This is the first in a series of posts exploring the idea that storytelling, gameplay or entertainment of any kind may precipitate acts of violence in the real world.
A few weeks back I ran across yet another article purporting to shed light on the decades-old question of whether video games beget real-world violence. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the article was merely another grinding of the ever-glistening axe which both sides in that debate are all too eager to wield in service of their own disingenuous agendas.
Here is the opening paragraph from the article, which took journalism to task for suggesting that violent video games and real-world murder might somehow be related:
In the wake of the killing of the schoolteacher Ann Maguire last week, the question has again been raised of whether playing violent video games could lead someone to commit murder. It’s a common link that we see suggested in the media whenever tragedies of this sort occur, but the scientific evidence simply doesn’t support these claims.
As we’ll soon see, implying that a lack of scientific proof voids any possible causal complicity is a gambit exploited by every industry that has ever been accused of fomenting real-world violence. Such arguments are at best legal and at worst deceitful, and in no case scientific. The inability to prove cause and effect by scientific means does not mean there is no cause-and-effect relationship, merely that it can’t be proven — and the first people who would tell you that are actual scientists. As we’ll also see, the last people who will ever admit that’s the case are members of the press because they have a vested interest in leveling such charges whenever it profits them to do so.
In attempting to understand cause and effect we’re taught — rightly — to put our bedrock faith in facts. Because science is very good at unearthing facts it may seem that a lack of scientific evidence is somehow important to the question at hand, but it isn’t. We need know nothing about science in order to determine whether violent video games or video games in general or entertainment of any kind can cause an individual to act in a particular way at a particular time. Abandoning science may seem to leave us bewildered about how to prevent acts of violence in the future, but in fact the opposite is true. By stripping away improper appeals to science and eliminating false hopes arising from such appeals we end up in a very certain and logical place that allows us to keep as many people as possible from being murdered. Or would, if all parties were in agreement with that laudable objective, which unfortunately also turns out not to be the case. [ Read more ]
