General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMy apologies, but maybe I am just getting old and remember D&D dust up too well
When I was a teen my high school history teacher burned my dungeons and dragons books (me and others were camping out on his property and he was a Christian Fundie).
There was a craze back then - see the 60 minutes documentary (on youtube) and the movie Mazes and Monsters (starring a young Tom Hanks) - where people were blaming role playing games for many ills.
Kids killing themselves or others were blamed on the game. It was a tool of the devil.
Were there a few who maybe used the game in ways not intended? Sure. Didn't know any myself but I am guessing maybe that there were some who had issues and 'got too involved' in it.
I remember that time well (not just for the reasons above). I was looking at getting a cool cloak (based on the LOTR) and my dad (a christian fundie) got upset and said no way could I buy one because he was afraid I would become like those other kids (he watched the 60 minutes show) that were drawn into the game and did terrible things.
Guns. Video Games. Movies. These are not the causes of things we see going on at times.
The person who did this latest act was not motivated by any of those things. They had free will and used it for reasons that we don't really know at this point.
To start blaming such things is to remove the real causes and empower things which don't really have any power at all. It is a way, perhaps, for some to try and make sense of it all. But it is not based on truth.
It is a way, used by many I have seen in the past, to make sense of something which makes no sense. People trying to tell themselves that if they can isolate what they see as a cause they can save us all from the same thing happening again.
It is lying to yourself and to others. An attempt to control what you cannot.
Problem here is not the guns, the games, computers, etc - the problem we face is trying to make sense of what some psycho did. And you can't do that fully.
You cannot, no matter how much you want to, control others and gain a perfect and safe society. And you sure as hell cannot achieve that by looking at that person and trying to remove from the rest of us the tools they had or the things they did for pleasure and hoping that will fix it all for you and make it all better.
LAGC
(5,330 posts)Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)If so, do you wonder how that came to be?
Because it didn't just "happen" out of the blue. Something happened to make it that way.
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)"The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html
Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)I'd like to see that data run in parallel with stats on prison population..
Now, if you tell me that our prison population today is much lower than it was 30 years ago, I will rethink my assumptions.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)in the population).
i think the decline in the population of young men + the increased percent of them in prison may skew the comparison a bit.
JVS
(61,935 posts)They're more or less a lump in the snake of time, so when they hit a phase the stats are thrown for everyone.
50s: juvenile delinquent crisis
60s - 70s: proliferation of drugs and drug related crime
80s: boomers have kids and suddenly "just say no" is the slogan.
2000-2010 and on: boomers get old, hence medical crises in the stats as their illnesses are tabulated in
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)flamingdem
(39,313 posts)They had numbers around 10 thousand and not varying.
flamingdem
(39,313 posts)at 10,000 per year.
Please do not confuse the issues.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)flamingdem
(39,313 posts)bhikkhu
(10,718 posts)It really isn't a matter of opinion; we have become a more peaceful people. If this were redrawn as a rate per-capita it would be even more clear, as we have many more people and much less violent crime.
flamingdem
(39,313 posts)That's what matters to me, hey I've been mugged with violence, whatever, but I WAS NOT KILLED. Big differnce
bhikkhu
(10,718 posts)Down markedly since 1993.
flamingdem
(39,313 posts)bhikkhu
(10,718 posts)Just wikipedia, but you can find the same data anywhere else.
flamingdem
(39,313 posts)You can select whatever point you like
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)JVS
(61,935 posts)along with sending drones to exotic locations like Yemen to summarily assassinate people, I'd have laughed at you. Other than the officially sanctioned violence of the military, I don't see an increase in violence since 1982.
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)I remember the whole country scared to death of Ozzy as well. Such idiotic nonsense. This has to be the most unreasonable, frightened bunch of sheep country in the world. And a great deal of it is because of religion. People scared of nonexistent entities like Satan and demons because their preacher told them so. It's sick.
Crazy people do things like this because they're crazy.
Iggo
(47,558 posts)Back when Judas Priest made those two kids go get their parents' gun and shoot themselves in the head.
'Cause see Your Honor, if you take this obscure heavy metal song, play it backwards, and listen to this fraction of a second part right here over and over and over and over, it kinda sounds maybe like the words "do it", and as every kid knows, almost hearing the words "do it" means "go to your parents' gun rack, get a gun, and shoot yourself in the head." I rest my case, Your Honor.
Yep. Good times.
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)As the popularity of D&D and other role-playing games increased, Pulling's more extreme views and statements were increasingly called into question. For example, she once told a newspaper reporter that eight percent of the people living in Richmond, Virginia were Satanists. She had arrived at that figure, she explained, by estimating four percent of adults and four percent of teens to be involved with Satanism, and adding them to get eight percent. When the reporter informed her that mathematically that was four percent, not eight percent, she claimed that it did not matter because even eight percent was a "conservative" figure.[7]
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)Worshipers were everywhere. I was just a kid but I can remember my grandmother talking about her friend in the country who was worried there were devil worshipers down the road. Her evidence? She could hear drums late at night and when she went down there to investigate the next day she found where they had built a fire
There were also beer cans laying around. So obviously it was devil worshipers. It wasn't until I was a teen in the 1990s and drinking beer around a fire at the end of a.dirt road myself that it dawned on me what had all the old ladies riled up.
longship
(40,416 posts)Everybody knows it's Harry Potter these days... Wait a minute, this didn't happen by Avada Kedavra. Nevermind about that.
Oh!!! I know! It's the gay! And those atheist billboards and... OMFG! ... The teaching of evilution!
That's it! As soon as we rid the planet of those things, we'll all be safe again.
Oh. Did I mention school prayer?
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)My son and his friends (20 year olds) all play a few times a week. Magic cards have also made a comeback.
I was very happily surprised
longship
(40,416 posts)Plus, it's open source, so it's free. But there's a huge repository of info on it. Regardless, you're likely not to come out of the dungeons of doom alive.
I recommend a look see. Don't let the simplistic visual characterizations turn you off. It is a very complex and ever intriguing universe.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)I'm sorry, I can loan you better games. Ha, you must not have played many recent MMOs, aside from a few recent exceptions the storylines are pretty much excuses to kill kill 10 of x or find 10 of y.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)Sorry, that's not NetHack, that's the original hack and slash adventure game, coded on a DEC PDP-10. I played that game so many times that I had the entire thing memorized. Even decades later I could probably do a credible job at beating it.
But NetHack is evil. You can only win -- I've done it -- by being ruthless and knowing what to do when the going gets very, very tough (as it is want to do).
It is the most difficult D&D type game I've ever played. It takes weeks to play a single game, assuming you survive.
Even real, roll-the-dice, D&D isn't as challenging. I love NetHack. And D&D.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Nethack is a blast, though I've never managed to get any of my characters to attain Ascension.
Every play a game like Diablo II or Diablo III or Minecraft with a "Hardcore" mode where once you die, your character and world are deleted?
Nethack did it first! The only way Nethack can be played is in hardcore. Backing up your character file and restoring it to revive after your character is killed is considered cheating.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Being into RPGs myself, I remember very much people going apeshit over D&D, calling us satanic, putting up a giant wall of stupid.
Again, I'll say it. And people don't like me saying it, because they think I'm "disrespectful" in the wake of a tragedy.
When people are hit with these tragedies, they become stupid, and they become authoritarian. It is exactly at times like RIGHT FUCKING NOW when we need to be watching out for opportunist authoritarian asshole types who want to hit us with stupid little authoritarian restrictions, or worse, stupid BIG authoritarian insanities (like throwing Japanese-Americans into camps after Pearl Harbor, or our decade of war, authoritarianism, destroyed civil rights and paranoia after 9/11.
Already, AMC has had a dumbass attack and banned costumes in their theaters.
NNN0LHI
(67,190 posts)I must be getting real old.
Don
hay rick
(7,624 posts)you can have a better and less unsafe society. You can't keep a nut job from running amok, but you can at least cut the possible toll with common sense precautions.
Your argument reminds me of a Jules Feiffer cartoon on nuclear disarmament. In the cartoon, nuclear weapons had become so commonplace that some neighborhoods had the weapons and wanted a seat at the negotiating table.
Compared to what the founding fathers had available to them, modern automatic weapons are analogous to nukes.
Raine
(30,540 posts)grandmother (on my mother's side, a real nut case) hid it and then destroyed it. I guess she thought it was evil or something To this day it infuriates me because it was a treasured book of my aunt's. My aunt gave it to me because I loved it and was so interested in it. I wish I had that book!
Nevernose
(13,081 posts)Yet to this day I have a book on the meaning of dreams, not because I believe in it, but because my beloved late aunt gave it to me. I feel for you; I couldn't bear to lose mine.
Raine
(30,540 posts)and old when it was given to me, probably printed in the 1920s or 30's. I feel it was taken from me for a ridiculous reason. I'm glad you still have yours to treasure though.
white_wolf
(6,238 posts)I think these people will try to blame these acts on D&D, Batman, video games, comics, etc. are simply wrong. However, I do think we need stricter gun laws here.
Clyde39
(1,074 posts)NO ONE (except police) should be able to buy an automatic weapon.
Zoeisright
(8,339 posts)Like every other first world nation in the world except the U.S. All you have to do is look at gun stats. This nation is insane. And it's very, very possible to make us much, much safer.
JEK1959
(1 post)Hardly anyone actually, physically works for a living now like my dad did and I do. Most now just sit on their ass, at their computers, and all they care about is themselves. They treat people who do physical work like vermin without realizing that they, themselves are the parasites that suck the life out of the ones who actually bring to them the things they need to live.
Or, because this dude was in the university, so he was better than the movie-goers?
I myself, just try to keep going, day after day, to provide for my aging mother.
I can't bring myself to tell this lady, who was born during The Great Depression, that all those advances that were made in the decades after it, are being squandered by greedy jerks, and the multi-generational inbred idiots who can't stop crapping out more kids long enough to understand that they are increasing the supply of workers and driving wages into the toilet.
When she passes, I will hole up in a comfortable bunker and wait for the inevitable mass starvation that will come from overpopulation, deforestation, and the stranglehold that the fossil fuel industry has on international politics.
Of course, I never went to college, so I don't know anything.
That's why the tanning bed morons that I work with laugh \when I talk.
But I'll have the last laugh, because I will know these idiots have no idea how to feed themselves when the grocery stores are empty.
Or maybe I'm wrong and it's all because of SSRI's.
Or guns.
Or the pigeons.
Thom Hartmann is my god, but he wouldn't like me much.
I'm tired, and I have to fix dinner.
Wish I could make my living on my laptop, LOL.
But someone has to do real work, I guess.
As ManKind Said, "Have a nice day"
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Thank God Al finally divorced her.
2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)Even had a few people refuse to play because of that. Like they thought there was some hypnotic magic to the game that would take away all their own self control and make them go on a murderous rampage.
Our media reporting, guides the public and it is treasonous for them to lie the way they do now.
TroglodyteScholar
(5,477 posts)Forgive me if I scoff.
Curtland1015
(4,404 posts)Clerk should have learned to keep a handful of 20 sided dice behind the counter!