Pornography or Erotica?

[SimonDoom]

We have a massive database of young people playing violent video games since the early 1990s, when first person shooter video games first appeared. My kids played violent video games. I've played violent video games.

There doesn't seem to be any evidentiary support for the idea that these games increase violence. Violence in the USA has dropped significantly since 1993, despite what lots of people seem to think.

 

[Statius]

'But you gotta blame someone when you're all in confusion' - Red Rider

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Violence in the USA has dropped significantly since 1993, despite what lots of people seem to think.

More lead, more murder. Less lead, less murder.

'But you gotta blame someone when you're all in confusion' - Red Rider

A writer called Caroline Fraser blames the Rockefellers and Guggenheims for the violent behavior in the USA.

She's done vast research into the correlation between violent behavior and neurological damage associated with high levels of environmental pollutants in the blood (lead, asbestos, arsenic etc.); her latest book, 'Murderland', shows how America's industrial practices created America's serial killers.

To quote Joyce Carol Oates's review :

Fraser isn’t shy about identifying the progenitors of “America’s killing fields”—those areas of the United States most polluted by mining, refining, and heavy industry that have also, surely not coincidentally, spawned a nightmare cast of sexual sadist–psychopaths, including the notorious Ted Bundy (Tacoma, Washington), Dennis Rader/BTK (southeastern Kansas—part of the “lead belt”), Richard Ramirez (El Paso, Texas), the unidentified Zodiac Killer (somewhere in California), and many others best relegated to a footnote. But these killers are small fry, mere amateurs set beside the multimillionaire purveyors of environmental toxins: “It takes two great American family fortunes to build a city of serial killers: the Rockefellers and the Guggenheims.”

 

[LargoKitt]

@DEFCOM5, et al,
Surely, my most respected colleagues, we're not going to allow ourselves to get roped into that, "video games create mass killers and porn movies create rapists" argument. The fact of the matter is that there is no rhyme nor reason, save for aberrant social thinking on the part of an individual, that is responsible for these things? They are occurrences that exist the world over for many different reasons. To attribute either to a single cause or influence is not a rational conclusion.

I play violent video games but for me they are simply that - games. I write erotic literature with no more thought of going out and attacking a young lady than I would entertain chopping my own right hand off! Does that make me aberrant? An exception to the norm in some way? I don't believe so.
Deepest respects,
D.

Going for cause and effect is mighty facile. But what concerns me is not ramping up violent behavior it's the damping down or 'normalizing' it. Parallel example: A couple of decades ago a police or medical TV show might have a few seconds of a gruesome corpse. Now we cut back to it again and again, show the bot fly larvae crawling in it, maybe even reenact how the gore happened. We played 'cops and robbers' as kids. But today's kids may have seen hundreds of hours of shootouts and chases and fights in closeup detail, in their bedrooms. "it's just fun and fantasy on a screen..." Most people's 'reality' is through a screen these days. Where are we right now? (And *so much everything* seems to scream for attention...and then ask for money.)

 

[LargoKitt]

They do here in Oz - same criteria as for movies, with G, PG, M, MA and R. And X if you're in Canberra or the Northern Territory.

The ratings cover both violence and sex.

Does anyone in OZ discuss why sex is as 'dangerous' as violence?

 

[LargoKitt]

Europe has the PEGI board. USA has the ESRB. Both do clarify if the game has depictions of sex, violence, profanity, drug use...

And at what age are 'kids' not supposed to watch violence?

 

[KittyOfSteele]

And at what age are 'kids' not supposed to watch violence?

A 13-year-old student once asked me if it was okay to have a girlfriend at his age. I'll give you the same answer I gave him: that's not up for me to tell you, you gotta ask your parents. In this case, since you're the concerned parent about your kids, then that's up for you to decide.

I'm a libertine. I am the worst arbiter of morality to ask that question to.

 

[LargoKitt]

A 13-year-old student once asked me if it was okay to have a girlfriend at his age. I'll give you the same answer I gave him: that's not up for me to tell you, you gotta ask your parents. In this case, since you're the concerned parent about your kids, then that's up for you to decide.

I'm a libertine. I am the worst arbiter of morality to ask that question to.

My son grew up loving video games, first in arcades, then on computers. D&D too. Now he is somewhat famous for being part of them. Ya reap what ya...

 

[ElectricBlue]

Does anyone in OZ discuss why sex is as 'dangerous' as violence?

The censorship criteria isn't the same - one relates to the sexual content, the other relates to violent content. There's no suggestion of "equivalence."

 

[DeMont]

Going for cause and effect is mighty facile. But what concerns me is not ramping up violent behavior it's the damping down or 'normalizing' it. Parallel example: A couple of decades ago a police or medical TV show might have a few seconds of a gruesome corpse. Now we cut back to it again and again, show the bot fly larvae crawling in it, maybe even reenact how the gore happened. We played 'cops and robbers' as kids. But today's kids may have seen hundreds of hours of shootouts and chases and fights in closeup detail, in their bedrooms. "it's just fun and fantasy on a screen..." Most people's 'reality' is through a screen these days. Where are we right now? (And *so much everything* seems to scream for attention...and then ask for money.)

@LargoKitt,
Haven't been in Oz since 2013 so I'm not sure what the current status is there. I agree, wholeheartedly, with you about the old "Dragnet" style, or "Adam 12" shows as opposed to the current "Law and Order" crop. I believe it's called "Shlock effect" and is used to make a grab for ratings, thus money. Much like current, trending, television (U.S.) is starting to be more "open" with LGBTQIA content. I mean, seriously, did Perry Mason EVER get it on with Della Street? I seriously suspect he was not "into" girls!

I would imagine that, without too much effort, one could search up "learned papers" on the psychology of these occurrences.
Deepest respects,
D.