Oh dear, another rant

[beautifulduckweed]

So I got into a conversation with my co-workers today about the killings at Virginia Tech, and they hit allllll my sore points.

"Violent music did it!"

"No, the violent video games did it!"

"Also, violent TV and movies!"

"And did you see those creepy plays he wrote?"

Gaaaah.

Look, if we want to use creation, consumption and enjoyment of violent media as any sort of reliable measure of mental health, I should be a raving, gun-toting lunatic by now, instead of a reasonably bright girl with very strong non-violent convictions and zero desire to ever possess a gun.

I tried to explain that violent stories and killing have been part of our culture for a long, long time. Fairy tales are often incredibly disturbing (that is, before we started sanitizing them so they were safe for the kids--and don't even get me started on the whole "think of the children" issue), and if you want to talk violent and fucked-up, let's peruse some Greek and Sumerian mythology, mmmkay? Violent preoccupations are nothing new; if it's not one thing, it's another. Back in the day, children and teenagers helped their families hunt and butcher animals, got into fights and played violent games with their friends and siblings.

I hate this species of nostalgia with a passion, this idealization of Ye Olde Tymes as being somehow better and gentler and kinder. Hate. Like, a layer cake of hate, with buttercream hate frosting in between. With every generation, it's a song that never changes, but that is replayed as if it's a fresh, innovative refrain. Waltzing will rip asunder the very fabric of society! Skirts that display women's legs will destroy civilization as we know it! No, jazz music will! No, make that rock and roll! No, make that Catcher in the Rye! No, it's those goddamn hippies! No, that awful rap music will destroy society for sure! No, it's those video games with red pixels that look like real blood if you kind of tilt your head and unfocus your eyes! No, bad industrial music played by people in even worse make-up will do it!

The lack of acknowledgement that these murderers are statistical outliers bothers me deeply. Millions upon millions of people read and write violent stories, listen to violent music, play violent video games, watch and love violent movies. Only a fraction of a fraction of these people are broken in dangerous ways.

How about this: I'm willing to bet that every mass murderer ever convicted ate rice and/or wheat on a regular basis all their lives. I'm seeing a dangerous pattern here. We need to stop this grain consumption now. Clearly, some dangerous substance in rice and wheat is responsible for the murderous urges. Let them eat quinoa! I mean, how many mass murderers ate quinoa on a regular basis, right? I rest my case.

Okay, spelt might be fine, too. However, I'm not sure about barley or corn. I'm pretty sure every mass murderer has consumed fairly significant amounts of both.

The biggest difference between Now and Then, near as I can tell, is that people who are determined to kill now have better firepower at their disposal and greater population densities to work with. It's easier for a single person to kill a whole lot of people in a very short time than it used to be.

At least nobody here has had the stupidity to bring up the South Korean issue--not around me, at any rate. It absolutely astounds me that people in any way think it's significant enough to comment on, other than as a piece of demographic information. Cho was South Korean. So what? He was also male, 23 years old, heterosexual, unmarried, and a college student. The fact that South Korean officials have apologized for Cho's actions makes me sadder than I can say, because they have nothing to apologize for.

Comments

[freyis.livejournal.com]

"Look, if we want to use creation, consumption and enjoyment of violent media as any sort of reliable measure of mental health, I should be a raving, gun-toting lunatic by now, instead of a reasonably bright girl with very strong non-violent convictions and zero desire to ever possess a gun."

Agreed. I've spent countless hours playing "murder simulators", as Jack Thompson would call them, and I have never killed or tried to kill anyone. In fact, the two fights I've gotten into in my life both happened in elementary school, BEFORE I started playing things like Doom and Quake and so forth. If anything, they've made me less likely to do those things.

People are far too quick to blame something other than the person who caused it all. Be it the gun laws in the U.S., music, games, parental upbringing, etc etc. What it all boils down to is that this guy snapped and was a fucked up individual. That's all there is to it. Blame him, not every little thing around him! He's the one that decided "Hey, I know, I should go kill a bunch of people and then myself! That's a GREAT idea!" Do people really think that playing a game or hearing a song will make someone decide to do that?

I hadn't known that they apologized.. and that is sad, since as you said, they have no reason to apologize. That'd be like me apologizing for an American overseas going on a killing rampage.

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

Funny, my most recent entry was all about this... my thesis was that liberal positions tend to focus on the social causes of behavior (rightly or wrongly), while conservatives focus more on personal responsibility despite those conditions (rightly or wrongly). Of course, I forgot - conservatives will be happy to blame negative behaviors on social trends they don't like, if it's an opportunity to take jabs at something they were attacking anyway (the media, lack of family values, that damn music the kids are listening to these days). [Just like they're happy to demand pluralistic equal air time for all views, as long as it's a way of imposing religious absurdities into science curriculum. But I digress.]

[lilithsaintcrow.livejournal.com]

Amen. Just...amen.

The thing about this that really teed me off was the gun lobby weighing in while the story was unfolding. People were still dying while they were trying to spin. It boggles the mind.

[rat-bastird.livejournal.com]

they appologized???

talk about a guilt complex!

I felt the urge to ask... when they went on the anti-violent game rant... did you feel a desire to kill them? Maybe strangle their neck? Or at LEST bash them over the head really hard with a nerf bat?

Ah the good old days of raping and pillaging... there's some pretty graphic books out there as to just how GOOD those days were!

[paraleipsis.livejournal.com]

South Korean officials have apologized for Cho's actions

Fucking seriously? Christ, even if there were any conceivable reason to do that for a criminal who had been, like, just visiting (which there still wouldn't be), the man hadn't lived in South Korea since he was six. If anyone's going to try to pin this on South Korea, the least they can do is give Romania a medal for producing Liviu Librescu while they're at it.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this Washington Post article?

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

Every time I hear that nostalgia bullshit, I just want to throw books at people. Like, oh, Zhu Xi's 12th c. CE treatise on education (Damn kids these days are terrible students, criminal hoodlums I tell you, not like back in the good ol' Han Dynasty, andthey listen to awful music) or the Middle Kingdom Egyptian "Dispute of a Man With His Ba," approximately 8th c. BCE (Goddamnit, the world's going to shit. People fight with each other, wars are unjust, families break up, the marketplace guys are cheats, and I'm lonely. I may as well just die. Everything's just getting worse.).

Seriously. The best response to that nonsense, otherwise, is "Grow up, you big baby. The kids and their bebop music aren't what's wrong with the world."
I grew up on violent media, and put my physical safety on the line all the time for pacifism. Gah.

[ariiadne.livejournal.com]

I linked in a comment below to Steven Pinker arguing against the whole nostalgia for less violent days problem - you might be interested too!

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

I, myself, am very fond of Vicessimus Knox's polemic against novel reading. I especially like substituting the word "novel" for "role-playing game," "violent movie" or "video game."

[ariiadne.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, Steven Pinker has debunked the "oh for how it used to be" argument, on a pretty grand scale.

In other news, people are stupid.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

That was an excellent article. I especially liked the point about how ACTUAL torture is no longer considered legitimate entertainment. Wish that had occurred to me while I was debating this issue with my co-workers.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

In other news, people are stupid.

That's news?

[majormojo.livejournal.com]

Rant away.. you've always expressed my thought much better than I could anyway.

Agreed with you on all points. Writing violent fiction does not make you a violent person. Some serial killers/ most violent criminals probably never wrote a piece of fiction ever in their lives, and a piece of violent fiction is probably written every second now by a regular angst ridden teen who will grow out of it one day to be reasonably bright, loud-mouthed and (horror!) armed with a law degree! ;)

It makes me sad that South Korea is taking on the blame. Truly, what has a nation that was not even his home in the last 10 years (?) got anything to do with it? Just highlights the difference in culture.

Rant more.

[jennekirby.livejournal.com]

I can't respond to this properly for a number of reasons, so instead I'll say...

...a few days ago another friend posted something that described crying "big fat buttercream tears" and now you've got buttercream hate frosting. I will never look at birthday cake the same way again.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Ha! Oh no! Between breaking up on your birthday and hate frosting, it'd seem like I'm (unintentionally) bent on fucking with your birthday.

(I contemplated describing hate tacos but went with the cake instead.)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I want to print this cartoon out and rapt it everywhere.

Though what makes me really ill is the guy who's blaming the students for not attacking Cho en masse and thus taking him out.

[davethegreat.livejournal.com]

It's simple math IMHO, and this fun experiment you can do at home will settle the violent video game debate forever. FOREVER!

A violent videogame, "Grand Theft Auto III," sold 8.5 million copies. It's no doubt one of the more violent games I have ever seen, hands-down.

If violent video games make people go on killing sprees, then logically we should have had 8.5 million killing sprees in this country.

A killing "spree" has to be at least, what, three people? Four? It's like an orgy, hard to define in exact numbers, but you know there is a minimum. Let's use 3 people to balance out the Virginia Tech shootings against the people with shitty marksmanship who get nailed by the cops before the kill anyone. Three dead people on average per spree.

So that's at least 25.5 million dead people in the USA from these gun sprees. Which is around 11 or 12% of the population.

So if you grab a random sampling of Americans, say, nine of them, at least one of them should be full of bullet holes because of these violent video games.

HERE is how to test it: Walk up to nine people today, and frisk them. Run your hands under their clothing and feel around (you can't just look; they could use makeup to conceal them) for bullet holes. Any nine people will do. Feel around as thoroughly as possible, perhaps humming a soothing tune to put them at east. Discuss the weather. Talk about sports. Ask them if they have ever been shot repeatedly by a strange person who played too many video games. Compliment them on their haircut. Ya know, soothing stuff.

If you find bullet holes in them, violence is caused by video games. If not, then just keep an eye out for those spooky Asian immigrants because THEY are obviously the cause.

::: ducks :::

[frostmorn.livejournal.com]

“if you want to talk violent and fucked-up, let's peruse some Greek and Sumerian mythology, mmmkay?”
You rock. A balanced, thoughtful perspective with a dash of dry humour rarely fits so well into a single sentence (which may explain the unpopularity of the balanced, thoughtful perspective).

During the Cold War, the conflicting powers did all manage to find one solid point of common ground: The Twist (the dance) was evil and degenerate, and should be stopped. Nice to know the whole ‘destruction of society’ bandwagon has a sharp perspective and sensible priorities. (Not that I’m suggesting we could destroy society with, say, a whole organized war instead of a single act of violence.)

I also like that you mention the reaction to the “South Korean issue”. I notice the fact that he’s heterosexual won’t even be mentioned in the media, although you can bet your frilly pink boxers there would be hew, cry and hype if he’d been anything else. Ditto if Cho had been female. Etc. We see what we want to see, but god forbid we actually learn anything.