while other arbitrary things in society you don't care for (like military spending) are to blame. So the government spending money on stealth bombers fundamentally affects our youth and causes violence, but playing a game where you kill people in first person doesn't?
6) Your first post came off to me as saying that most Americans are ignorant of history and xenophobic, and that the US is plagued with discrimination. I would consider this somewhat anti-American. Perhaps I misunderstood, in which case I apologize for saying your post was an anti-American rant. Perhaps anti-American government would be a more apt description?
04/18/09
What people fail to take into account is that there are a lot more negative responses to our current complacency with our culture then just the school shooters. They just happen to have the largest shock value. But lots of kids go through bullying and alienation in school.
Some adapt and push through it. Others become bully themselves and will have a history of aggressive and abusive behavior well into adult hood. Some drop out of school and join gangs (who also go out and murder/attack people, but we don't associate it with school and have grown numb to it), while other kids completely loose confidence and live the rest of their lives timidly and paralyzed by fear.
In reacting to these people though, it isn't enough just to start paying attention to them after they have already snapped. Its not a matter of getting the proper concealing when they are already on or over the edge; people are tempered by the day to day involvement of their friends, family, and community or lack there of.
But this requires a diligent effort, that pushes us outside of our comfort zone. Like a company choosing to settle with the 0.01% of families out of court rather then doing a recall on our society value, we instead silently accept these statistical radicals as acceptable casualties and find scape goats for them after the fact.
The deconstruction of the video game argument is another essay in itself. But it is a moot point until people are willing to take more personal responsibility in our daily lives. The parents who blame teachers for their kids getting bad grades, when neither the parents nor the students made an effort to work at their education. The acceptance of bullying and alienation ('suck it up, wuss') because it seems to wide spread and common to effectively police. The lack of response... the inability to even cross the street and lend a helping hand to someone who may be off putting and grumpy, because we don't want to put ourselves out there or draw ourselves out of the comfort blanket of our own lives...
This isn't just a government or authoritative problem. This is a social construct and environment, that affects family, friends and communities. Even if we do work at it, there is no guarantee we will forever eliminate all of the negative outcomes in the world, but that dosen't give us an excuse not to put forth the effort to it.
04/18/09
I read this comment after having written one of my own and feel somewhat upbraided by the call to action at the end, the "doesn't give us an excuse not to put forth the effort" bit. Because I am assuredly not somebody who has done much of a damn thing for the greater good, to date. Not going to try and explain that away...or to assert that people with your dedication toward the attempt at improvement, however futile, are necessary in the world. They are. You are. I just provide the trash cans of the world with their equally necessary jaded, grouchy denizens. One morbid reflection at a time.
04/18/09
Also we have similar debates in Britain about violence in the media but all anyone wants to do is use them a party platforms to ciriticse the Gov of the day
04/18/09
It's not the American attitude, it's the conservative attitude.
04/18/09
I'm fully sympathetic to the notion that there are deeper cultural trends that predispose Americans to violence. But the fact is that easy accessibility to firearms leads to more homicides.
04/18/09
You know gun-related self-defense? What they were meant for?
Or if someone went into an old folks home and started carving up people with a steak knife would you be calling for the ban of kitchen utensils?
04/18/09
04/18/09
bullets do.
04/18/09
04/18/09
04/18/09
I don't care about guns, but I don't want them completely banned. I hope everyone knows that banning *assault weapons* don't think deeply about the issue. I don't know anyone who walks around carrying an assault rifle in public. They are hard to conceal and easy to spot. Pistols are easier to hide and more available. Honestly more citizens die from pistol fire than assault weapons in a public settings.
04/19/09
Shock usually kills before loss of oxygen, though.
04/19/09
Indeed. In Canada, it's much easier to get licensed for a hunting rifle or shotgun than it is for a handgun, simply because rifles and shotguns are much more difficult to conceal.
04/18/09
04/18/09
People who crave the violence will seek out appropriate past times that allow them to revel in it. It's par for course. It's been that way throughout human history and always will be.
Even in this past century... Video games, clothing styles, various types of music, comic books, haircuts and so on. There will always be a scapegoat, but nothing will change the fact that we're human.
04/18/09
04/18/09
American history is steeped in blood whether it is their own or others plus when, what is now known as, the "Wild West" also plays a big role in American history I think we can start to see where said savagery has come from. I'm not saying Americans are all cowboys but from what I know of American history (which admittedly is not a lot) it seems the history is very bloodied.
I just think that this whole gun violence thing stems from something much more complex than video games or even gun laws, I think it's a very deep set cultural thing.
Honestly, I'm not trying to piss anyone off and I am in no way saying all Americans are crazy gun nuts or anything of the sort.
04/18/09
However, like you said in your second comment, neither Ireland nor the UK, and similarily France, Germany, Italy, etc can claim to have a lovely clean history. Our nations have all been extremely voilent at some point in time and just because we live in a technologically advanced era, it doesn't mean we're any less voilent as individuals.
04/19/09
Kudos.
04/18/09
04/18/09
Now, I will be going off on a tangent.
The kids you speak of represent the overly pampered "trophy kids" of today's generation. It's practically as if every kid feels as if they're entitled to something without having to work all that hard for it. This has personally become obvious to me, after being a part of said generation, then having my world turned upside down in Marine Corps boot camp.
Shit, even boot camp is softer now than it has ever been before.
The reasons aren't infinitesimal.. They can be summed up as a natural result of the Baby Boomers' rebellion against their parenting generation. As a collective whole, our current generation is naturally acting out its own rebellion. There's a book out there ([www.fourthturning.com]) that theorizes a four-generation cycle that inevitably repeats itself due to a sort of rational cause and effect. This suggests then that the children of this current generation will give birth to a generation that resembles the parenting generation of the boomers, and that this whole damn cycle will repeat, as it always has.
I know it sounds terribly dramatic and all, sort of like a sitcom soap, but I haven't read the book, so I can't do it justice. I've just read a similar book by the authors, and a few others that are related (such as Generation Me)
But hey, even before any of this crap, there has been proof of bad parenting.
04/18/09
And you know what happened then? Well, Mrs. Parker was a qualified chemist, but she was still taking night classes to get her teaching license, and although she HAD sent an official letter to all the parents saying that, and NONE of the parents had a problem with it... all those pissed off cheating people tried to get her fired. Their leader, worst of all, was... well I won't say her name. But she was really smart, and she didn't even HAVE to cheat, she was just so corrupt and felt entitled, and she's like number 6 or 7 in our class still.
PACE is our advanced-course program for the elementary through Junior High schools, and my mom, a 4th grade teachers, always says "PACE parents are the worst parents in the world." Anytime their kids get a remotely bad grade or if they don't make the cheerleading squad or they don't exceed in anything, the parents don't talk to the kids, they go straight to the teachers and principles with whining and threats. It really pisses me off. Luckily I have great parents and they would ground me if I tried to pull that crap :P
Oh dang, I just realized that my grammar was pretty sloppy in this post... oh well.
04/19/09
Trying to get a teacher fired because she's giving quizzes?
When I was in high school a teacher got fired when they threw furniture at the students and no less.
04/18/09
04/18/09
04/18/09
Thus the hate.
04/18/09
That should answer your question.
04/18/09
To commemorate the COH expansion release
04/18/09
04/18/09
Does it make anyone else upset that we probably have spent more money researching whether there is a violence/video game connection than on some of the more common diseases? I mean Bandura did his Bobo the clown study a while ago. Get over it.
04/18/09
Medical research, economic stimulation, pensions and tuitions, etc.
It's particularly bothersome since violence has been ingrained within humanity since even before the dawn of our civilizations and recorded history.
It's common sense really. Some people are deeply disturbed and do very horrible things because of it. Some just happen to play video games as a way to satiate their bloodlust, and unfortunately there comes a time when said individuals will want the real thing.
No amount of research or number of studies will come to a conclusion that explains away the problem.
04/18/09
Well, you're talking about individuals here. Any psychological study is going to be talking about groups and demographics. Science only works through statistics, so saying its a problem with 'individuals' ignores the actual studies. Exposure to violent video games increases aggression in people, more so than movies. Considering how prevalent they are in todays youth I think it's a very relevant area of research.
04/18/09
Psychological and sociological studies are not admissible in courts for a reason, outside of a judge stipulating that they're to be counted as "expert" testimony.
Obviously video games increase aggression in people moreso than movies, they're an interactive medium compared to a sedentary one. You sit and watch a movie, vicariously getting your thrills through what you see happening. In a game, you have control.
It's no different than aggression levels being increased amongst high school football players compared to those in band. Just as children taught to hunt, and regularly partaking in the activity will have increased aggression compared to a stay at home recluse.
Studying the effects they have will not prove to have a "solution" to a problem that is endemic with the human species. Some people are prone to snap and others are not.
Video games are not a trigger mechanic. They are not the catalyst for violence. The individuals who eventually do this are already foregone in how they think. The games are an outlet, just as violent movies, music, books and other past times are.
They seek the games out, the game's don't make them commit the crimes.
04/18/09
I think the real reason violence occurs is that we are all out of gum.
04/18/09
04/18/09
Actually, that's not Duke Nukem 3D in the screenshot, but a mod for ZDoom.
04/18/09
04/18/09
And for the hell of it...
02/04/09
I managed to escape the world of misery thats being a geek in highschool thanks to my strong build, but that doesnt means i was a popular kid, nor that I couldn't see the abuses perpetrated to others.
It really sucks that these guys couldn't hold a little longer, I'm sure they would be game designers by now, making a lot more than the hillbilly white trash they had to deal with every day...
02/04/09
@Pope John Peeps II:
Quite honestly, just thinking about it, you really can't point any fingers.
Instead of interpreting the book saying "cool kids caused this", I think it's much more proper to say that "the environment, and their reaction to this caused this".
In that environment belongs "cool kids", "school", "home", etc...
"...The cause of such shootings are rarely as black and white as they initially seem"
02/04/09
02/04/09