The Empowered Nerd.

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
school shooters and ISIS attacks draw focus of media attention with the sense that absolutely anybody, including the economically prosperous and educated, could be targeted, and there's nothing you could do about it.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Films and computer games are hardly bastions of "social conservatism". They do however depict the heroic, and on some base level that appeals to people (especially men). So it's good for business. Is this last redoubt of heroic values really the cause of the mass-murdering nerd? I'm skeptical. Suppose you removed this outlet for masculine fantasy (to be replaced with something that attempted to inculcate progressive values more systematically, I suppose); who's to say that school shootings would go down, and not up?

Impressively bleak view of manhood this: ; if men don't have their fantasy 'outlet' where they can channel their violent impulses, then they're more likely to go on shooting sprees. Imagine if that was a proven fact, what would this say about men's nature? I'm very critical of masculinity, but I'm a bit more optimistic than that about what would happen if we curbed some of this stuff (or at the least started questioning it more).

I mean in a way, I can see your line of thought (given that we're nowhere near to agreeing on what these values might be), but does that mean we shouldn't bother trying to replace them with more progressive values? To me it sounds a lot like that argument that if you took porn and prostitution away from men as an outlet, there'd be more rape, so we'd better not! Which sounds like a horrible excuse for defending something that men simply feel entitled to do and want to continue doing, a way of justifying harmful behaviour, abstaining from responsibility and dodging criticism.

Fantasy is never just fantasy, it always has real-world repercussions. Obviously its not as simple as 'heroic values in video games and films cause the mass murdering nerd', and I'm not campaigning to ban GOT or whatever, but like you say, its 'good business' so there's no brakes on any of this stuff and it has a massive psychological effect. Makes sense to look at the connections between it all at least.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Has got mainly to do with taking revenge for being neglected/expelled/mobbed and the easy access to firearms more likely. There have been four major cases in Germany in the 2000s. All of them have either dropped out of school (due to low performance) or been victims of mobbing. They had easy access to weapons (one was already a member of a shooting club - the Erfurt case - or took the guns from his father, a sports marksman.

That they used chatrooms and were playing computer games isn't cutting it at all, bc there are millions doing the same and not running amok. 4 shootings between 2002 and 2009 (meaning 5 million male students between 10 and 19) makes these school shootings statistically ABSOLUTLEY neglectable.

NOTE: I am referring to the German cases here.

Probably there are (somewhat) different causes from case to case and from country to country.

'mobbing' = bullying, I assume?

And yes, "Call of Duty turned normal boy into psycho murderer" is obviously a complete non-starter of an argument.
 

vimothy

yurp
Impressively bleak view of manhood this: ; if men don't have their fantasy 'outlet' where they can channel their violent impulses, then they're more likely to go on shooting sprees.

Well, maybe and maybe not. My point was that we don't understand the relationship and positing the causality as computer games -> mass killings is speculative, at best. The causality might just as easily run in the opposite direction. We have no idea and no obvious way to find out.
 

vimothy

yurp
Although I can offer up an even bleaker view of manhood: if men don't have their fantasy 'outlet' where they can channel their violent impulses (to include real violence, with a symbolic function), then they will have already ceased to be human.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Although I can offer up an even bleaker view of manhood: if men don't have their fantasy 'outlet' where they can channel their violent impulses (to include real violence, with a symbolic function), then they will have already ceased to be human.

Do you think same goes for women?
 

Leo

Well-known member
Although I can offer up an even bleaker view of manhood: if men don't have their fantasy 'outlet' where they can channel their violent impulses (to include real violence, with a symbolic function), then they will have already ceased to be human.

is your claim that all humans have violent impulses? or that one isn't human if one doesn't have violent impulses? or is it that having the fantasy outlet enables them to be human?

whatever way, it sounds unprovable.
 
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luka

Well-known member
The Anal Emotional-Territorial Circuit: Imprinted by the toddler first learning to walk, this circuit deals with matters of power: domination and submission
;)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think people all have violent impulses. Humans are animals, violence got us where we are.

That said, I think most ppl have a distaste for violence, which is perhaps a further evolution? Even the Nazi death squads had to get blind drunk to carry out their massacres. Other than the born psychopaths, who thankfully are a tiny minority.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Probably the fundamental way to distinguish Luke's view of life and my own is by comparing our favorite films.

The Matrix vs Ghostbusters
 
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