fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2818 ]

[ SECRET POST #2818 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2818 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Why doesn't violence video games cause violence, but the constant objectification of women in media causes realistic expectations for women. I don't get that.

I think videogames cause the same amount of violence as it does misogyny. Meaning 0.

I think the difference is that violence in video games is generally not praised as good and right and proper. Everyone socially well-adjusted knows violence is usually wrong and a bad thing, self-defense and such excepted. People are taught not to be violent. Society frowns upon violence in general.

Meanwhile, objectification of women is supported by most of society. People laugh at ugly chicks and fat chicks or any woman that isn't sexually attractive. Parts of society try to teach women to love themselves no matter how they look, yes, but they're the vast minority and when most of the world factors physical appearance and/or sexual desirability as one of the major values of a woman... it's different.

Yeah. people also laugh at ugly guys and fat guys. That's media. People like to see the prettiest/most handsome people. Everyone else is a punchline. Get used to it. No one wants to see Steve Buscemi play Thor.

Ugly guys and fat guys always get the hot girl at the end, though. Comparatively, there are extremely few media depictions of the fat or ugly girl getting the guy at the end, or getting anything in the end. Unless she wins by losing weight and becoming beautiful enough to be acceptable.

I'm not saying men are immune to being mocked, which they aren't: they're judged for height as well as weight and facial features, everybody is judged about that.

But that wasn't the point. My point was that pointing out that violence in video games, where violence in real life is heavily frowned upon by most of society outside of specific areas like martial arts and such, is different and incomparable to something like idealized physical appearance which is supported by society. The difference is in how "okay with it" society is.

this is why I love Ugly Betty (the American version, not the original where Betty transforms into a supermodel and then finds love)

I dunno, I'd watch Buscemi as Thor.

Being ugly and fat isn't usually all those guys are, though.

Whereas beauty/desirability for women is seen as worthy above and beyond things like intelligence or morality.

And how dare you, Steve Buscemi should totally play Thor.

I think media does influence people, I just do not think it's a direct influnce like see violence = do violence. But I do think certain images/stories/tropes that are prominent do subtly influence your thinking process over time.

I don't think the media can create attitudes, but it can certainly normalize them. The problem comes if this is harmful, like cowboy cops being treated as heroes by the media. Then you've got a situation where people might occasionally think that on their own, and discard it when confronted with facts, but with media saturation the facts get forgotten and it being okay gets normalized. Or government intrusion, or grimdark superheroes, or soldiers being heroes instead of the occasionally necessary butchers, or it being okay treat women like crap, or thinking of paying your goddamned taxes as something horrible. All those horrible attitudes occasionally exist in the dark places in all our minds, but media saturation makes it easy to justify them and hard to accept the challenges to them. I think there needs to be a law that makes the media much more responsible to avoid further normalization of those attitudes.

I think there needs to be a law that makes the media much more responsible to avoid further normalization of those attitudes.

No.

Believe me, that will never work out for the better. Never in a million years. Unless you made Atticus Finch sole dictator of the world, or something, that is and will always be THE single worst and most damaging idea for social change in the universe.

Yeaaaah making a law about what can be in media is probably going to go very poorly tbh. You'll have people who abuse that law to silence things they don't like and people who will use it against people they have bigotry against (imagine that law in the hands of homophobic politicians who think that showing LGBT is 'promoting bad things' or whatever. Yeah no)

>I think there needs to be a law that makes the media much more responsible to avoid further normalization of those attitudes.

You just made a list of bad things that included "government intrusion" and then ended it with this. Are you trying to troll, or just not thinking?

Ah yeah, that should be military intrusion (The NSA et al are still military) but Social Welfare is fine by me. The trick is holding onto the leash of the cops tightly enough and punishing cops who go military retard harshly enough, combined with complete transparency of process that they can't bastardize their own process. IN order to do that, we need proper control of the media to prevent them having their own agenda too. Set the police, military, and media properly against each other and punish collusion and there is no reason it cannot work.

Re: Do you think media has influence on people?

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-21 19:37 (UTC) - Expand

It's easier to be misogynist than it is to be violent. People interact with women everyday, they hardly ever interact with violence. I know that's a simplification, but that's basically the idea.

I think media can influence people and violence in video games probably does lead to a more violent culture.

The problem is that the people making arguments about violent video games being bad want to make an argument that's direct and not at all nuanced. The arguments that you hear are that a violent video game made someone violent. That somehow violent video games bear the primary responsibility for acts of violence, that there's a direct causal relationship going on here. And that argument is wrong, I think. It assumes that people are much stupider than they are.

By comparison, when you talk about objectification media, you're talking about general cultural attitudes and how certain points of view can be normalized and made more or less acceptable. You're not talking about how a sexist piece of media turned a guy into a sexist when he wasn't before, you're talking about the broad cultural impact these things have, the cumulative effect of them on the culture. And I think you can make a corresponding argument with video games. It's just so far from being the argument that people actually make.

I think the media can be a trigger, but it's way more complicated than that. With video games, I think it's really about who is playing it. Someone with the inclination to murder their brother might play video games to try controlling those feelings, OR because they enjoy the fantasy - one extreme or another. Either the game doesn't get rid of their urges, or they decide to act out their fantasy, and they kill someone. But because all we know is that "Johnny was a normal person until he played video games", that's the association we make.

Yes, of course I think media has an influence on people. Both on an individual basis and as a more general influence on culture as a whole.

Eh, it's complicated. Basically yes violence in media is oversaturated, but then irl it's not accepted as a generally okay thing to do/see. But misogyny isn't the same case at all, so it's not like media causes objectification it just kind of adds to the overall culture of sexism and stupidity because everywhere you look it's put up as an okay thing.

I really ran out of steam halfway through that last paragraph. Should have just stuck with "it's complicated."

I don't think, I know...

But not in the simplistic way it is explained on the internet or in casual conversations, but yes as a society and as individuals the media we consume do affect us, especially in dictating what we see as both reality shows and fictional shows/films. F.eks: The lack of women, people of colour, LGBT and so on in media, makes us as a society think that it is the status quo.

Edited 2014-09-20 21:51 (UTC)

It does. Undoubtedly. However, that influence has ALWAYS been there; back to the olden days of people performing plays or traveling storytellers. It's always been there, influencing people.

It absolutely does. Video games aren't real people though, which has been pretty consistently shown to have more influence than cartoon depictions for how people will model behaviours.

I do concede that as video games get more and more photorealistic there's probably a greater effect.

...The addendum here is that neither of these effects are completely causal, and they don't exist in a vacuum. Trying to tease out the effect of video game depictions of violence or objectification of women by themselves is pretty much an exercise in futility, but that's what most people are intent on doing these days.

I keep telling people: these things don't CAUSE misogyny and violence, they are a RESULT of it. you get a cultural belief, that belief will be reflected in media and entertainment.

and i guess you could argue on some level it may support it, in the sense that it spreads those ideas and allows them to keep living.

The media is an echo chamber, anon. Cultural values end up in media and then bounce back, and that's been the case since the beginning of human communication. As a result, the media doesn't cause things, but it certainly helps normalize them in people's minds. If you weren't exposed to an idea--say, that women are bad at math--but you saw dozens of shows that said that? If that was then enforced by not seeing female math teachers, or science teachers, or having people say that directly to you? You'd start to agree.

Video games don't cause violence because society doesn't tell you shooting someone with a rocket launcher will solve all your problems.

I disagree with your last point, the US, at least, doesn't have any problem with killing groups of people as long as they "deserve it" in some messed up respect. Revenge killing is a very real thing celebrated here and much of the media here glorifies it.

What I mean is that video game violence is so over the top that nothing else in society backs it up. Media in general, I'm sure, certainly does contribute to some kinds of violence for exactly the reason you've mentioned.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2818 ]

Do you think media has influence on people?

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