This week – Is it violent video-games that make some #gamergater’s act the way they do. Most unlikely. But the better answer from an academic/research perspective may well be much more troubling.
jon
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This week – Is it violent video-games that make some #gamergater’s act the way they do. Most unlikely. But the better answer from an academic/research perspective may well be much more troubling.
jon
The supposed causal connection between violence and video games is probably an invention of big news corporations which are constantly looking for “best-selling” news rather than reporting something that has some connection to reality. Given that the mass media repeatedly reports the connection, I wonder why they still call it “news”. Here is a recent article which failed to convince me:
http://time.com/34075/how-violent-video-games-change-kids-attitudes-about-aggression/
I think the problem goes to the source of this baseless unscientific claim. It is easy to make such claims popular because people have easier time to mentally associate violence in games to violence in reality as we know it. Add to that the fact that some criminals happen to be video gamers, and the connection is even stronger! Well, some serial killers are on healthy diet; does healthy diet lead to committing murder? I wonder why the “correlation =/= causation” principle has not become as popular/accepted as it should be.
As to the #gamergater’s, blaming the violence in video games on their activities will give them free support. Also fabricating scientific studies with unscientific methodologies in the news may actually help the #gamergater’s justify their stupid actions. #gamergater’s are enjoying the anonymity behind the screens; if they don’t have the guts to come out of those basements and back up their pointless movement, blaming game developers or the taste of the public won’t help them.