Fox is screaming that video games are to blame.
Never mind the white supremacist manifesto the guy posted on the white supremacist website that always promotes and praises the white supremacist murderers, never mind that every country in the world has the same video games, but for SOME REASON, doesn’t have the mass shootings we do…
Something else I’ll have to add to that obligatory post about mass shootings. It’s another BS “pay no attention to the availability of powerful firearms” distraction that’s as discredited and played out as disbarred attorney Jack Thompson himself.
Seriously, by this logic South Korea should have mass shootings every day. But for some weird, really weird reason it doesn’t…
I’m not sure violent video games make kids more violent but I’m pretty certain first-person-shooters make kids more deadly. When I was young the most famous mass shooting was the University of Texas tower shooter, Whitman, who was a trained Marine. In those days a despondent edgelord might clumsily cut one or more people before being held down by some meathead jocks (or Chads, i the current parlance). But now these advanced combat simulators are honing these young men’s aggressive actions and, of course, our death-cult culture is providing fuel for our righteous indignation.
I really don’t think the shooter training idea holds much weight particularly in incidents like this one. This was one minute of firing a gun into a crowd in an open street. No training is required for that to be incredibly deadly.
I think it has less to do with games being gun training and more to do with gaming communities being rife with right wing terrorists and enabling a cultural bond over extreme toxic masculinity in a population of young impressionable men who also exist in a society with disgustingly lax gun laws and an unchecked cult of ammosexuals. But sure, it’s the drawings.
Again, you can play first-person shooters in every country in the world. We’re the only one that has – and makes excuses for – these mass shootings. The difference is guns, and an unwillingness on the part of the government to move against terrorist training grounds like 4chan and Fox News.
That’s like blaming the obesity epidemic on Pac-Man. Holding a video game controller is fundamentally different from holding an assault rifle. A First Person Shooter won’t train you to be an expert gunman any more than a Tony Hawk game will turn you into a professional athlete.
Evidently “Mount & Blade” must be very popular over here in the UK? That could be the only possible explanation for stabbings being the big news story over here.
@RickMycroft “Looks like that “keep Americans safe” is working just swell.”, just about as well as the War on Drugs.
They’re just desperately trying to stop anyone from noticing that the manifesto is literally just the Fox News evening lineup’s broadcast talking points, basically word for word.
First: myth busters proved that video game “training” has a marginal effect on real world skill.
Second: I spent 8 years in uniform and qualified as expert on 16 different weapon types. I suck at first person shooters. They are not equatable whatsoever.
Third: NO. Saying stupid non factual shot like this is the same as saying “oh but Trump is kind of right because ya know Baltimore has some crime issues”. FUCK ANYONE WHO ESPOUSES THIS UTTER BULLSHIT. VIDEO GAMES AND REAL WORLD GUN VIOLENCE ARE NOT CONNECTED IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.
There are a number of studies debunking that video games, even violent ones, are responsible for making kids into killers. Shitty people are responsible for doing terrible things, they’ll gravitate towards anything that allows them to sink further into a dark hole. Could be drugs, music, books, etc. Saying that videogames is causing violence doesn’t gel that this is not happening elsewhere in the world. It’s the American culture that’s causing it
Fine. Then teach your viewers how to play tetris. Given the average ability of a fox viewer to think rapidly, the wall should be built with small holes by level 5.
So young men are easily swayed by experiencing pseudo violence in video games but not at all affected by a president spewing hate? Funny how they think that works.
I really doubt that a video game prepares you to use a weapon to kill. The physicality of the gun, the noise, the kickback, the smell, the sight of actual people being hurt - no video game could prepare you for that. And I really doubt that aiming a real gun is that similar to aiming a video game gun. I really don’t think it takes much training to “spray and pray” with a modern semi-auto gun.
(No, I have not fired any sort of gun since I was 14 plinking soda cans with a .22. Nor have I played many first person shooters (I suck at them). But I’ve read plenty about both)
No combat simulators exist on the market. Maybe for fighter aircraft. But the experience of playing a popular FPS[1] is miles apart from even paintball let alone actual combat. It does not teach marksmanship, it does not teach athleticism, it does not teach how to manipulate the firearm effectively, i.e. in every FPS ever[2] you reload by pushing a button. In reality you reload by executing a rather complex sequence of operations which the game is mute about. You can’t even learn about firearms as an abstraction in games because even games which purport to have real guns in them have firearms which do not look, sound, or behave as their real-world counterparts.
An average FPS is about as accurate about how firearms work as an average Hollywood movie, i.e. not even slightly.
The only combat-relevant skill I can imagine FPS games teaching is small unit tactics and communication. No attack has been the result of such tactics.
[1] Actually, currently the most popular FPS games feature fairly cartoonish settings and are even less combat simulators than what I describe in this comment.
[2] Except Reciever which is an obscure arty game and not relevant to this discussion.
A modern gun shoots about as well as the .22, really. The problem is more that it takes absolutely no skill to just point the firearm in the direction of a mass of innocent people and pull the trigger repeatedly. I don’t think these people actually aim all that much.
As others have noted, it’s more likely the toxic culture in fps fandoms, not the games itself. Although I would concede that as fps games get more realistic they may have a desenitizing effect when it comes to violence and hurting others. This doesn’t mean the players will become more violent, though, or better shooters and so on, but rather that having the means to commit violence that at the very least feels realistic, but is completely consequence-free, and being immersed in the sort of toxic masculinity and generally toxic culture in many online communities, in many cases from a very young age, may influence people to various degrees.
There is, via chan 8 it appears, a gamification of death underway. They want to beat the high score.
Other nations play games too. Access to weapons.
Why not both? I absolutley believe that my hundreds/thousands? of hours in a pc flight simulator and my ground school training has given me the skills to fly a cessna to a different airport and safely land. Flight sims also help keep me enthusiastic about flying, keeps me motivated to learn more things, keeps me involved with like minded people, encourages my confidence.
Why wouldn’t a person contemplating killing in RL get the same confidence from killing simulators that I get from flight sims?
I know the christian right went way too far overboard with demonizing music and it is still a deflection tactic today, but I dont think the answer to that is to pretend killing games dont play a part in the larger picture.
