Are Video Games Killing Us?

I suppose many people think that we had PONG thirty years ago - and any iteration of a video game since can only be built up with that competitive good wholesome nature - no beheading priests or bringing a city to its knees, no killing bikers gangs or dismembering families to get the drugs they swallowed out of their abdomen - It cannot be dangerous, for we can ALWAYS tell the difference between real and fake, right?

Today's video games are nearly photo-quality equivalencies. They supply well-acted screenplays and actors and are so much more intelligent than your blank slate of a mind that still enjoys figuring things out. There are so many secrets in each game. Secrets within secrets. It's nearly impossible to find the time to invest in the pursuit.

The first large entourage of humans getting their first dose of such grotesque killing sessions was with the 8-bit DOOM released in 1993. It was released with the specs: 8-bit CPU running at just 4 MHz, with 64 KB of RAM. A lot was left to the imagination, but somehow it affected us. DOOM was the original first-person shooter (FPS) game that made it into most homes. It spawned an endless supply of bloody video games and DOOM was the game the Columbine shooters worshipped. If this is not the bulk of the public, who is creating this revolting edge of gore, and for whom? Who needs carcasses, entrails, and grey matter- seriously, I need to know who has this laundry list of the grotesque. About 55% of all movies are rated R.

Video games used to be like movies you play a part in and subject yourself to. You might have an axe, some gold, some stamina, some farmers under your care, some intergalactic star colonizers, a SEAL Team, or some Formula 1 vehicle-driving prowess. Whatever it is, you must use it before someone with the same weapon pulverizes you in a blood-spattered pulp.

“Violent video games lend themselves to our psychological needs because they’re designed in a way that allows us to achieve a sense of control and accomplishment, and they help us figure out where we sit in a social hierarchy based on our performance in them,” — Professor Kasumovic.

The horrors of war, train accidents, fatal car roll-overs, even point-blank assassinations of your friends - things no one hitherto wanted to see, are all there for your viewing pleasure. These are graphically portrayed in their most visual of all manners, with the game programmer's sick and twisted mind deeply into the grotesque for you, the unassuming customer. Some image stills are PTSD material.

You must accept that when you buy an R-rated video game, you just might be venturing into the worst a sick-minded programmer can churn out. On the other hand, you are about to be entertained by someone who finds killing his neighbor's pet a worthwhile past-time. If they are the norm, they masturbate incessantly. I do not require this from my game programmer.

If you tie in the unemployment rate, the detritus people not working after covid, and the pot-smoking gamer who spends all his time in front of his screen, podcasting to Twitch while eating Tater Tots in his mom's basement, and you have a huge demographic of lazy, sick, injured volunteers to be caught playing video games. Affected, they will be. The average person doesn't have the stomach for the goriest of releases. But let 100,000s of young kids do exactly what they want to do, and you will have a sacrifice to the living god.

And while I have this space - video games DO kill video games; guns DO kill people. Quit trying to sideline your responsibility. No gun was convicted in a court of law and sentenced to life in prison. Only people do - so wise up. The musician and his instrument... a man and his gun, a kid and his controller.

You'll have Joquin spraying a sub-automatic warrant out forth sh*t he's going to do across his horizon. He doesn't care. Or Shaniz, who drives like she's trying to face off against traffic cops. Or Haggarty, who struts across the Crip's territory prepared to use his stolen tazer should anyone come close. And last but not least, the litany of private citizens film from public property into private property. This always ends wrong the subject is just being a dick to the powers that be, and many people end up hurt because of the filming actions of one man. Love live the unemployed!!! But what in God's name do they fill their days with???

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Today's games streamline things you would otherwise think or talk about. But the action has to happen fast. You kill or be killed. And there are streaks when you - say - drive over several police officers, effectively killing them and getting a high score just for hitting a combination on an X-Box controller. So do you feel a tinge of remorse? Of course not; they were there to stop your game, both the enjoyment and entertainment.

You run from the cops, and you kill cops. Or, as we know, you will be caught or killed by the police. But again - these are just electronic police officers... they are meant to be mowed down. Could a circumstance arrive where "we" start thinking of human cops with such disregard? Yes, the swarthy way people don't care about police these days is insane. From "Defunding The Police" strategies to recent mass lootings to assassinating cops while they eat their lunch is just such a response.

Crime has gotten away from us. We DID have a strong-armed approach. California's iconic "Three Strike" rule to the current run on free-for-alls at Target, Macy's, Walmart, and jewelry stores. Up is now down; down is now up. Open stores are closing if you need proof. And if you think video games don't play a factor in the thieves' lives writ large, think again. It's where they get their bravado. It is where they lose their fear of the police. It is where hatred becomes natural. Not like they had an axe to grind with the police, not like they hate the police because of past trauma, but because society and video games have made the police into the ENEMY. For society, this is a terrible place to be. To not trust those sworn to protect you.

In today's extreme video games, you drive over people, dragging them for blocks, create massive traffic accidents, flip over fire trucks and escape your mess, or drop the bodies of drug dealers in the street in a hail of bullets from AK-47s. While video games came to reflect life, humans have a creatively sick and twisted mental side that wants to exploit the mirage of gaming and kill people with impunity. The video game now mimics real life and, more often, clears the consciences of trespassers - so VERY FEW PEOPLE IN AMERICA ACTUALLY FEAR ANYTHING so long as they're armed with a weapon, or are on drugs.

If you are not reacting in real life to how violent video games are dismantling society, you do not have your pulse on how certain tribes of criminals ought to treat law enforcement. With a nation with gunfire ringing out 24/7, it's no wonder we might feel better playing these games as a version of revenge on society.

• Playing violent video games causes more aggression, bullying, and fighting.
• Simulating violence like shooting guns and hand-to-hand combat in video games can cause real-life violent behavior.
• Many perpetrators of mass shootings played violent video games.
• Violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence.

What happened to us? A few short decades ago, games required us to catch a lousy bad guy, grow a tree, become a king, drive around a track, build a burger, water some vegetables, hit a ball to the infield, learn metalwork, or catch a lateral pass on the touchdown line. Of course, this expanded our talents and views on future technologies. We were green, wet behind the ears, all of us, at one point, innocent.

Did we need grotesque violence? No, not really. One could argue we need a world that grows independently from the abuse and crazed injuries we need as violent gamers, but, of course, we're human; we categorically need gore. Racism and sexism are the other huge problems violent video games create, building up arguments worldwide. We, humans, cannot get enough of the physical adult human body, not enough beauty outside or guts inside. It's weird. Admit it. There are approximately 100 million acts of sexual intercourse each day.

Biology and psychology researchers from UNSW Sydney have a theory that could help explain our fascination with violent video games. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and cognitive evaluation theory—a theory explaining the effect of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation—among others, their recent paper, published in Motivation Science, suggests violent video games resonate with so many of us because they offer opportunities to fulfill our psychological needs.

Harry Potter (a child's game franchise and a collection of child's books) was a fantasy world to immerse yourself into. I prefer driving games, say, the latest EA release. Now I race illegally around Chicago playing the recently released "Need For Speed: Unbound." The driving is semi-atrocious. In no way does it resemble driving in real life. I run people over. I run cars off the road. I try and kill the police that chase me.  This is a family game.

Did we need school shooter video games? What good did that serve us? Did we need the pornographic? Did we need to try smuggling drugs? Or smuggling people? Did we need to blow up an airport? Of course, we're human; we need overkill, massive danger, sexual innuendo, and wonton violence. But why?

There is little accountability in these matters. You might get shot, but YOU get more lives in a video game and can always start over.
    The police you mowed down or sent sailing off some overpass to their deaths do not have extra lives; you killed them. Why? To escape, and you have no regrets. You can saunter off to bed with a high score as your prize. Don't you think that's strange? You may dream of your gameplay; I certainly have. You can walk down Main Street with an AR-15, but it's just a video game or a dream (remember scripture when it reinforces the power of dreams). Even if you put 500 hours into the game, it certainly hasn't confused you with what is real and fiction. Right?

No lasting mental effects... none whatsoever.

But what if someone younger gets pulled over by the police and speeds away - all as per the education in the video game?

Suppose video games are your child's teacher - you better know what the hell their video games teach them. Otherwise, the next ten years of driver's licenses will be really messed up with no way to compute the right option when faced with law enforcement. There will be a lot of unnecessary deaths of stupid people.

A man famously entered the U.S. Navy after successfully leading how to fly jets on Microsoft's Flight Simulator. Likewise, a child can practically learn to drive a car with today's simulators. There are literally 100s of FREE games to play online to learn driving techniques. It would be wise to play this before your driver's exam.

But without good guidance, they can gain nasty bad habits. They love to crash into other people (likely adults) and ruin their standings like children. They like to ruin a perfect move like children. I hate children on multiplayer when all they want to do is crash vehicles. However, maybe they can glean some sound driving habits and learn the physics of heavy vehicles, which could prove to be good skills when they are driving for real among us. Inshallah...

I go back for a moment to understand what humans are. We can construct, we can understand, we can make up stories, we can lie, we can be poor eyewitnesses, we can design, we can program, we can do addition, we can electrify a board room with our ideas, we can develop virtual reality (VR), we can believe in a lie,  we can change the views of others, we can lose sight of own view, and on all these examples, we can merely be confident, and often, that sustains the narrative.

That's why so many senior citizens lose millions on scams. They "believe" the speech that they've been given. Bully for them, you may say, it is their fault for being tricked - but what kind of a society do we want where you have to study every lead until it pans out? And we all have grandparents we want to protect.

The world is far more complex, and when I get a call from the I.R.S. saying I owe them money, I know NOW that I don't. But so many people cannot discern IRS from an IRS scam. We do this to our fellow taxpayers. We do this to our fellow human beings who the federal government is already fleecing.

Recent creative teams in India have attacked "scammer" offices in India that are trying daily to scam Americans of their money. It feels good to watch it unfold, but will we ever reach a criminal homogeneity? Will these two curves flatten? Or are we at war with our fellow humans forevermore? Is some sleek new legislation going to put things right again? Not a chance. No one is driving this bus.

If you play games like GTA5, Post Scriptum, Gunrunner, or the State of Survival, you can kidnap, steal, cheat, machine gun down foes, terribly mutilate a friend's body, car jack, and sell drugs... all in 4K realism - if you have a huge TV, more authenticity. Rules are defunct because you aim for an objective by specifically breaking laws to get your way! The more you break the social law, the more you are rewarded. What a cost it is for Gen Zers to be kind. It suddenly fits.

The ability of a game to dominate your every waking function and focus it on terrible crimes (were they real life) has done something I don't think we can see from the sum of the parts. Who assassinated real police officers in real life? Gamers or people who treat life like they do in a video game. It IS hard to walk away from hours of the grotesque and disgustingly sexual without carrying some of it into the present. There is no such thing as an instant cleansing after hours of torture. Such visual violence does not just disappear. It takes a toll. Just watch a realistic war game with teams in contact on headphones, and you will see a bloodbath and confidence that never occurred during the war before headphones. A chair is a very safe place to take over the world from.

Wrong question: "Do video games cause violence?"
Better question: "How does extremism spread in online communities formed around video games?"
— Timothy Clancy, Ph.D

And the amount of time these games suck from life is startling. Some games go on forever, some just a few hours less than that. But many big maps are hundreds of hours of gameplay. Time siphons away your social life while you battle with your screen. We cannot tell a human from Artificial Intelligence. We cannot tell a scam from a genuine initiative. We cannot tell our friend's voice from a DeepFake audio or a video from a DeepFake video. We cannot discern reality from reality. And therein lies the future of humans lying to humans for some measly profit.

Sex, violence, greed... something tells me a small percentage of people want to foist their sick and twisted beliefs on all others - so that it becomes mainstream. Mainstream is the danger we must all fear; for in their mediocrity, participating in the event is incest, rape, or fetishes - that which should not be in front of our God-fearing eyes.