My Textbook says video games are bad!

[Nageck]

I think they're scapegoating with the first semi-reasonable excuse that they can think of. Really, though, withing the next fifty years we are going to have a president who played Grand Theft Auto growing up, so this technology bashing business will go away. It was the same way with rock, or the devil's music if you will. Eventually the fans grow up to hate whatever the new kids like. And the cycle continues forever and ever and ever...

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I'd have to ask, how many of the gamers involved also ate snickers bars?

Could it not be the evil combination of caramel and peanuts causing psychotic behaviour among adolescents?

We need to ban female partners from having snickers bars to lower the chance of this happening.

I propose we all march on the campus with banners and signs along the lines of:

'DOWN WITH GIRLS SNICKERS!'

(no, it wasn't worth all the effort, but I still think it's far too easy to blame anything that happens to be nearby, and videogames are always a simple scapegoat.)

 

[Woem]

"Dating violence is where a person in a relationship feel intimated by their partner, whether physically or mentally. Why do these things happen? They are widely because of drugs, video games, and abuse."

I'm glad you posted the complete reference. Here's the thing: those are not the real reason. Take for instance drugs. Drugs don't make you do things. There's usually a reason why people do drugs. If you find those reasons, then you will probably find that those are the real reasons why "dating violence" happens.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

"Dating violence is where a person in a relationship feel intimated by their partner, whether physically or mentally. Why do these things happen? They are widely because of drugs, video games, and abuse."

And Marilyn Manson.

 

[Dajmin]

Of course it's true. Because obviously nobody killed anyone or did anything bad before video games were invented, right?

 

[Woem]

"Dating violence is where a person in a relationship feel intimated by their partner, whether physically or mentally. Why do these things happen? They are widely because of drugs, video games, and abuse."

I'm glad you posted the complete reference. Here's the thing: those are not the real reason. Take for instance drugs. Drugs don't make you do things. There's usually a reason why people do drugs. If you find those reasons, then you will probably find that those are the real reasons why "dating violence" happens.

That completely disregards pretty much all the knowledge we have on pharmaceuticals. It is KNOWN for several drugs to cause irrationality, or completely upset emotional stability. Ever wonder where the term "roid rage" comes from? Because steroids can cause you to go into irrational and uncontrollable anger!

Now, you could argue that only body builders use roids, and thus the activity (body building) leaves the subjects (body builders) to fall into the syndrome (roid rage). This is essentially equivalent to your argument (people do drugs for a reason, and that underlying reason is the problem, not the drugs). The problem is that roid rage was discovered in CHILDREN who take steroids for disorders. The children with the disorders are essentially randomly distributed, with very weak correlations on race and other genetic predispositions, as were the incidents of roid rage! This essentially debunks your line of reasoning, because randomly distributed children of various backgrounds, with nothing in common with each other, all developed similar symptoms. It was the drug, not the person.

Now, you could argue this does not apply to recreational drugs, which would be equally wrong, as we have a multitude of cases of date rape directly associated with BAC levels. As BAC goes up, the chance for date rape goes up. Most drugs have typical results from usage: amphetamines cause violence and heart attacks to scale, alcohol has rape and abuse scaling with it, etc etc. These are among RANDOMLY DISTRIBUTED PERSONS, including those who unwittingly or unwillingly were given drugs (which is relatively common in some areas).

Basically, to blame the users internal state of mind for what is obviously caused by the compound they use is criminally negligent to the years of medical research and billions of dollars spent studying addiction. Not to mention case studies, experiments with drugs, etc etc. It is simply a fundamental attributional error, to blame the internal state when it is so clearly the external influence.

In the term "drugs" I understand recreational drugs, otherwise I would call them medicines. There are indeed side-effects on medicines that can cause this unintentional behavior, but that's not what I was referring to. I'm talking about someone abusing alcohol and hitting his wife in a drunken stupor for instance.

 

[Bat Vader]

People have always been demonizing demonizing video games after that bad school shooting roughly 20 years ago (I forget the name, I don't get out much). Yet they never WERE gamers of the violent kind, nor bullied, shunned, or even unpopular! They were simply mentally ill. And then the media blamed video games, then snowball it.

Video games have little-to-no effect on violence.

Columbine? I think that was back in 1997 or 1998. When did we jump ahead to 2019?

 

[Lexodus]

It was obviously written by a fucktward, probably over the age of fifty.

 

[Lexodus]

WE've all heard about Rapelay (if you haven't, where have you been?), but I have as of yet not heard about a daterape game.

 

[KeyMaster45]

If I were you I would bring this to your school's principle and tell them that there is no basis or hard facts showing that video games lead to violence and that you feel this textbook is spreading ignorance. Matter of fact give me the name of the people who make the textbook, I feel like writing an angry letter.

If all else fails go talk to the creationism people in Kansas to see if they can't help you get stickers put on the health books saying "This is only a theory".

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Though I was reading my textbook to do my homework and my teacher yelled at me saying "If I wanted you to just get the answers, I would have told you them!", so I'm not taking seriously health class.

The happiest years of your life. God bless the education system.

 

[FROGGEman2]

they overlook the fact that all people who play videogames that much are
a) incapable of hurting people
b) are not in relationships