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'MORTAL KOMBAT TAX' PROPOSED FOR U.S. SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Jimquisition:

>perform absurdly gratuitous, caricatured 'Fatality'
>buy a military grade firearm from Walmart and commit mass murder
>ipso facto™



THE POINT, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, IS THAT GREED, FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD, IS GOOD.

GREED IS RIGHT. GREED WORKS. GREED CLARIFIES, CUTS THROUGH AND CAPTURES THE ESSENCE OF THE EVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT.

GREED, IN ALL ITS FORMS — GREED FOR LIFE, FOR MONEY, FOR LOVE, KNOWLEDGE — HAS MARKED THE UPWARD SURGE OF MANKIND; AND GREED — YOU MARK MY WORDS — WILL NOT ONLY SAVE YOUR SOULS, BUT THAT OTHER MALFUNCTIONING CORPORATION [TOO], CALLED 'THE U.S.A.'.

— The Eternal President of United $tate$ of Avari¢e, Gordon Gekko
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
As a survivor of a school shooting, this has to be some of the dumbest shit. Yup, it’s not the fact that it takes next to nothing to get a gun even legally, FBI not following up on suspicious behavior (like my old school), or the lack of emphasis and awareness of mental health issues. It’s clearly video games.
 

Circus

Part-Time Kano Hostage
Millions. Literally MILLIONS of people play violent video games and have normal successful lives.

It takes a small handful of people doing stupid shit to allow dumbasses to make greedy bills like this and scare the population that doesn't play video games into passing nonsense.
 
Millions. Literally MILLIONS of people play violent video games and have normal successful lives.

It takes a small handful of people doing stupid shit to allow dumbasses to make greedy bills like this and scare the population that doesn't play video games into passing nonsense.
That's the real sad thing, there's enough people who not only don't play games (nothing wrong in of itself) but also buy into this bullshit.
 

sub_on_dubs

Online Scrub Lord
Evil and violence have been around far before videogames were created. If a videogame makes you want to shoot up a school, then there was already a problem in your brain to begin with. Not sure why mental health issues are mostly ignored when it comes to this issue. If someone can't distinguish real life from a videogame, then they need help. I'm sympathetic as well since mental health issues run in my family.
 

Vslayer

Juiced Moose On The Loose
Lead Moderator
Their ‘scientific’ theory is easily debunked by the millions of gamers who have never killed anyone or shot up a school. This is stupid. No one in their right mind decides to kill someone, especially not because of a video game that 99.9% of its users know is a virtual reality. What they always fail to look at is mental illness, which is what should be the focus of. Not raising tax on a game parents will buy their whinning child regardless of the price.

Pure fear mongering.
 

Saint Op Omen

Savagely beating his super-ego with his id...
eh the whole "sin tax" thing has been tryed many times actually...some dumbass tries to score political points it always goes nowhere & it goes away...nothing new really .. not worth chatting about even, just gets them more attention. .first amendment always wins...

on a positive note studies are showing games arr a more reliable treatment for depression then therapy so theres that.
 
Do yourself a favor and avoid watching content from Jim Sterling. His angle is to rile you up without any reason. "Tripple aaaaaay greeeeeeed"

EDIT
To expand on that. Avoid any YT channel that is over 50% "outrage" based (Jim being almost uniquely that).
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
I did a research paper in college in my psychology class on this very topic. There was an actual study (probably multiple) on if violent video games make you violent or more violent. My conclusion was simple, there’s zero evidence that violent video games make you more violent in any way. It CAN make you more aggressive or hostile, but so can a lot of things.

My teacher showed us a video where kids watched a violent movie then afterwards were imitating to an extent what they saw. But that’s because kids are impressionable, and like to mimic things. It wasn’t necessarily that they were more violent, they were just mimicking what they just had watched. This is why a rating system exists on video games and movies.

Basically, we can’t sloth off the responsibility of our actions onto our artifacts and say “they made the decision”. That’s not how it works. Correlation does not equal causation. Meaning, even if every single mass shooter played violent video games every day, that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with them doing what they did. Just as if they all ate cheeseburgers that doesn’t mean cheeseburgers make you go on a shooting spree. There’s just some individuals who are crazy, that’s it. It’s not about weapons, video games, movies, etc. If an individual makes the decision to do something insane, they will find a way to do it no matter what. That’s not to say it can’t be prevented, but people want to point the finger at everything BUT the individual that made the decision.
 

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
It's scientifically proven that the aptitude has to be present in the subject for media to trigger anything, and even then the chances of media triggering it in all but most extreme cases is negligible at best.

Aptitude for violence is triggered by, you guessed right, being subject to violence, be that verbal aggression, physical bullying or otherwise.

If it wasn't fucking 6 in the morning I'd dig up shit on google scholar for none of you to actually read anyway.
 
Is this the first image of Bailey Jay on TYM?
I live to give.
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As for video games making kids more violent: that argument can only hold water where one is already predisposed to violence -- something that stems from upbringing, environment and / or certain epigenetic (DNA) offshoots. Indeed, even in such cases, the video game would only serve as a catalyst, and would not be the cause.

No one is turned into a "school shooter" because of a video game. Games are not played as if in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, the gaming industry isn't a re-branding of 'MK Ultra', and no matter how "realistic" visuals get, the faculty for one to differentiate fantasy from reality (...admittedly, no mean feat for some -- see: religion), dictates how much formative of influential effect any entertainment medium will have on a given individual. In this sense, using MK as the oft-vilified example, the more gratuitous the violence gets, the more absurd it becomes and, thus, the more detached from reality it inherently is. I'd even argue that the original MK game had more 'disturbing' finishing moves -- relative to era, comparative video game violence, and because of the digitised live actors used for 'sprites'.

One in some very large number are predisposed to psychosis... However, this does not justify marijuana being prohibited and its myriad positive denied from the world. Fuelled by alcohol, millions commit heinous crimes -- every, single day... Yet, grog is easily obtainable by adolescents, and even proffered by their parents / guardians. >priorities


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It may have something to do with that you can’t buy a gun...
Gee... You think?
 

Krankk

Smoke & Noob & Rain
I did a research paper in college in my psychology class on this very topic. There was an actual study (probably multiple) on if violent video games make you violent or more violent. My conclusion was simple, there’s zero evidence that violent video games make you more violent in any way. It CAN make you more aggressive or hostile, but so can a lot of things.
What's your opinion on the idea that violent video games could trigger already unstable individuals and encourage them to pick up a M4A1 and play Counter-Strike in real life? I think that's where the actual arguments lies.

I personally don't think for a second that a normal person will get violent outbursts and run amok, due to them playing shooters or other violent games. But that's the case for normal people. There is a concept called "the call of the void", where you stand on a cliff and think about jumping, but you don't. You can have similar destructive thoughts about other things: "Man, I would like to kill person XYZ". Yet you never do.
I don't think the same can be said about people with psychopathic tendencies. So I wouldn't want to see such a person play violent video games. And if that means preventing them from having access to those in the first place, then maybe that's for the better. Same with violent movies or songs or whatever. But regulating that is absolutely impossible, especially without ruining it for regular consumers. Especially considering how much money the video game industry makes - with shooters, where you kill people, leading the sales.
I also think I remember reading about how surgeons, who played FPS games performed better than surgeons, who didn't. Playing FPS games does train your hand-to-eye-coordination and micro-adjustments with your hands and fingers.