Thread: Killing of Australian baseball player

'Training simulation:' Mass killers often share obsession with violent video games | Fox News



Hmmmm..... Where have I heard this before?.......

Originally Posted by EMC45

'Training simulation:' Mass killers often share obsession with violent video games | Fox News



Hmmmm..... Where have I heard this before?.......

I'm sure they do. I doubt anyone interested in mass murder is into stamp collecting. I'll bet they have a fascination with firearms too.

In MA, they also had a fascination with fireworks from NH and pressure cookers from the Kitchen Wares Department.

The most effective means of stopping such tragedies is probably to identify the root causes and deal with them more effectively otherwise, the strife (Patriots Game) can continue for decades or centuries. I do not know how to identify and treat the individuals having mental health issues before they reach a violent breaking point.

I fully support freedom of the press, but wish that the news and entertainment media would tone down the violence and sesationalism. Would businesses spend billions of $ on advertising if people did not respond to suggestion? Insane malcontents and terrorists could not aspire go out with high publicity to express anger with their plight, if there was less sensationalism.

Unfortunately sensationalism is what sells, and what sells is what matters. One of the issues I see with the media is that, IMO, there's a larger incentive to give consumers what they want to hear than there is to give them actual information. (Actually, there's a similar issue prevalent in politics, but I digress...). Sometimes the two coincide but more often than not a newspaper or tv news show cater to the preconceptions of their readers/viewers, or are simply a mouthpiece for the views of their overlords and masters (the Murdoch press, for example).

Some media outlets are better than others on this issue - in my experience these are the ones that are, usually, publicly funded and don't have a need to report a profit to their shareholders. But even those have to compete in the "news market", and so the cycle continues. I laughed out loud the other day while reading a blurb from Australia's publicly funded ABC news - it said something along the lines of "there's been a lot of things said in this [Australia's recent] election. So we thought we'd try something different: fact checking." Imagine that - journalists actually checking facts. Now that *is* something different!

Anyway, sorry this got a bit off topic. I do put some weight in the idea that normalising violence on tv, in video games, news etc can in some ways impact on people's behaviour. But I also think that those people have other issues - I mean, I see the same stuff as them on tv, I have played violent video games, but I don't go around acting it out in my day to day life. There's more going on and whatever it is needs to be addressed more seriously than it has been. The fact that it hasn't been so far is just a reflection that, as a population, we don't care enough. To quote Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), it is SEP - someone else's problem.

James.