Downtown Rumbles: Sharp's Scotch Bar

[Cody]

Okay, then that's fair. I'm still not fully decided, as further research might show something different, but that does shade things differently for me now. Thank you for the clarification.

Mea culpa.

Oh I agree. There still may be research that suggest otherwise. For all we know there could be a secret government group using video games to brainwash us into being their unwitting slaves the moment they say "execute order 66" or something. For now, I'll keep up to date with the latest research on the topic.

[The Arbiter]

Side note - thanks to Arbiter's comment, I've had a look at further stuff, and will warrant that there's certainly weighting these days toward video games NOT causing issues.

Live and learn, I suppose.

Yay, I did a thing!

Lol, studies are weird. Its good to check up what's peer reviewed and so forth* from time to time. Another study suggested eggs are as bad for you as plutonium. >_>

*obviously I know you are keenly aware of this given your career etc. I'm mostly just ranting in general, not calling you out.

[Guy1]

[Guy1]

[Guy1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUM5srwajjY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eapHKzu-ZX8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2FOituFIjk

[Hazard]

I feel the longer episodes aren't quite working out. I mean, I get why they did it, since youtube is less likely to take them down like this, and boy, was it taking them down fast before, but now they have a bit too much padding.

[Guy1]

[Lord Falcon]

...I'd really rather be spending what precious time I have this afternoon writing more forum RPG posts, but this continues to need correcting.

We are not sheep. Nor are we omniscient gods. Propaganda and marketing theory has evolved by leaps and bounds over time. I had to study a lot of this for Mass Communications in undergrad. It used to be that people thought propaganda was this super-powerful tool that would unite the country no matter what. But this ignored not just individual people, but local cultures and changing technology as well. With more ways for the individual to access their own information, the propaganda theory started to lose steam. People started thinking that it would barely work if at all anymore, around the time of the Vietnam War. This too proved to be an exaggeration.

Media is a factor in how we perceive the world. There is no magic line separating politics from comics, documentaries from science fiction. What matters is what messages penetrate our consciousness and get us to take them seriously. There are plenty of messages to be had in comics, some which the writers themselves never intend to make because perception is funny like that. Media is born from our culture, feeds into our culture, and is born anew. It doesn't shape our entire world view because there are other inputs and we don't always take it seriously anyway. Sometimes we have no opinion about something, and sometimes we have a pre-established view that's going to take a lot to change. But it's there, affecting society and how we perceive ourselves and our social structures. Did the film industry single-handedly make being gay acceptable in the US? No. But showing positive portrayals of such people opened quite a few people's minds to the possibility and helped to show people how being gay could be seen as normal.

Do video games make people more violent? No, because people generally have some balance to their distribution of inputs into what informs their world view, and people have or devlelop the good sense to differentiate the reality of shooting people from the fantasy.

Is it worse when sexism happens to a woman, or racism to a black man? The answer is yes. Except that in South Africa, the opposite is starting to be true. Power structures dictate leverage and the harm the majority can do to the minority. That doesn't mean sexism against men or racism against whites is acceptable, merely that the harm it creates is not as acute. Of course women can find scantily clad men sexy. That's not the point. I think Wonder Woman is sexy as hell. It's about, for me at least, immersion and taking each gender seriously because these are the fictional heroes who are going to help inform (but not solely inform) our views on what ideal people are.

[Cody]

Do video games make people more violent? No, because people generally have some balance to their distribution of inputs into what informs their world view, and people have or devlelop the good sense to differentiate the reality of shooting people from the fantasy.

Exactly, just like how a cartoon character being drawn sexy, or powerful doesn't really make anyone more sexist because people "generally have some balance to their distribution of inputs into what informs their world view, and people have or develop the good sense to differentiate" the difference of a comicbook superhero, and a real person. Much like how research into video games(which are far more engaging than comicbooks since you are in the middle of the action)shows no effects on the players aggression, or how they view women(German researchers found this).

(not trying to mock you, but that this argument works for comicbooks too)

If these were newspapers, that would be different(see previous racist depictions of African Americans being compared to Monkeys)as newspapers are supposed to present facts, and even opinion pieces are taken seriously as a form of intelligent source(even if that isn't always the case).

As you said; we are not sheep. But we don't have to be omniscient gods to have our views so easily altered by comicbook superheroes to the point we see each other so differently.

[Len Ikari145]

Psycho-Chad is becoming my fan favorite in this series.

[Guy1]

[Cody]

I missed this, but I'd say that character archetype is an accurate portrayal as to the type of antagonist I would be.

[Lord Falcon]

Exactly, just like how a cartoon character being drawn sexy, or powerful doesn't really make anyone more sexist because people "generally have some balance to their distribution of inputs into what informs their world view, and people have or develop the good sense to differentiate" the difference of a comicbook superhero, and a real person. Much like how research into video games(which are far more engaging than comicbooks since you are in the middle of the action)shows no effects on the players aggression, or how they view women(German researchers found this).

(not trying to mock you, but that this argument works for comicbooks too)

If these were newspapers, that would be different(see previous racist depictions of African Americans being compared to Monkeys)as newspapers are supposed to present facts, and even opinion pieces are taken seriously as a form of intelligent source(even if that isn't always the case).

As you said; we are not sheep. But we don't have to be omniscient gods to have our views so easily altered by comicbook superheroes to the point we see each other so differently.

As someone with a rounded education and a relative bounty of resources now, I can agree about that. But people live lives outside of my bubble. People perceive information in ways I never would, and come from backgrounds and cultures I don't. Many of these cultures and subcultures have biases that can be overcome or reinforced, just as I have biases that may be overcome or reinforced. I have a hispanic friend, perhaps the closest friend I have in the world. Great guy, extremely smart, deep thinker, strong intellectual integrity. Really liberal views on gay rights and women's rights, yet nothing at all for the transgender community.

Your own story about how boys in your neighborhood viewed masculinity and how portrayals of Batman and Superman affected you - the comics weren't the main source. Of course they weren't. But from your telling it seems they reinforced an existing bias.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Just got brand new tires put on Monday.

One of them just blew on the highway.

[Cody]

Your own story about how boys in your neighborhood viewed masculinity and how portrayals of Batman and Superman affected you - the comics weren't the main source. Of course they weren't. But from your telling it seems they reinforced an existing bias.

Well I have also always had depression growing up(even as a child I had some suicidal tendencies, as I mentioned a while back), as well as being born with ADHD, and we tend to take things more personally than most(as I am sure most of you have noticed from me by now). So I was also easy to affect. This of course comes the question of how it would affect most people, and how it impacts those with mental illnesses such as myself. As difficult as my problems have been for me, there are those who have it much, much, much worse. These are the type of people that I can see being affected by comics and the like, much like how I did. So while it may have reinforced my views of myself(as you have correctly pointed out)the question is if it would have the same impact if I hadn't had the problems I had. I mean have any of you felt bad about your bodies when you were kids just because a comicbook character was built in a way that no human could possibly obtain without the perfect genes+drugs+surgery? Even if you were bullied?

It's much like the shootings going about in America, where it's almost always a mentally ill person doing the shooting. They were affected by things that people such and you and I would not be affected by. So when you think if someone is being changed by games and/or comicbooks, you would also need to wonder if the problem was because of comicbooks/video games, or if it wasn't already there in the persons mind in the first place and would they be affected if the problems weren't already there?

Just got brand new tires put on Monday.

One of them just blew on the highway.

That's shitty. Was it a defect so you can get your money back? Or shitty luck and you ran over a nail on the road or something?