If that was Nesrie’s message, I didn’t get it from the way she was wording it.
Edit:I do pretty much agree with everything you wrote Tim and I agree that efforts should be made to move the needle closer to the ideal. Women should not have to worry about being harmed in any way due to how they dress or express themselves.
I think almost everyone here has agreed with Nesrie’s sentiments (and what you tried to clarify). People (myself included) are getting tripped up by the semantics.
Hasn’t Facebook tried to claim ownership rights of photo’s posted? Wasn’t that in the news a while back?
Very thorough and insightful, WS.
What I thought at the time was that the writer was telling her story as a cautionary tale to warn others about the dangers of creating such pictures. Which I summed up in what I thought was a duh-type statement, and one that I have repeatedly made to my sons when they got cellphones. Those things are bad idea magnifiers in the hands of the young and dumb. I take every opportunity to point out when famous people do dumb stuff like Brett Favre and his junk-pics a while back, and emphasize that they need to stay on the smart side of this issue.
If, instead, the writer was trying to say that she’s entitled to make whatever pictures she wants, hand them to multiple parties, and that Congress should pass new laws to give her legal authority over them if they escape into the wild – then I’m not really on her side. But if I thought that, I wouldn’t have tried to be pithy and instead dug into the pitfalls of such legislation.
No they don’t, but they do the next best thing: you give them royalty free rights to use your image. You still control who sees it, but they can make as much money off your image as possible, and they will owe you nothing.
Once you realised that whilst Nesrie is replying to your post, she’s not actually responding to what you wrote, it makes more sense and the conversation easier. I learnt this in P&R. It’s why I generally respond to the subject or speak to the thread.
Video games do not create murderers. With his Thursday meeting, the president was merely engaging in political distraction.
And yet Mr. Trump was absolutely right when he said that “bad things” are happening on the internet. Video games do have a big problem, but it is not stylized virtual violence. Rather, it is the bigotry, social abuse, sexism and other toxic behavior to which players too often subject one another when gaming together online.
In other words: It’s not the content; it’s the culture.
Yes we are.
Thanks for the couple of PMs from folks as well. I didn’t exit the conversation so much as allow it to complete.
So, it’s not a videogame problem, just the internet being the internet… which is just a symptom of the modern dog eat dog culture.
Surprised NYT didn’t add some both siderism into the piece, it would fit right in.
So it’s not just that videogames are responsible for violence, it’s that videogames are responsible for people being assholes?
Man, the NYT never seems to miss an opportunity to disappoint.
-Tom
I don’t know, I feel like there are lots of examples of toxic culture in the gaming community.
I don’t know how much that differs from the internet as a whole, but the gamer segment is by no means clean.
For instance, it was called GamerGate, not SomethingElseGate.
Given my own experience in online FPS games since the late 90s, I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to argue that some gaming cultures can be quite toxic. Strategy games, boardgames, RPGs not so much. Even MMOs frequently foster a positive community that can last years.
And I agree with the general point of the argument: Study the culture more, and correlate outcomes with prior associations less.
Yeah, the communities for competitive FPS games, or MOBAs, are notoriously bad. Many people here have reiterated themes about not playing certain games, or disabling all in game chat and communications, because of toxicity.
The claim that many online gaming communities are toxic beyond repair isn’t controversial, it’s fact. It is an actual problem, and rightly so he article points that out as more of an issue than depictions of violence.
Ban all in-game chat.
The implication of the article – which is pretty facile so maybe I’m reading too much into it – is that the videogames are to blame. Call of Duty doesn’t make people call someone a nigger in ingame chat. It doesn’t make someone put a swastika on his player tag. It doesn’t make someone use of the word “fag”. Being a racist homophobe makes someone do that stuff. Videogames provide an easy, consequence free, and anonymous way to express racism and homophobia, but I don’t believe they cause it.
But isn’t this the same issue as people being dicks in YouTube comments sections and on Twitter. Why would you single out videogames as if they were somehow to blame? Why would you characterize this as “the real problem with videogames”? It strikes me as the same scapegoating behind attempts to connect videogames and violent behavior.
-Tom
Nintendo was right in not having in-game chat after all!
You’re right, I forgot about that since I don’t do multiplayer, but you can still find plenty of deplorable speech outside of gaming or the internet.
You could automate censoring game/forum chat according to age rating, or increase the age requirement for online play, I suppose. But it is like saying soccer makes people violent after seeing some incidents, that’s not the origin of the issue and focusing on it is just going to shift it somewhere else.
Video games do have a big problem, but it is not stylized virtual violence. Rather, it is the bigotry, social abuse, sexism and other toxic behavior to which players too often subject one another when gaming together online.
In other words: It’s not the content; it’s the culture.
followed by
While researchers have devoted ample time to studying the emotional and psychological effects of virtual video game violence, the actual social behavior of players has largely escaped academic attention. That should change. The racism, homophobia and misogyny prevalent in many online game precincts can amount to emotional abuse. This is a phenomenon that needs to be better understood and more widely known.
I think you’re being a little bit ungenerous, but I can see where you’re coming from.
Culture tends to be self-sustaining and self-reinforcing. What a particular culture revolves around (MOBAs, Darts, Nascar) isn’t necessarily a causative factor in why their culture is toxic.
That’s the mistake that has been made quite frequently in studying videogame violence, the assumption that e.g. violent videogames are strongly related to violent outcomes.
Years of being disappointed by the NYT will do that to a guy. :)
-Tom
The gaming community seems not only open to but accepting of the toxic behavior. It’s a hostile community that loves to hate itself. The professional are no different. Are they worse than the typical sports player, maybe not… but it seems like it.
As for the YouTube commentators, well a number of those individuals also seem to play games since they comment on gaming, movies… just about anything in that arena.
Having said that, many of the traditional news outlets don’t have comment sections enabled, for a reason. At least they acknowledge the problem.