I am pissed at this liberal spin

Hang with me here for a bit of my history. I will get to why I am pissed in a couple of minutes.
I was in college when ‘’pong’’ first hit the rec room in my college dorm. Two player games then began to proliferate around the country. A variety of games where two people would stand in front of a console and challenge each other to electronic games of sport. They were mesmerizing.
As the market caught on newer games began to emerge. Racing games and jumping games and lots of games that called for lots of perceptive imagination.
By the mid to late 70s, arcades were springing up all around the country offering all these sport games and racing games and a new type of game where two people could shoot at each other with tanks or air planes. Violence in games began to proliferate.

Then an interesting thing happened. The arcade industry began to notice that where in the earlier years two people would come to the arcade with their pocket of quarters ready to spend them all, as the first years went by the fad of arcade games began to wear thin. Instead of people coming in together they began coming in by themselves and would have to find a stranger to play the arcade games with.
At that point the arcade game industry pretty much changed from dual player games to single player games. Among those single player games, shooting games began to show up. Shoot the animals, shoot the aliens etc. Shoot those bad guys.

Enter the home video game era. Hoo boy, pac man, frogger, asteroids, the list goes on. Among them ,war games and more shooting games. On those old consoles with the old graphics they were simplistic and almost funny. I know because I was into them. I felt the draw of the action right there in my own home. Hours spent before the screen, sometimes with friends but all too often alone.

Then I began to notice something weird. I noticed that after having spent some amount of time in a racing game, when I would go outside to drive somewhere it was difficult to completely wash my memory and my driving reactions from the ones I had used while playing the video game. If in the video game I could go faster by running red lights, I was tempted to run red lights in reality. If in the video game you could go faster by knocking other drivers off the road, I felt the same ‘’pull’’ in reality.
But I never did any of that, my driving record remained intact but I did feel the pull in any event.

This came on the heels of other games we played. Intense games. For instance a card game called ‘’bullcrap’’. In this game lying is a central point of the game, mixing truth and lies and hoping not to get caught. When someone else is playing a card you must call bullcrap. Questioning every thing that is said or done in the game. I recall after games driving home seeing a stop light and thinking ‘’bullcrap’’.
We are susceptible to interchanging our emotions and consciousness between fictional games and fact based reality.
All of that of course is from my own history with video games. Opinions and facts may vary.

Over the years I have watched the morphing of home video games and the heavy reliance on first shooter games. With the advancement of graphics and computer power I watched the violence games increase and become more and more intense. Knowing my own reactions to those simpler games I wondered about how these games would affect younger people who played them from childhood, not from college level as I had.
I read psychological papers on the effects of these games and all gave warning to this tendency among some to not be able to hold the game experience to the game itself and indeed there were predictions that in some people the spill over could be deadly. Not just psychological papers but indeed movies pointed out this problem.
And now why I a pissed.
For all this time it has been liberals who have spoken out against the violence in these games and how it has been training not all, but some of our youth. And almost across the board it has been conservatives who have denied that these video games had anything what so ever with the rise of violent mass murders.
But now, with Trumps speech placing blame on video games, many toady Republicans are lining up to echo his words, blaming violent video games for the rise of unbalanced young men striking out in public.

But even that is not what has me pissed. I’m glad to hear this from conservative lips, joining the liberal lips that have been saying it for years. But wait.

Now, since Trump has drawn attention to this problem, the liberal voices have gone silent on the perils of violent video games and indeed have made it a point to ridicule Trump for these statements.

Rather than joining their voices to call out this peril, they have chosen to ridicule it . Scripted speech or not, whether or not Trump and other conservatives even believe it, they have missed the boat of truth in favor of partisan politics.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Hello ! So am I ............

Add the movies and music containing violence they constantly thrust at an audience primarily under 25. Much of it with no reason other than to hold the viewers interest. Once upon a time if there was violence there was reasons behind it and the "good guys" only resorted to it as a final option.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Thank you for that addition. I just did not have enough finger energy to include it

Honestly, growing up a decade after you, I believe these games were made to program us...how to fly a drone, how to kill, etc.

To this day, I still play, but am weary of what I play.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Democrats endorse killing American babies right up to the moment of birth. This should tell you that they're controlled by evil, and cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. Let nothing they do surprise you. NOTHING.

And what about countries other than America? Video games the cause of all the woes in those countries too?

Let's blame the video games and not the parents that let little 8 year old Johnny murder hookers in grand theft auto.

Let's blame the video games and not the parents that let little 12 year old Bobby buy that game that's RATED M for MATURE content and themes.

John Wick has made over half a billion dollars and its just that one dude killing a bunch of people in absurd ways, but lets blame the video games.

GTFO with that #.

If you can't separate video games from reality, maybe you shouldn't ducking play them.

Also seek help.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Democrats endorse killing American babies right up to the moment of birth. This should tell you that they're controlled by evil, and cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. Let nothing they do surprise you. NOTHING.

Ah yes, DEMOCRAT BAD HURRR

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Democrats endorse killing American babies right up to the moment of birth. This should tell you that they're controlled by evil, and cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. Let nothing they do surprise you. NOTHING.

They don't actually do that. Even Democrats who are pro-choice want reasonable limitations upon abortion and only when the foetus is non-viable and will die by natural causes during birth, especially in the cases where the stillbirth will also endanger the life of the mother.

Republicans for Choice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Democrats for Life of America

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Since Colombine, video games have been blamed for violent behavior (prior to that Comics and RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons got blamed too).

Studies have shown that the blaming of video games is a non sequitur. You can blame a lot of things, but the large number of kids (and adults) who play these games and do not go on violent rampages is an indication ,that its a pile of horse droppings to blame them.

The right also blamed the lack of church as a problem here.

What was the problem? At least one of the killers, was a fricking white supremacist. Look right there. All these attacks (indluding the one in March in New Zealand, by and Aussie) have been far right racists.

Look right there for the problem. A culture of hate, a culture of supremacy.

The plight of liberal controlled cities, is proof positive of what they stand for.

New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles... these former shining cities, have been progressively destroyed by decades of liberal socialist governance.

The leftist media abhors, having to report their own failures. So... they blame the "racist" conservatives for disasters that they created.

The President didn't create these rat-infested, feces laden, needle ridden, disease factories... instead, he called out the ones that did. He called attention to the problem, and was called a racist for his efforts.

Conservatives take the collective blame, while the left's elite ruling class amasses tremendous wealth... all on the backs of those they pretend to represent.

Bill De Blasio reportedly funded his wife's "Thrive" initiative, with taxpayer money, to the tune of $1 billion... where did that money go? It certainly didn't go to help New Yorkers... where is the media outcry?

The mainstream media, is no longer any better than white noise...

a reply to: AScrubWhoDied

You need Christ

When I was in college I had this game called Soldier of Fortune 2, it was the most graphic violence I've ever seen in a shooter game before or since.

Loved that game and it's play style. I probably played through the story a dozen times.
I played tons of shooter games and I still think SOF2 was the best single-player shooter game ever.
Better than Return to Castle Wolfenstein even. It was that good.
(I wasn't too into their multiplayer modes).

In real life I've never hurt anyone and I've never even touched a real gun.
I have no desire to own or handle a gun at all.

A game's just a game.
Some are much better than others.

By the way, Wargame Red Dragon is the best RTS game made in the last 15 years.
It's was the last great RTS game before the genre died out.

I grew up during the rise of video games. Both at home and arcades. The first one I remember having an "effect" on me was Halloween for the atari 2600. The one where the babysitter and kids head get stabbed off and they go running around with blood squirting out. What affected me more, and by more I mean vivid scary evil dreams, was scary or gory movies like Halloween.
Video games never made me feel anything but maybe competitive, and a little bit angry(lol) from time to time. I dont believe its just the games, or movies, or music. Its parenting. For me thats plain and simple. A little common sense and smart parenting goes a LONG way.
I suppose video games being very realistic can have an effect on SOME kids, but again, they shouldnt be playing those games and its up to PARENTS to control that. Easier said than done yes, but not impossible.
Stop giving in to tech like its your job. Get out. Do stuff.

a reply to: visitedbythem

Is this anyone in particular? Or just a general statement?

a reply to: theatreboy
I do not know how much of the industry has been developed for purposes of training or brainwashing though for sure some of both, but I think mostly it has just been market driven, which has not always been the best standard for society.

a reply to: carewemust

Nor do i find much of your input to be surprising either. Always Bible driven, I'll give you that at least.

a reply to: AScrubWhoDied

That has been a standard conservative talking point against finding problems with the violence prompted in video games. Of course we can not blame these games for everything that goes bad. It's a combination of things of which these games are only an aspect.

And seeking help for this is exactly what is needed and what from recent Republican speeches should be taking place. We need to deal with this as a mental health problem and not just dismiss it.

I grew up during the arcade era and still a casual player of games. Yes, I like FPS games with gratuitous violence.

I don't think the games by themselves are all that bad. However, I do think they are a contributor.

It is a combination of:

1) Violent images in games, music, and movies where faceless people are gunned down wantonly...
2) Mental illness enhanced by psychotropic drugs
3) Media reporting and hysterical coverage creating copy cats
4) Broken homes and families
5) Easy access to firearms. I support 2nd and don't want further restrictions, but let's be honest about access to firearms being a huge factor

originally posted by: visitedbythem
a reply to: AScrubWhoDied

You need Christ

And it looks like "Christ" needs my money. Where does that leave us?