I haven't followed up on the Columbine shooters (too depressing) but weren't they addicts of violent video game who's parents didn't monitor or talk to them. In very sad cases I believe it can contribute to violence but generally if the parents aren't melodrama addicts themselves they can educate the kids pretty well.

PoopooHead

Brooklyn, NY

September 2003

SEP 23, 2004 08:57 AM

I don't know where or how, but I do know that I can watch the most violent movies all day long, but I cannot watch a single beheading video. And I cannot go to those fucking websites that publish pics of suicides and people run over by trains and shit. Things I know are real make me violently(ha) ill - literally physically sick to my stomach. Movies, things I know are fake, don't phase me beyond the: "I can't believe they did that!"

[Edited on Sep 23, 2004 by desperatecomfort]

dem_z

United Kingdom

June 2004

SEP 23, 2004 09:37 AM

TheFuckOffKid said:

coughee said:
ok. the advertising industry is a trillion-dollar business based on the simple idea that people's behavior is influenced by images and ideas that they see repetitively, whether in positive or negative context, and whether they like it or not. it's a well established fact that television advertising works, hence the lucrative ad industry.

I wasn't aware that there was any such established fact except at the highest level of generality.

Many MANY individual advertising campaigns fail. Many products bite the dust, many businesses fail, despite all their efforts at promotion, brand enhancement and name recognition. Ask John Kerry how easy it is to "persuade people" based solely on name recognition.

You're not trying to say the US election will be decided on real issues and not the best adverts / dirtiest campaign?

People can be influenced by TV advertising, and I'm sure people can become desensitised to violence. But there isn't some simple causal chain that says "see violent imagery => increase propensity to undertake violent acts".

Would you accept "Watching many violent movies makes a person more likely to use violence as a solution to a tricky situation?"

How about "Watching many violent movies makes a person more likely to behave in a similar manner, which might lead them into violent situations?"

[...]I think the huge pink elephant that no-one's talking about is the biological roots of all of this. Why would we be influenced towards violence by seeing others doing it, unless we had some kind of predisposition towards violence "hardwired" into us in an evolutionary sense? Yet, and I've noted this elsewhere, there's an overwhelming tendency amongst today's groovy young college grads to deny that biology plays any part in anything to do with human behaviour.

That bit is interesting and I need to do a lot more reading about it.

So, to go back to my questions: how about "We have a predisposition to violence, and watching violent movies makes the use of violence more acceptable"?

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