The group responsible is “Collective Shout”, the same org has targeted Steam before.
There are calls on social media now to contact Mastercard, Visa and co. and file complaints.
The group responsible is “Collective Shout”, the same org has targeted Steam before.
There are calls on social media now to contact Mastercard, Visa and co. and file complaints.
Jesus Christ we can’t be back to this old chestnut.
We cannot, and do not, standardize society’s guard rails around the most extreme edge cases.
Leave it back with Jack Thompson in the late 90s-early 00s where it belongs. The horse has already been jellied by repeated blunt force trauma more than a decade ago. You’re just punching a horse shaped divot into the dirt at this point.
The question is if it’s edge cases. People suffer sexual trauma in very large numbers and working in psychiatry has taught me how incredibly harmful it can be. If this kind of material could help prevent sexual trauma, we should definitely allow it. If research shows that it makes problems far worse, we should consider limiting access to it. I am not saying either is the case, I am saying I don’t understand what is wrong with the question itself.
This restated question is not the problem directly.
The problem is the entire discussion/concept of “exposure to a dangerous idea in a pretend context maybe might maybe make someone more likely to emulate it in reality” when there has been little to no evidence found supporting that concept. Additionally the non-proportional amount of concern given to videogames in relationship to this concept as compared to literally any other form of media.
If there was even one iota of connection between “exposure to horrible things in media” (or even “pretending to do horrible things in a pretend context”) and “doing horrible things in real life”, the world would already look considerably different than it does. Militaries would be using these games as “exposure therapy” for soldiers. We’d be seeing crime rates of all sorts shifting in accordance with the media industries. There would already be measurable impacts after the decades of these things existing.
And more so than any of that: This discussion has literally been happening for longer than any of us here have been alive. I’m tired of having it.
Please stop letting the vague idea of “but it might help” override the logic of “but there’s no evidence to support that except a vague gut feeling”.