Dear Troublemaker,

We have reviewed your application essay for acceptance into the Pokket and Kardashian School for the "talented."   We feel you will not be a good fit here due to the fact you actually researched a topic and tried to use logic and reason.   There is no place for logic and reason in the Pokket and Kardashian School for the "talented."  Furthermore, you decided to not adopt the hive mind and blindly accept what information was given to you.

We wish you the best in your future endeavors.

It's called senseless violence for a reason. 

Politicians and advocacy groups need to start being a little more cautious about the things they do in the name of protecting society and our youth. 

They're starting to tread thin lines that can cause a lot of nonviolent people to turn real violent, real fast, and it would not be senseless. 

I am a parent with adult children now, my kids all played video games all their lives and none of them are aggressive, violent people. That being said, I do think there are too many parents out there that don't WATCH what their young impressionable kids are actually playing. Little Timmy asks mommy to get him this game or that game and his mother has no idea what the game is or what its about. I always know and if I didn't know, I did some research to find out, i.e.: ask sales people, read online, etc. but I never just let my kids play what they asked for without checking. Ok, that being said, I think our society doesn't want to look inward at our own parenting skills because we're afraid what we'll see. Too many people just not paying enough attention to their OWN kids and too much time into everyone else’s business. I'm all for being safe and preventing real violence against people, like the recent events but video games aren't the problem, and at least part of it is poor parenting decisions and disinterest in peoples own kids. Too busy to raise em after they have em....It just makes me so angry that they want to blame EVERYTHING else and don’t look at themselves.

Also, if we're going by the logic that these folks in Melrose are using, then video games and media are the reasons girls become strippers....

So you're saying there's no chance of this then pokket ? :)  /laugh

I think that there are factors within mmorpg's that can help cause a person to snap mentally. Lag, Queues, someone afking mid-raid, kill stealing, loot ninjas, bots, exploiters, and so on.

The thing I'm wondering, is if the studies were true, how many Wushu players are going to castrate themselves?

All humor aside,  games and movies can contribute to a desensitization of violence. All too often, there are people who are left to struggle with their mental problems without the proper care that they need.  

Warning WALL OF TEXT! This is commentary on the whole issue, not just Pokkets article.

There can be little doubt that violent video games contribute to a form of desensitization to violence as they become more, and more realistic, as do other forms of violent mass media. However, desensitization does not mean your libel to commit a violent action yourself, it just means that your empathy for such events happening to others is likely to be decreased. You feel less about it when you see it happening to others.

I think anyone that is honest with themselves will admit this. When you first seen war footage for instance, you might have been shocked or disgusted, but as you are subject to more and more footage of such images they fail to illicit any emotional reaction over time. I think about how I felt when I first seen the twin towers exploding, and then if I see those same images now they mean nothing to me. The become “fantasy” since they are removed from your everyday life and you no longer feel empathy for what is going on. Go watch a 80's horror film and tell me if you feel any sort of fear from the kind of violence that once terrified people.

How do we tell the difference between fantasy and reality? Video games can blur these lines for people that are either immature, or emotionally damaged. We all know people who rage violently at video games, I have done it myself on an occasional tense pvp battle, and the reality is that we do commit violence in video games. And we like it. It gives us dopamine as it is part of our biological programming to survive. Competition itself is hardwired into our brain chemistry.

Violent video games desensitize us. They do not, however, give us morality. Morality is the rational part of us, not the animal instinctual part of us. We do not kill others because we are morally committed to that, even when we might feel like it. This ability to control our more base natures with our moral commitments is something that happens every day, all the time, 24/7. These kinds of horrific events are caused by a complex set of variable that cannot be easily determined by simple causes and trite answers. But morality is not an abstract thing, it is something we learn and assent to as we grow in maturity. These crimes are committed by individuals that have not developed a moral sense, either from lack of training, neglect, mental illness, or a combination of all three. Then they have access to deadly weapons that our ancestors who wrote the second amendment could not have dreamed of existing.

If anything the problem we face is that morality has been taken hostage by the religious factions for so long that secular society seems to think it doesn’t need any of it. We have abandoned an arbitrary morality, and replaced it with an even more arbitrary morality. Western society must evolve. It must evolve morality, but not one based on superstition and dogma. Until we train (not just parents, but the collective society) children to value morality, and to have purpose and dignity these kind of event will just continue.

Don't blame video games. Don't blame media. Don't blame parents. Blame lack of collective vision.

Originally posted by Heafstagg
instead of dealing with the actual problem with regards to mental health care/awareness and proper gun control/legislation, they use the video game as a scape goat. Its pathetic.

America needs no gun control. Your comment about mental health care is what is needed. Video games/Hollywood violence has absolutely nothing to do with a persons decision to take a life. Gun control will be about as effective as stopping illegal drug use/traffacking. Criminals are going to have guns and the rest of us need them to protect ourselves against them. As the economy keeps spinning out of control, things will get worse before they get better. We don't need unprotected citizens in jeopardy because they can't arm themselves.

And, put concealed carry staff in our schools to keep these kids safe.

IMHO

I know personal anecdotes blow, but I was recently replaying Hitman Blood Money, and it definitely negatively effected me emotionally when I would end up getting caught and end up in a fire fight just mowing down endless numbers of police officers and civillians. With that game they always tried to make your target a real scumbag, but really you were mostly just offing people with no way to defend themselves. I don't know, I like the style and freedom of the game, just putting you in the map with objectives and letting you figure out how to do it, but the violence is a bit much.

I also was sickened by playing a melee class in Age of Conan when it first went F2P. I could handle the spellcasters, but the melee just was too much for me.

People don't like taking responability for themselves. People also don't like taking the simple answer of in the Sandy Hook situtation, the guy was mad, both at his mom and possibly life in general, and sought out the destroy what she worked for. I mean, he targeted the children at the school she worked out!

Instead what people want to blame is things they don't understand. They don't understand video games(though thats getting a tad absurd seeing how many decades games have been around now) and human nature sometimes leads people to fear what they don't understand, which also can lead to hate. So they don't understand video games, and they know that some video games involve killing human representations.

So instead of putting blame where it belongs, the shooter, the put the blame on games. Why? Because its a convient scapegoat. They blame GTA saying it desensatizes the person to violence and so they go around murdering people. Since its the video games fault this automatically excuses the these people from being worthless excuses of parents who don't pay attention to their kid and blame it on something else.

Finally the reason this gets any political support is due to politicans and their lobbyists taking advantage of the situtation. There are the anti gun people who are going full force of ban all the guns or most of the guns or what not relying on people voting by emotion of the tragic death of 20 children and 6 adults. They know normally people are usually pretty okay with guns, so they try to rush these laws using this emotion to get a law passed that normally wouldn't. On the flip side, those pushing that video games are the sole reason for these shootings are likely politicans backed by gun lobbyists such as the NRA. They want to shift attention away from guns and towards video games.

What all of these people fail to do is shift the blame on where it belongs, the killer. You AREN'T going to be able to prevent future bastards from murdering children. Ban all guns and all video games, a guy is going to go in and stab children with a knife. Will it reduce the deaths? Dunno a guy in China managed to stab 20 children and while thankfully they didn't die, he still injured 20 children. Bad things happen, they happen to good people, innocent children, to everyone one. Restricting freedoms such as games does little, banning guns may or may not reduce violence. But it won't prevent tragedies from happening in the future.

Originally posted by Kendane

People don't like taking responability for themselves. People also don't like taking the simple answer of in the Sandy Hook situtation, the guy was mad, both at his mom and possibly life in general, and sought out the destroy what she worked for. I mean, he targeted the children at the school she worked out!

Instead what people want to blame is things they don't understand. They don't understand video games(though thats getting a tad absurd seeing how many decades games have been around now) and human nature sometimes leads people to fear what they don't understand, which also can lead to hate. So they don't understand video games, and they know that some video games involve killing human representations.

So instead of putting blame where it belongs, the shooter, the put the blame on games. Why? Because its a convient scapegoat. They blame GTA saying it desensatizes the person to violence and so they go around murdering people. Since its the video games fault this automatically excuses the these people from being worthless excuses of parents who don't pay attention to their kid and blame it on something else.

Liberal Reasoning 101: Blame the Thermometer for the Temperature

I remember back in the 80's people thinking AD&D turned their kids into satanists and would burn the books

Originally posted by Pie_Rat

Americans have legalized firearms, Europeans don't. Americans get random shootings every 6 months, Europeans every 20 years.

This particular comparison bothers me because a lot of people fall for it, as if violent crimes are only committed using guns. When looking at violent crimes as a whole, it's a different picture.

A really different picture.

Violent crime isn't the result of a game or gun. It's the result of problems in a society, and those problems need to be addressed.

Which brings me to the actual topic, and I think that pointing the finger at any realistic source to our violent crime problems (parenting, education, mental health facilities/assistance) would be wildly unpopular or, worse, require action and money on the part of the US Government to solve. Whatever the case, the gun issue has served its purpose for our leaders - a distraction. Going to quote a buddy of mine on this one:

"This is just a distraction from the govt towards the people; the people who actually want meaningful progress on jobs and the economy. If this is the bread, what will the circus look like?" - Danny Block

Originally posted by PyrateLV

Originally posted by Kendane

People don't like taking responability for themselves. People also don't like taking the simple answer of in the Sandy Hook situtation, the guy was mad, both at his mom and possibly life in general, and sought out the destroy what she worked for. I mean, he targeted the children at the school she worked out!

Instead what people want to blame is things they don't understand. They don't understand video games(though thats getting a tad absurd seeing how many decades games have been around now) and human nature sometimes leads people to fear what they don't understand, which also can lead to hate. So they don't understand video games, and they know that some video games involve killing human representations.

So instead of putting blame where it belongs, the shooter, the put the blame on games. Why? Because its a convient scapegoat. They blame GTA saying it desensatizes the person to violence and so they go around murdering people. Since its the video games fault this automatically excuses the these people from being worthless excuses of parents who don't pay attention to their kid and blame it on something else.

Liberal Reasoning 101: Blame the Thermometer for the Temperature

 

You're right, the video game(whichever one he played, made him do it. It single handly warped his mind and caused him to kill those kids. If video games never existed, school shootings never would happen.

Conservative Reasoning 101:  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

True, but does that mean we should allow average citizens to make Nuclear weapons? How about Chemical weapons? There is always going to be human beings that want to harm others, SHOULD WE MAKE IT IT EASY FOR THEM TO DO??? Or hard...hmmm

Personal responsibility doesn’t take away from collective responsibility. We protect people from all sorts of stuff in civilized society, this conservative argument is not only weak, but infantile.

Wake up, and use your brain.

Originally posted by mythran7

 

Conservative Reasoning 101:  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
 

True, but does that mean we should allow average citizens to make Nuclear weapons? How about Chemical weapons? There is always going to be human beings that want to harm others, SHOULD WE MAKE IT IT EASY FOR THEM TO DO??? Or hard...hmmm

Personal responsibility doesn’t take away from collective responsibility. We protect people from all sorts of stuff in civilized society, this conservative argument is not only weak, but infantile.

Wake up, and use your brain.

And the purpose of gun ownership is to allow people to protect themselves, whether that attacker is a random thug or government. From your profile, it appears you are Canadian, so I don't expect you to understand the reasons for gun ownership in America or America's gun culture. However, to say that quote above is attributed to conservatives only is false, especially in a thread where most people agree the solution is identifying and fixing the problems in society that cause people to commit violent crimes, and I seriously doubt this is a heavily conservative crowd. :)

The collective responsibility is to get help for the people that need it. The collective responsibility is to make sure that a person doesn't reach the point of committing such atrocities. Don't blame the thermometer for the temperature.

Its always sad to see people die BUT its FUNNY to see that some people blame video games for whats happening when in FACT the US is by FAR the number one armement selling country in the WOLRD.

In fact the US economy is so great thanks for many good things but also because of all these weapons selling all over the world.

Also everyone can buy guns hell even auto-riffles in the US OMG!!!! and after when a tragedy happens the president himself almost cry and say that the US need to find a solution????

I always feel bad when I see kids or people get killed by a psyco BUT geez before blaming video games LOOK at all the REAL weapons that THEY allow their own people to buy...

Oh yeah 20 people die to a shooting how sad BUT yet MILLIONS die each year around the world becaus eof the same weapons sold by the same contry? cmon...

I played video games and violent ones all my life and I never considered shooting anyone.

It is the moral values of people that has to be addressed. Education is the best solution and the society have to walk the talk. I have seen cases where people go to church and then go home and rape his daughter. I  have seen personally how a pious mother who go to church and then go home and verbally abuse her kids.I strongly believe it is not video games that causes these but it is the society that pressure someone to go beserk and kills.

Things happen for a reason. The shootings in the states, in my opinion are due to psychological stimulus and pressure from something somewhere. Hell, if you take a look at civil war torn Africa, people were masacred every day in outskirt villages. Kids burn or even put to run with a pinless grenade just for amusement. they don't have video games, but they still do it?

If the states were to ban violence on video games, it won't solve anything.

If this was true, that violent video games/movies breed the "events that are happening with youth...then on there account I would be considered a Serial Killer canadite LOL.

7-10years old watching freddy,jason,goolies,hellraiser, mortal kombat, etc..( like many others)

<--Family of 5 that I love to death, and why I bust my ass at work....nuff said {grins}