Essay

Do violent games and movies make kids killers?

1501Art New Communications Technologies

Dane Weeden

2678945

It seems that everytime a student at a high school in America pulls out a gun the left wing of society rushes to his room and finds that he once played the skeet shooting level in Barbie's Pony Island Adventure. The military would certainly hope that the catalyst for killer is in video games. But is this really a viable and realistic theory. Can playing video games or exposing yourself to violent media really make it easier for you to kill someone.

Although it may be a surprise to many, violence was around even before radio was around. When considering the actions and social reactions of humans in the past, regarding violence, is it not far to say that as technology has come into humanity, violence has dropped dramatically.

A journalist by the name of Grub Smith carried out an investigation for national geographic about the ability of solders to kill other human beings. The documentary came to the realization that only 2% of solders could actually willingly kill another person. The first half of that 2% were considered to be free of empathy towards there fellow man, and therefor had the ability to kill without mercy or restraint, they enjoyed the killing. The other half of the killers were inspired to kill in defense of their fellow soldiers.

Of course the army by now has picked up on this and have developed new training methods to overcome the natural instinct to 'not kill'. These new training programs have proved successful and as a result the US and British military have a very high kill rate in man to man combat as opposed to less organized or funded armies.

It seems somewhat doubtful that the US army would give the secret ingredient that gives them the advantage in combat to a game designer or a movie director. Statistics clearly show that killers are born, and are very hard to make. If the US army has only just figured out how to desensitize humans then surely games and movies are a little way behind.

Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, says that violent video games do not cause violent youth. Sternheimer refers to a list of other moral panics that have emerged about youth culture in the past, those being cars, radio, movies, rock music, and even comic books.

She argues that the real causes of youth violence are often overlooked. We would perhaps see our society as perfect and stable and it is this violence from games that is disrupting it. However, as Sternheimer points out, it is often our already unstable social environment that may cause the violence. She refers to poverty, neighborhood instability, unemployment, family violence and mental illness as major causes in youth violence.

Sternheimer also raises a very important point, that the white middle class isn't the only group in the world that plays video games. So rare is it to hear a case of an African American young male shooting someone and hearing video games get blamed. This raises the question of the effectiveness of studies that have concluded that video games make killers.

Richard Kuklinski is a convicted mafia hit man who is now spending life in jail. He admitted to killing over 200 people. He was never been exposed to video games yet he killed people without fear or remorse. In an interview with Dr. Park Dietz, a world-renowned psychiatrist, Kuklinski asked why he was capable of feeling nothing from killing someone. Dietz explained that he was born with just the right combination of personality disorders, Paranoia and Fearlessness. These are what made him a killer.

Its hard to see, after all these cases of killers been driving by revenge or just being born killers, how its possible to simply say that video games and violent media cause youth to be violent. Surely in such an act of extremity every little detail comes into play. It seems as though video games are used as a scape goat to ignore the reality of how life can treat some people. Perhaps some people are more effected by video games than others but if a person lacks the ability to distinguish between simulation and reality than that person is socially different long before they picked up a controller.

It is interesting to consider that if video games really did create killers, why is the US military so desperate for more troops. Surely in our game and media filled world people would be lining up for a chance to riffle of few bullets into the enemy. The truth is that the human body really does know the difference between whats real and what isn't. Perhaps when virtual reality becomes a part of society, if it ever does, then we way not be able to tell whats real and whats not. But for all the tough talking that anyone can do, unless your born a weapon, it's not easy to pull the trigger.

References

Violent Games Don't Cause Youth Violence, Says USC Sociologist

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2007/02/28/violent-games-dont-cause-youth-violence-says-usc-sociologist

National Geographic: The Truth About Killing (2005) (Grub Smith- Host)

http://dirtyliberalwords.blogspot.com/2005/08/truth-about-killing.html

The Iceman and the Psychiatrist

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/iceman/synopsis.html

Pincus, Jonathan (2002) Base Insticts: What Makes Killers Kill W.W. Norton

Lewis, D O (1998) Guilty by Reason of Insanity: A Psychiatrist Explores the Minds of Killers Ballantine Publishing Group New York

3D worlds v IM

Theres alot of differences between something like msn messenger and second life. MSN could be compared to a phone call or sending txt messages. Visual elements complete change to situation and the way you react, theres a reason a video call is more expensive than a voice call on your mobile. Its easy to make a fake hotmail and put someone elses image as your display picture so to say that people on MSN are more real would be wrong. But the fact is that there is less room for you to make up stuff on msn. All you have is your word and a picture.

In a virtual world you can make yourself thin, in shape and even black or white. Surely though, anyone who goes into a virtual world knows what there getting into. You know that all the people are going to be fake and the few that arent fake are probably too boring to talk to.

In regards to the social aspect, MSN is like going to a friends party and virtual worlds are like going to a night club alone. The people you talk to on msn are only there because you have added them or they have added you and you have accepted it, so generally you know most of the people on your list and theres no one you try to avoid because you can just delete them.

The people you talk to in virtual words and mainly complete randoms. They don't need your permission to talk to you and you generally cant make them go away. It is this socially environment in which annoying people flourish.

So all in all i would take msn over a virtual world anyday, unless i was super bored and super lonely and had super low self esteem.

Word and Excel

I did business communication technology in high school so im all Microsoft office savy. We did mail merges and all that sort of thing so all this stuff was just bringing back memories. Funny thing is i remember learning the stuff in year 10 and thinking wow that would be useful, yet i have never used it untill this point. So it has yet to prove itself useful for any purpose.....

Essay Outline

Do video games and media desensitise us?

Much argument has been made that violent video games and explicit media have made current generations much more accepting of violence in reality. It has also been put forward that exposure to such media makes people more aggressive. Not only accepting violence but instigating it.

The army would certainly hope this to be true and they have strongly believed in using military games as not only a recruiting tool but on another level a training tool. The military would also dearly hope that violent video games gives unexperienced troops more confidence in situations that have never, in reality, been involved in.

The other problem that the army have faced and would no doubt hope that violent media would solve is a human’s ability to kill. Interviews with veterans have revealed that most of them never even shot to kill. It has been claimed that, usually in a company of 100 men, there would 2 men capable of doing the killing. The rest either never shoot to kill or pretend to load the guns as an excuse.

These testimonies were taken some time ago. So how has that changed since past wars and how do soldiers react to killing these days. There’s no doubt that violence has become much more accessible in media. Anyone with a camera phone can film there to school friends fighting and then quickly upload it to Youtube. But does watching that really make it easier to punch someone in the face the next day?

Wikipedia

So this week we are looking at wikipedia and seeing if its knowledge matches up to our own expertise. For some reason I'm inclined to say yes, but i will see anyway. The task asked us to pick two things, could be anything, that we know a lot about and read the wiki article on it.

So for my first thing i decided to pick my favourite tennis player Tommy Haas, from Germany. I know that there would be room for plenty of bias or criticism when it comes to sport players so I thought it was a fair place to start.

The things that we were asked to look for where

* Is this an accurate article?
* Does it cover all the basic facts that you'd need to understand this topic?
* Does this article follow the wikipedia guidelines for useful articles?
* Is this article fair and balanced, or is it biased towards a particular side or argument?

Finally - What changes would you make to this article to improve it and make it useful for the wider wikipedia community?

Reading through the article I found it very accurate, at least to my knowledge anyway. It covered all the basics facts and then some. It didn't just say his had to take time off but it explained why. It follows all the guidelines, there is certainly nothing but respect for Tommy and his fans in the article. There aren't any put downs of his ability or praises without numbers to back it up.

So for Tommy Haas wikipedia gets a thumbs up. Now for the next one.

The next one i did on Water Fluoridation. This one is certainly different. It's history section only includes the medical uses of fluoride and not any of the other reasons fluoride was put in water (see Nazi Germany). Therefor with the lack of history it does NOT give all the basic facts needed to understand the opposition to water fluoridation. It does feature a small chapter on opposition which is good to see, but it really deserves the same amount of text as the pro water fluoridation section. Not it does down the bottom link to a page full of opposition to it, but I would have liked to see it in the original water fluoridation page.

The article is about 80% one sided, but wikipedia does well not to definitively say one way or the other. The only way this page would be better is by expanding the history section and by merging the opposition page with the current page.

Guess the google

Number 1, click on the picture

Authenticity

I guess there has always been questions of the digital side of art and was it means for tradition hand made art. Theres no doubt that seeing The Last Supper in its original painted form has more of an aura around it then some scanned version on Google Images. But thats what reproduction has done to everything its touched. Things that can't be reproduced are valuable, simply because there's only one of them or one way of making them that is not well known. Those things have value and an 'aura'. But with modern technology anyone can create and reproduce things with the push of a few buttons.

It's happened with art, when now most people would have more artistic flair with a computer mouse rather than a paint brush. It's happened with music, when now anyone can paste a couple of samples together on their home computer and make a fine example of techno.

But this doesn't really ruin the art of these things. It really just makes a new genre of the art. The only way that a photoshop image would be authentic is in the Art of Digital Media. Because thats what it is. No-one is comparing digital art to traditional art. In fact the more something is ripped off with a lesser quality the more valuable the original becomes.

So I think that digital technology is hurting art or overwriting traditional art, its just creating a new genre.

Now to see or get an aura out of digital art I think you couldn't achieve it without knowing something about digital art or even being a digital artist yourself. You would personally need to know how hard it was to create the piece or art before you could really appreciate it. Similar to music really. It's hard to really appreciate some music once you know how easy it can be reproduced.

Now the only thing reproduction technology really hurts is currency. Case and point, America and there paper money. But enough about that.......