WWTBAM Bored

I want to change the celebration of guns we have in the United States. I do not want to take away anyone's guns who has trained with them and bought them legally and who uses them responsibly. I have other angles.

One is to develop a module in my college class and others, to teach young people, especially young men, how to express their frustrations before they reach a violent place.

The second route is to let people in charge of advertising know that they can stop running ads for first-person shooter video games. I understand that everyone has the right to buy and play these games, but I think they contribute to the culture that makes people think there are no consequences when they gun down real people. To that end, I have sent this letter to Amazon and will adapt it to other networks as it comes up.


Hello,

I would like for your company to consider not running ads for Call of Duty on Amazon Prime TV.

The United States celebrates gun culture and violence to a dangerous degree, such that we are raising young men who do not know how to express their frustrations without shooting other people. To end this, one of the things we need to do is curtail the time they spend playing violent games in which no one actually gets hurt.

If your company and others stop running ads for these games, fewer people will purchase them and play them. Over time, demand will lessen. Even if one only young man does not become addicted to them and kill someone because of your company's decision, it will be worth it.

I teach at UNC Charlotte. Six weeks ago, we lost two young men, and four other students were injured, because one young man does not know how to say he is angry without using a weapon. Games like Call of Duty make his situation worse.

Please do not accept advertising from these gamers, even if your company owns them. Let them find sales in other ways.

Thank you for listening.

Ritterskoop wrote:I want to change the celebration of guns we have in the United States. I do not want to take away anyone's guns who has trained with them and bought them legally and who uses them responsibly. I have other angles.

One is to develop a module in my college class and others, to teach young people, especially young men, how to express their frustrations before they reach a violent place.

The second route is to let people in charge of advertising know that they can stop running ads for first-person shooter video games. I understand that everyone has the right to buy and play these games, but I think they contribute to the culture that makes people think there are no consequences when they gun down real people. To that end, I have sent this letter to Amazon and will adapt it to other networks as it comes up.


Hello,

I would like for your company to consider not running ads for Call of Duty on Amazon Prime TV.

The United States celebrates gun culture and violence to a dangerous degree, such that we are raising young men who do not know how to express their frustrations without shooting other people. To end this, one of the things we need to do is curtail the time they spend playing violent games in which no one actually gets hurt.

If your company and others stop running ads for these games, fewer people will purchase them and play them. Over time, demand will lessen. Even if one only young man does not become addicted to them and kill someone because of your company's decision, it will be worth it.

I teach at UNC Charlotte. Six weeks ago, we lost two young men, and four other students were injured, because one young man does not know how to say he is angry without using a weapon. Games like Call of Duty make his situation worse.

Please do not accept advertising from these gamers, even if your company owns them. Let them find sales in other ways.

Thank you for listening.

Once again, we agree more than we disagree.

You might find these 2 linked columns interesting.

They are from Craig Rullman, one of the 2 principals at Running Iron Report. Mr. Rullman has extensive military and law enforcement experience.

Rullman takes an in-depth look at first person shooter games. The base of the columns is driven by the research of Dave Grossman, an expert on the topic.

Core pull quote>>>"What Grossman found was that violent, often first‐person shooter video games were using the same reactive targeting and rewards system employed by military trainers to increase lethality. And to similarly lethal effect."<<<<

https://runningironreport.com/biograph/ ... r-act-one/

https://runningironreport.com/culture/f ... r-act-two/

My pull quote>>>Reactive targets go down, explode, or make a rewarding sound when they are shot. ... When that reaction is noted, the shooter is internally rewarded for his efforts by a little shot of dopamine – which is nature’s biochemical reward for success.<<<<

That’s the same neurochemical reaction found in drug, gambling and other addictions. But most addictions primarily harm the addict.

jarnon wrote:My pull quote>>>Reactive targets go down, explode, or make a rewarding sound when they are shot. ... When that reaction is noted, the shooter is internally rewarded for his efforts by a little shot of dopamine – which is nature’s biochemical reward for success.<<<<

That’s the same neurochemical reaction found in drug, gambling and other addictions. But most addictions primarily harm the addict.

...including "likes" on social media and getting little sparkly things on Candy Crush.

Good to see the Fantasy Island Police are out in full force again....



People who can't tell the difference between alternate reality and reality are gonna be problems regardless. I believe there need to be places where literally anything goes....

lb13

I'm down with people playing games if it is a substitute for them actually shooting people.

Like rap. I don't care for it, mostly (because there is often no melody), but if it helps someone to SAY horrible things instead of DOING them, I'm in favor of it. And of course, many rap songs have benign lyrics, so even that doesn't apply to the whole genre.

LB, I hope what you say is true, and that the games have not influenced the shooters. Until we can say for sure, I hope you don't mind that I ask an advertiser not to participate, in case it does turn out that the games have a causal relationship to the shootings. I am not asking for legislation, only to allow the market to respond. One of the ways we can influence that is by expressing our opinions rationally.

Come to think of it, do you have a different explanation for why we have had these shootings only in the past 25 years? My first thought was that people got frustrated and angry a hundred years ago, but they worked 12 hours a day in a factory or on a farm, and were too tired for shenanigans.

Note to the extremists on the board: This is how two reasonable people discuss a problem. There has not been and will not be any name-calling, only the making of arguments.

Ritterskoop wrote:LB, I hope what you say is true, and that the games have not influenced the shooters. Until we can say for sure, I hope you don't mind that I ask an advertiser not to participate, in case it does turn out that the games have a causal relationship to the shootings. I am not asking for legislation, only to allow the market to respond. One of the ways we can influence that is by expressing our opinions rationally.

Come to think of it, do you have a different explanation for why we have had these shootings only in the past 25 years? My first thought was that people got frustrated and angry a hundred years ago, but they worked 12 hours a day in a factory or on a farm, and were too tired for shenanigans.

Note to the extremists on the board: This is how two reasonable people discuss a problem. There has not been and will not be any name-calling, only the making of arguments.

I guess it's only Americans who play violent video games.

Ritterskoop wrote: Come to think of it, do you have a different explanation for why we have had these shootings only in the past 25 years? My first thought was that people got frustrated and angry a hundred years ago, but they worked 12 hours a day in a factory or on a farm, and were too tired for shenanigans.

Actually, there are a number of statistics that indicated that the number of mass shootings has remained fairly steady, at least since the 1970s which is when they began tracking things like this. What has changed is the amount of publicity that these events get. Back in the 1970s, for news, you had the three major networks and their 30-minute nightly broadcasts, plus local news and newspapers. If a shooting took place in your hometown, it got major publicity, otherwise not so much. Now, you've got several 24-hour news channels, almost everyone carrying a smart phone that can take photos and videos and transmit them instantly (can you imagine what would have happened if people had smartphones during Charles Whitman's rampage) and a social mediaverse that can take an incident of someone acting ugly in a restaurant and turn it into a national sensation overnight.

So the number of incidents may not be increasing as much as the attention they get skyrockets (and also, with improved technology, the efficiency of these shooters also increases).

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000524/ ... tings-rare

silverscreenselect wrote:

Ritterskoop wrote: Come to think of it, do you have a different explanation for why we have had these shootings only in the past 25 years? My first thought was that people got frustrated and angry a hundred years ago, but they worked 12 hours a day in a factory or on a farm, and were too tired for shenanigans.

Actually, there are a number of statistics that indicated that the number of mass shootings has remained fairly steady, at least since the 1970s which is when they began tracking things like this. What has changed is the amount of publicity that these events get. Back in the 1970s, for news, you had the three major networks and their 30-minute nightly broadcasts, plus local news and newspapers. If a shooting took place in your hometown, it got major publicity, otherwise not so much. Now, you've got several 24-hour news channels, almost everyone carrying a smart phone that can take photos and videos and transmit them instantly (can you imagine what would have happened if people had smartphones during Charles Whitman's rampage) and a social mediaverse that can take an incident of someone acting ugly in a restaurant and turn it into a national sensation overnight.

So the number of incidents may not be increasing as much as the attention they get skyrockets (and also, with improved technology, the efficiency of these shooters also increases).

The statistics say you're wrong: https://www.cato.org/blog/are-mass-shoo ... e-frequent

Bob Juch wrote: The statistics say you're wrong:

A lot depends on how you define "mass shooting" such as whether gang and drug shootings are included and whether you're talking about total victims or fatalities. And I said "number of shootings," not number of victims or fatalities. My chart indicated that there have been in the neighborhood of 20 such shootings a year since 1976, while yours show no more than 20 in any year, so we're not far off, despite the differing definitions.