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Our society (and every parent I know) has established that kids are highly impressionable. That’s why so many laws are written to moderate advertising (eg not s

Our society (and every parent I know) has established that kids are highly impressionable. That’s why so many laws are written to moderate advertising (eg not show a camel smoking a cigarette), moderate content (tv and movie ratings) etc. I can’t go a day without people telling me how manipulative social media is on the news for both kids and adult minds. We casually acknowledge entire elections have been manipulated by the content shown to people on television. So what is it about video games that have absolutely zero negative impact on impressionable and unstable minds? Speaking purely for myself, as a life longer gamer (I’m 37), I personally don’t believe video games have inclined me in any way towards violence. I do believe that the idea of handling assault weapons was normalized by video games (it was a non event for me to shoot them at a range when I eventually sought them out), and that trashing cities and committing vandalism became fun. Doesn’t seem like a stretch to me that boys being boys are going to be more inclined to do it, especially without some overarching moral construct to counter balance or (like church).

jakelazaroff 3y ago
Why video games and not movies or TV? Why not books or music? And why is church a positive moral construct? Maybe I want my kid playing Stardew Valley to counteract all the violent fire and brimstone they're getting from the Old Testament. Hell, why not their own history textbooks? France at least one prominent example of a violent revolution that's looked on positively in retrospect! (Of course, when you're the leader of the ruling class, no challenge to the current status quo could possibly be positive in your eyes). The thing with pinning the blame on any one thing like this is that it betrays one's own biases. Macron grew up without video games like we have today, so they're his go-to culprit — it obviously can't be the violent things I grew up with, I turned out fine, didn't I?
- layer8 3y ago
  > Macron grew up without video games like we have today, so they're his go-to culprit Video games were already made a culprit in the 80s and 90s, when Macron was a kid and a teenager (he’s 45). I’m pretty sure he’s aware of that.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Why video games ... ? He said this so people argue about whether or not videogames make kids violent instead of question why cops are shooting unarmed kids. It was a distraction. It appears to be working.
  - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
    > why cops are shooting unarmed kids. Which unarmed kid? A car is a deadly weapon if you've been driving it through crosswalks at high speed. If your family had been in that crosswalk you'd be complaining about the lack of policing.
    - JamesLeonis 3y ago
      So cops should kill every driver they suspect of being dangerous?
      - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
        Every driver who was fleeing at high speed through civilians, and who attempts to do it again, yes. Absolutely. It's literally the time they're supposed to shoot. I'll quote US law here because it's in English, but it's pretty much the same worldwide. > "1-16.200 - DEADLY FORCE - Law enforcement officers and correctional officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person." Fleeing wouldn't be enough, but fleeing in a car after reckless driving that already endangered civilians is.
        JamesLeonis 3y ago
        Were these men speeding through civilians or fleeing dangerously when they were shot? https://thegrio.com/2021/08/29/footage-of-police-shooting-man-who-was-asleep-gilmore/ https://thegrio.com/2021/08/29/footage-of-police-shooting-ma... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy-shooting-vallejo-police-55-shots https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy... Before you answer... Do you want others to make the same excuse as you if you were shot by the cops?
- p3rls 3y ago
  It's too early to say whether the French Revolution was positive or not
  - usui 3y ago
    https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00018657;jsessionid=1964743619F0942115DC9A5108BCF7C4 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > Why video games and not movies or TV? Why not books or music? There's no dichotomy, all of these things effect the people who experience them. Whether this is harmful or for the best is highly subjective, and depends a lot on the specific nature of the experience. But regardless, to say that somebody can read books and not be at all effected by those books is absurd. If that were the case, if reading books were nothing but a NOOP waste of time that had no effect on the reader, then why does our culture encourage people to read? We encourage people to read because books do change people and most people think it's a net positive. Nonetheless, it is possible that books in general are a net positive, but some books might be a negative influence on people (and others, an unusually positive influence.) Video games aren't special in this regard. They, like anything people might experience, will influence those that experience it. Whether this influence is for the better or worse overall is highly subjective (which is why most people aren't very keen on empowering censors who lack nuance.)
hotpotamus 3y ago
Yes, children are impressionable and I don't think that stops at the age of 18, otherwise the biggest tech companies wouldn't be advertising companies. Being repeatedly shot and killed by other humans in virtual format taught me the lesson that other people can be quite skilled at shooting and killing me, presumably in real life as well, and I'd very much like to avoid that in a situation where I can't just press "A" to respawn.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Sounds more like police should be banned from gaming, instead of the children they murder
Clubber 3y ago
All of that may or may not be true, but Macron bringing it up is designed to distract from the fact that a police officer went really aggressive on a 17 year old, then shot him dead when he tried to flee. Apparently this was just a routine traffic check. The kid was Arab, so there is an implied racial aspect to it as well. Here's the video of the actual shooting: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230627-french-police-officer-investigated-after-teenager-shot-dead-in-paris-suburb https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230627-french-police-of... The police of course lied and tried to spin it as the kid was some sort of threat, then the video came out. The kid was unarmed, and the police had is gun drawn and pointed at his head, threatening to shoot him. The driver inched forward and was shot at point blank range. Here's the NYT summary on it. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/france-protests-police-shooting-timeline.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/france-prote... In response to the violence Macron seems to be going full authoritarian to combat it by threatening to cut off social media and whatnot. We've of course seen this by dictators like Putin when he was being criticized for the Ukraine war.
brandonmenc 3y ago
> So what is it about video games that have absolutely zero negative impact on impressionable and unstable minds? And unlike movies and advertising, video games require active participation. Yet they somehow have zero training effect while passively watching advertisements is seemingly universally accepted to be a form of brainwashing. It’s bizarre. FPS are mass shooting training simulators. Full stop. Does everyone who plays FPS become a mass shooter? Obviously not. But find me a school shooter who didn’t obsessively play FPS. It’s nearly impossible.
- pjc50 3y ago
  The actual radicalization of most US mass shooters, plus a couple of international ones of the same ideology, has been through far-right propaganda. It turns up again and again in their manifestoes and target selections, such as Anders Breivik. Conversely much of Europe's really nasty political violence pre-dates video games. Europe is probably more peaceful now than at any time since .. 1914? (There have also been Islamist mass murders in Europe; it's the 18th anniversary of the London Tube bombings. However that seems to have finally fallen off? I would love a good analysis as to why)
  - brandonmenc 3y ago
    > political violence pre-dates video games I'm talking more about things like school shootings, which were pretty much non-existent before the invention of the FPS.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      School shootings are also quite often political violence, it's just that there's a conspiracy to not recognise them as such. As well as to ensure the continued mass availability of weapons in the US. Example of political school shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massa... Example of non-political school shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre ; resulted in the handgun ban and no more school shootings.
shadowgovt 3y ago
They're not modeling video games. If anything, they're modeling the BLM protests and riots in the United States. Mirrored circumstances, mirrored activities. And good on them. The comfortable should be uncomfortable in a society where the police can just shoot an unarmed young man in the face without consequence.
- aodonnell2536 3y ago
  Do you really claim that it’s good for people to feel unsafe in their own society? I find this comment particularly intriguing given that your username is ‘shadowgovt’
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    I claim a society where the cops can shoot an unarmed young man in the face with no repercussions is an unsafe society, and if people have convinced themselves that it couldn't happen to them, or that oppression of their neighbors is not oppression they need concern themselves with, they need to understand otherwise.
    - aodonnell2536 3y ago
      When framed as such I’m in agreement with you. A police state is mostly beneficial only to those who fund the police. That being said, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the riots are a good thing
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        Agreed. Society's checks and balances breaking down so far that people feel compelled to start fires and wreck cars because they doubt the system can be changed is generally not a good thing. I'm less familiar with the situation in France, but in the US at least I'm low on alternative approaches that are likely to succeed.
        LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
liorben-david 3y ago
Children are able to distinguish between video games and reality. Social media influence comes from real people(Or at least appears to come from real people), so children learn behavior. Children playing violent games is not new in the slightest. Instead of playing with branches they now play with joysticks
- Foobar8568 3y ago
  Most kids yes, but for the generation who are living in their echo chamber, without anyone telling them to stop, without authority reference or brainwashed that is a different god, they consider life is a big GTA or secular laws don't apply to them. You can see that on YT, TikTok, Reddit etc, and this anywhere in the World. Hell, 5-6y old were playing squid games last year during recess.
mcpackieh 3y ago
I think you're basically right; to a substantial degree, people are what they eat. All the media people consume effects the people that consume it, nobody is left untouched by what they watch, read, play, etc. This is true of all video games, all books, all movies, all hobbies and recreations, all school lessons and life experiences.. everything that people experience has an impact on them. The dogmatic insistence that video games cannot effect kids is a sort of internet meme that formed in reaction to people like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton trying to regulate video games in a way that a lot of people, particularly young people on the internet, didn't agree with. That's an understandable reaction and I also think those would-be censors were going too far, but the counter-reaction meme of video games having no effect on players has also been going too far. Human minds are not inviolable bastions of individuality, we're all constantly being changed by what we experience. Regardless, Macron blaming these riots on video games is farcical. It's obvious that isn't what's going on here but Macron isn't going to say the quiet part outloud, so he'll latch onto any other excuse no matter how inane.
ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
>That’s why so many laws are written to moderate advertising (eg not show a camel smoking a cigarette), moderate content (tv and movie ratings) etc. It's a good argument, and perhaps once we started down that path we were always going to get to this point. I've had the same thought about gambling being banned on twitch so minors can't be influenced by it. But then they can click on one of the many GTA RPers role playing as a gang member. I actually do agree gambling is bad, but I think this all just proves the slippery slope is real. As soon as you draw even a single line, you provide arguments for drawing another.

jakelazaroff 3y ago

Why video games and not movies or TV? Why not books or music? And why is church a positive moral construct? Maybe I want my kid playing Stardew Valley to counteract all the violent fire and brimstone they're getting from the Old Testament. Hell, why not their own history textbooks? France at least one prominent example of a violent revolution that's looked on positively in retrospect! (Of course, when you're the leader of the ruling class, no challenge to the current status quo could possibly be positive in your eyes). The thing with pinning the blame on any one thing like this is that it betrays one's own biases. Macron grew up without video games like we have today, so they're his go-to culprit — it obviously can't be the violent things I grew up with, I turned out fine, didn't I?

layer8 3y ago
> Macron grew up without video games like we have today, so they're his go-to culprit Video games were already made a culprit in the 80s and 90s, when Macron was a kid and a teenager (he’s 45). I’m pretty sure he’s aware of that.
dfxm12 3y ago
Why video games ... ? He said this so people argue about whether or not videogames make kids violent instead of question why cops are shooting unarmed kids. It was a distraction. It appears to be working.
- LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
  > why cops are shooting unarmed kids. Which unarmed kid? A car is a deadly weapon if you've been driving it through crosswalks at high speed. If your family had been in that crosswalk you'd be complaining about the lack of policing.
  - JamesLeonis 3y ago
    So cops should kill every driver they suspect of being dangerous?
    - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago
      Every driver who was fleeing at high speed through civilians, and who attempts to do it again, yes. Absolutely. It's literally the time they're supposed to shoot. I'll quote US law here because it's in English, but it's pretty much the same worldwide. > "1-16.200 - DEADLY FORCE - Law enforcement officers and correctional officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person." Fleeing wouldn't be enough, but fleeing in a car after reckless driving that already endangered civilians is.
      - JamesLeonis 3y ago
        Were these men speeding through civilians or fleeing dangerously when they were shot? https://thegrio.com/2021/08/29/footage-of-police-shooting-man-who-was-asleep-gilmore/ https://thegrio.com/2021/08/29/footage-of-police-shooting-ma... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy-shooting-vallejo-police-55-shots https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy... Before you answer... Do you want others to make the same excuse as you if you were shot by the cops?
p3rls 3y ago
It's too early to say whether the French Revolution was positive or not
- usui 3y ago
  https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00018657;jsessionid=1964743619F0942115DC9A5108BCF7C4 https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...
mcpackieh 3y ago
> Why video games and not movies or TV? Why not books or music? There's no dichotomy, all of these things effect the people who experience them. Whether this is harmful or for the best is highly subjective, and depends a lot on the specific nature of the experience. But regardless, to say that somebody can read books and not be at all effected by those books is absurd. If that were the case, if reading books were nothing but a NOOP waste of time that had no effect on the reader, then why does our culture encourage people to read? We encourage people to read because books do change people and most people think it's a net positive. Nonetheless, it is possible that books in general are a net positive, but some books might be a negative influence on people (and others, an unusually positive influence.) Video games aren't special in this regard. They, like anything people might experience, will influence those that experience it. Whether this influence is for the better or worse overall is highly subjective (which is why most people aren't very keen on empowering censors who lack nuance.)

hotpotamus 3y ago

Yes, children are impressionable and I don't think that stops at the age of 18, otherwise the biggest tech companies wouldn't be advertising companies. Being repeatedly shot and killed by other humans in virtual format taught me the lesson that other people can be quite skilled at shooting and killing me, presumably in real life as well, and I'd very much like to avoid that in a situation where I can't just press "A" to respawn.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Sounds more like police should be banned from gaming, instead of the children they murder

Clubber 3y ago

All of that may or may not be true, but Macron bringing it up is designed to distract from the fact that a police officer went really aggressive on a 17 year old, then shot him dead when he tried to flee. Apparently this was just a routine traffic check. The kid was Arab, so there is an implied racial aspect to it as well. Here's the video of the actual shooting: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230627-french-police-officer-investigated-after-teenager-shot-dead-in-paris-suburb https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230627-french-police-of... The police of course lied and tried to spin it as the kid was some sort of threat, then the video came out. The kid was unarmed, and the police had is gun drawn and pointed at his head, threatening to shoot him. The driver inched forward and was shot at point blank range. Here's the NYT summary on it. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/france-protests-police-shooting-timeline.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/world/europe/france-prote... In response to the violence Macron seems to be going full authoritarian to combat it by threatening to cut off social media and whatnot. We've of course seen this by dictators like Putin when he was being criticized for the Ukraine war.

brandonmenc 3y ago

> So what is it about video games that have absolutely zero negative impact on impressionable and unstable minds? And unlike movies and advertising, video games require active participation. Yet they somehow have zero training effect while passively watching advertisements is seemingly universally accepted to be a form of brainwashing. It’s bizarre. FPS are mass shooting training simulators. Full stop. Does everyone who plays FPS become a mass shooter? Obviously not. But find me a school shooter who didn’t obsessively play FPS. It’s nearly impossible.

pjc50 3y ago
The actual radicalization of most US mass shooters, plus a couple of international ones of the same ideology, has been through far-right propaganda. It turns up again and again in their manifestoes and target selections, such as Anders Breivik. Conversely much of Europe's really nasty political violence pre-dates video games. Europe is probably more peaceful now than at any time since .. 1914? (There have also been Islamist mass murders in Europe; it's the 18th anniversary of the London Tube bombings. However that seems to have finally fallen off? I would love a good analysis as to why)
- brandonmenc 3y ago
  > political violence pre-dates video games I'm talking more about things like school shootings, which were pretty much non-existent before the invention of the FPS.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    School shootings are also quite often political violence, it's just that there's a conspiracy to not recognise them as such. As well as to ensure the continued mass availability of weapons in the US. Example of political school shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massa... Example of non-political school shooting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre ; resulted in the handgun ban and no more school shootings.

shadowgovt 3y ago

They're not modeling video games. If anything, they're modeling the BLM protests and riots in the United States. Mirrored circumstances, mirrored activities. And good on them. The comfortable should be uncomfortable in a society where the police can just shoot an unarmed young man in the face without consequence.

aodonnell2536 3y ago
Do you really claim that it’s good for people to feel unsafe in their own society? I find this comment particularly intriguing given that your username is ‘shadowgovt’
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  I claim a society where the cops can shoot an unarmed young man in the face with no repercussions is an unsafe society, and if people have convinced themselves that it couldn't happen to them, or that oppression of their neighbors is not oppression they need concern themselves with, they need to understand otherwise.
  - aodonnell2536 3y ago
    When framed as such I’m in agreement with you. A police state is mostly beneficial only to those who fund the police. That being said, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the riots are a good thing
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Agreed. Society's checks and balances breaking down so far that people feel compelled to start fires and wreck cars because they doubt the system can be changed is generally not a good thing. I'm less familiar with the situation in France, but in the US at least I'm low on alternative approaches that are likely to succeed.
      - LawTalkingGuy 3y ago

liorben-david 3y ago

Children are able to distinguish between video games and reality. Social media influence comes from real people(Or at least appears to come from real people), so children learn behavior. Children playing violent games is not new in the slightest. Instead of playing with branches they now play with joysticks

Foobar8568 3y ago
Most kids yes, but for the generation who are living in their echo chamber, without anyone telling them to stop, without authority reference or brainwashed that is a different god, they consider life is a big GTA or secular laws don't apply to them. You can see that on YT, TikTok, Reddit etc, and this anywhere in the World. Hell, 5-6y old were playing squid games last year during recess.

mcpackieh 3y ago

I think you're basically right; to a substantial degree, people are what they eat. All the media people consume effects the people that consume it, nobody is left untouched by what they watch, read, play, etc. This is true of all video games, all books, all movies, all hobbies and recreations, all school lessons and life experiences.. everything that people experience has an impact on them. The dogmatic insistence that video games cannot effect kids is a sort of internet meme that formed in reaction to people like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton trying to regulate video games in a way that a lot of people, particularly young people on the internet, didn't agree with. That's an understandable reaction and I also think those would-be censors were going too far, but the counter-reaction meme of video games having no effect on players has also been going too far. Human minds are not inviolable bastions of individuality, we're all constantly being changed by what we experience. Regardless, Macron blaming these riots on video games is farcical. It's obvious that isn't what's going on here but Macron isn't going to say the quiet part outloud, so he'll latch onto any other excuse no matter how inane.

ApolloFortyNine 3y ago

>That’s why so many laws are written to moderate advertising (eg not show a camel smoking a cigarette), moderate content (tv and movie ratings) etc. It's a good argument, and perhaps once we started down that path we were always going to get to this point. I've had the same thought about gambling being banned on twitch so minors can't be influenced by it. But then they can click on one of the many GTA RPers role playing as a gang member. I actually do agree gambling is bad, but I think this all just proves the slippery slope is real. As soon as you draw even a single line, you provide arguments for drawing another.