Does violent media cause violent behavior?

SacredWarrior

Umbra Witch
As expected with the latest mass shooting, there are people blaming violent media for the shooter's actions. Mainly Donald Trump. Which brings up the current question. Does violent media cause violent behavior?


I don't think that it can by itself. If a child does something outrageous like fly to another state (this actually happened I think) or they end up killing one of their parents because they took away a game the child was addicted to (this happened too), it's pretty easy to see where the blame should lie.

Basically it's the same scapegoating trend that we see all the time since Columbine. If only common sense wasn't so rare that it's a super power......
 
To be honest, It's mostly due to how easy it is to influence said person that is seeing said content. People just immediately assume that people do bad things due to what they are watching / playing just because of the content in said game / whatever it is they are watching. If someone is really easy to influence / persuade, then that would be pretty predictable to see that it would be the case.

It's really silly how people immediately push the blame towards Video Games just because they contain violent content and 18+ stuff.
 
Violent media? No. It may desensitize you over time but when the real life violence begins it's a completely different story. You may be trained to be OK with the idea of it, but almost everyone is going to have a different set of reactions for fantasy and reality. Media glorifying violent sociopaths going on shooting sprees and sympathizing with them is the problem.

Their lack of character isn't ever brought up, it's always some sort of deflection, blaming someone else for what they've done. Everything needs a spin to keep viewers tuned in so they can get that sweet ad revenue. The pedestal these people are put on by media elevates them from common violent psychopaths to kindred spirits of the downtrodden everywhere. Instead of shaming the perpetrator of the crime and not trying to make a martyr out of them for their story, they use the misery to spin it into this week's agenda as they've always done since the early 70's, to make you think the world's a horrible, terrible place, keep you angry, scared, and keep you hooked on their channel or publication. There's no big wars, the government bombing foreigners is old news, Americans don't care about other countries, there's no new disease to get in hysterics over, so they have to fabricate their own material.

Real reporting takes effort and accountability, a random person having a public meltdown in front of a camera is a cheaper way to fill the empty space. Shameful.
 
Here's the way I see it.

Violent media does NOT cause violent behavior in-of itself. However, it's also important to remember that things aren't as clear cut as a simple 'yes/no' answer. Most adults can tell the difference between a violent shooter where they viciously execute foes by the thousands and filing TPS reports. However, being exposed to certain behaviors and attitudes, especially without grounding, will lead to said behaviors being seen as 'acceptable'. You see people cursing a lot in games in casual manners and you can slowly come to accept that such language is acceptable. Play a lot of GTA and, especially if you don't have enough real-life grounding, you'll start to lean towards attitudes and sympathies shown in the games. Play a lot of games with strong female leads, you may start to see women as being entirely equal to men and their differences between the two being effectively cosmetic. Likewise, if you play a lot of games where the genders are distinctly inequal and it wouldn't be surprising to see someone start to favor one over the other.

However, adults, teens, and even children are usually capable of telling the difference between fantasy and reality. Even if you become more pre-disposed to commit car theft 99.99% of people who play GTA would never even consider it just because they played GTA. But that 0.01% is the percent everyone flips out about. Because there are people out there whom are mentally unstable. That anything could push them over the edge, and that video games may not have even been the final push, is irrelevant in the public eye. That little Timmy was a crazy nut that everybody in school avoided and constantly listened to songs about death and violence while cutting out the eyes of female classmates photos and the heads off of male classmates photos while living in a household where his father abused his sister and his mother threw empty beerbottles while cursing the day he was born gets shoved aside in favor of noting that he obsessively played CoD and acted in the worst ways possible.
 
Violence has existed for as long as humans have been around and especially since the dawn of entertainment, whether that's from books, film, music, etc. To have freedom of expression, you must run the risk of being offensive in order to maintain the purpose of your art, even if it's combative to an opposing stance. That violence creeping into the real world is on the behalf of the audience or how they are brought up/exposed to these different themes.
 
Honestly, I believe that it isn’t the media that makes people violent, but the urge for violence that makes the media. So games that could be considered violent, are a way for people who feel the need to let anger out or just be straight out violent to blow off steam. But on the other hand, that doesn’t mean in the wrong proportions on an impressionable mind, that said violent media cannot cause violence, it is just less common.
 
Humanity has always wanted to find something to blame tragic events on. It helps people to rationalize and give them a bogeyman to point at and say 'that's what caused all of this!' In some cases if not controlled or talked down/debated, such attitudes can turn from sheer stupidity/bullheadedness into dangerous territory and possibly even witch hunts towards the perceived 'enemy.'

In less extreme cases, you get events like the forming of the ESRB when concerned lawmakers/citizens believed that video games like Lethal Enforcers, Night Trap, and Mortal Kombat were negatively effecting our youth. Companies like Nintendo threw their competitors under the bus and it reflects in the footage of the meetings: SEGA's rep got shut down constantly and some of it's people weren't even allowed to speak. The fact that the rep shot himself in the foot multiple times didn't help either.

But rather than end up hurting people, consumers wanted more of the aforementioned games. Night Trap was a terrible game but it gained popularity through the controversy and is actually getting an HD re release soon. A lot of the times with cases like 'media is violent' it's watchdog guardians who don't know what they're talking about and don't bother getting anybody who's actually playing the game's opinion. One of the creators for Night Trap actually asked Jack Thompson if he ever actually played the game

"Senator, if I may...Have you actually played Night Trap?"

"I don't need to. I know it's nothing more than filth"

Even the video game companies themselves realized that censoring their games would only hurt themselves in the long run. SEGA may have gotten their rear end chewed out at the Senate hearings but it was the Genesis version of MK1 that got people's money, not Nintendo's watered down bloodless version. Which is why after the formation of the ESRB, people quieted down on 'violent games affecting our youth' for a while. Cue Manhunt released by Rockstar in the early 2000s.

A teenager in the UK murders his friend and the police find that he owned a copy of Manhunt. Jack Thompson immediately jumps on this and threatens to take Rockstar Games(Manhunt's publisher) to court to try and get Manhunt banned. Some countries like Australia never released any of the Manhunt games at all and owning them unless you pirate is illegal. Rockstar rode the wave of controversy this kicked up however and they ended up making enough cash from Manhunt to make a sequel, again likely due to people hearing about it 'being the game that caused a murder' and so on in the news and wanting to see it for themselves.

Do I personally believe that playing Manhunt provoked that youth to murder his friend? No. It's extremely likely that to immediately jump to murder after playing the game that youth already had a series of mental issues that weren't properly addressed before something tragic like that occurred. People like Jack Thompson want an enemy, something to point at and put all the blame on when we should really be looking at issues of mental health and the like and getting people the help they need instead of just 'putting the blame on games.'
 
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