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This article presents one of those ironies about human society: how as much as we promote working things out without violence, we have that inner craving to jus
by vtange 10y ago
This article presents one of those ironies about human society: how as much as we promote working things out without violence, we have that inner craving to just see the good guys to blow the baddies away. It's almost like fast food, in fact.
And it's not just movies. You see it in many major video games too. Take Mass Effect for example; You could play as the most loving, all-tolerating paragon character in that game but in the end there are baddies that you have to shoot, not love/tolerate.
- dlss 10y agoI don't really see the irony. Humans are pack animals; love/tolerance is for the in-group, cruelty for the out-group. The only people I know who don't match that description are basically lacking an in-group.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pps43 10y agoI would say that video games affect people's choices more than TV or movies. For example, gun ranges usually have Desert Eagle for rent, but not S&W M&P. In real life Desert Eagle is pretty rare because it is completely impractical, while S&W M&P is popular with civilians, police, and competition shooters. But in video games the situation is reversed - gamers know Desert Eagle and ask for it when they come to the range.
- icebraining 10y agoThere are many, many films and TV shows starring the Desert Eagle, though: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle Besides, there's a third possibility: that the Desert Eagle is simply a "cooler" weapon than the M&P, and hence chosen by gun ranges users and by film and video game producers for the same reason.
- pps43 10y agoThat's partly because M&P hasn't been around that long. Among recent movies (released after 2005 when M&P was created), imfdb lists 10 with DE and 16 with M&P. TV is 11 DE vs. 23 M&P, and video games 9 DE to 1 M&P. So if you think that movies and TV shape demand, you would expect to see more demand for M&P at the ranges. In reality the distribution of guns people ask for at the ranges is a lot closer to what's in video games than in movies/TV. There are many "cool" guns, but if they're not in video games, nobody cares.
- s_m_t 10y agoCounter point: Running a compelling simulation of a shoot out only requires a handful of vectors in memory and a couple of vector operations per frame. Running a compelling simulation of a social interaction is impossible given our current tech.