After Riots In France, Macron Partially Blames Video Games On Violence (npr.org) 108
President Emmanuel Macron is partially blaming video games for the spread of violence in France following the shooting death of a teenager during a police traffic stop in a Paris suburb last week. NPR reports: "It sometimes feels like some of them are experiencing, on the streets, the video games that have intoxicated them," Macron said in a press conference on July 1. He added that protesters are using Snapchat and TikTok to organize themselves and spread "a mimicking of violence, which for the youngest leads to a kind of disconnect from reality." Concerns that video games promote shootings, massacres or rioting are now about half a century old; it has been traced back to the 1976 release of Death Race, an arcade video game which put players behind the wheel of a car to mow down humanoid figures for points. The argument gained renewed traction in the 1990s with the release of much more realistic first-person shooter games. It is an old bogeyman that politicians have latched onto in the wake of horrific tragedies. But it has become less common as troves of studies have largely concluded there is no causal link between video games and violent behavior.
Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the impact of such games on the public, said he is surprised at Macron's comments. The president is 45 years old and belongs to a generation raised with video games, so "seeing him mention this is almost anachronistic," Ferguson said, sounding perplexed. "The evidence is very clear. Whatever may be going on in France, whatever violence is occurring, it certainly is not due to violence in video games." Decades of research, especially long-term experiments spanning decades, have consistently found "that playing violent video games, do not cause even prank-level aggressive behaviors, let alone violent crimes," Ferguson said. He also noted that the overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped significantly between 1993 and 2020, the same period during which violent video games soared in popularity.
And it's not just in the United States. A 2019 study out of Oxford University determined that early violent video game playing among British teenagers does not predict serious or violent criminal behavior later in life. According to Ferguson, if video games were the cause of rampant violence, then countries like Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands, which consume more violent video games per capita, would be rife with bloodshed. "Instead, they're three of the most peaceful countries on the planet in terms of violent crime," he said. "You could wave a magic wand and take all these people's video games away, and that's not going to have any effect in any way going to help their lives and reduce their aggression," Ferguson said. So why do politicians turn to the familiar refrain? Ferguson said it is a way for elected leaders to shift the blame away from failing government policies. "It gets people talking about the wrong thing. They're thinking about video games. They're not thinking about gun control or whatever inequalities are happening in France," Ferguson said.
Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the impact of such games on the public, said he is surprised at Macron's comments. The president is 45 years old and belongs to a generation raised with video games, so "seeing him mention this is almost anachronistic," Ferguson said, sounding perplexed. "The evidence is very clear. Whatever may be going on in France, whatever violence is occurring, it certainly is not due to violence in video games." Decades of research, especially long-term experiments spanning decades, have consistently found "that playing violent video games, do not cause even prank-level aggressive behaviors, let alone violent crimes," Ferguson said. He also noted that the overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped significantly between 1993 and 2020, the same period during which violent video games soared in popularity.
And it's not just in the United States. A 2019 study out of Oxford University determined that early violent video game playing among British teenagers does not predict serious or violent criminal behavior later in life. According to Ferguson, if video games were the cause of rampant violence, then countries like Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands, which consume more violent video games per capita, would be rife with bloodshed. "Instead, they're three of the most peaceful countries on the planet in terms of violent crime," he said. "You could wave a magic wand and take all these people's video games away, and that's not going to have any effect in any way going to help their lives and reduce their aggression," Ferguson said. So why do politicians turn to the familiar refrain? Ferguson said it is a way for elected leaders to shift the blame away from failing government policies. "It gets people talking about the wrong thing. They're thinking about video games. They're not thinking about gun control or whatever inequalities are happening in France," Ferguson said.
Qix (Score:4, Funny)
I was a Qix addict in my youth. This new causal link explains a lot of things.
(also Sinistar, is that a bad combination?)
Re: Qix (Score:2)
I hunger.
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Or more aptly around here,
RUN, COWARD!!!
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I was a Qix addict in my youth. This new causal link explains a lot of things.
I always wondered why you seemed to spend so much time filling in rectangles.
Pretty sure its because you broke democracy Macron (Score:5, Informative)
Using special powers to reject the democratic vote of parliament during peacetime on a matter than clearly isn't what the people want either, had created what we all should expect to see - A rejection of law and government by the people.
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yes and it's utterly racist and islamaphobic to blame the 'new french' for any of this.
The French constitution is complex (Score:4, Informative)
But it is untrue to say that 'special powers to reject the democratic vote of parliament during peacetime' is undemocratic. The legislature COULD have voted down the package of pension reform, but its members chose not to.
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I believe it gives the opposition a chance to call of vote of no confidence -- which they didn't take?
They called it (Score:2)
But not enough of the opposition voted for it.
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But yeah, you could blame video games... but since zombie games, films, & TV shows have been all the rage in recent years, I'd expect at least a few incidents of the protesters devouring the police.
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If so, maybe think about why that is. Is it because voters don't think rationally when the stakes are high? And then: do you think that the stakes are not high in this case? Stakes can be pretty high during peacetime. Just look at Brexit. Or how the US contemplates suicide every time the debt ceiling comes up. Would it be okay for the president to overrule congress if they decided to des
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If the leaders show their true nature then the protests become a mirror showing the masses the true nature of their leaders. This is when protests like Ghandi had work wonders to educate the public.
Totally orderly protests without any consequences have no teeth; there has to be risk and the possibility of it going beyond just a few bad eggs into a serious threat to the establishment. So some bad eggs or some illegal actions help long term to keep from being ignored completely.
Can they get enough people angr
Re:Pretty sure its because you broke democracy Mac (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a book of more effective non-violent protest strategies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Unfortunately, it's been weaponised by the CIA to destabilise countries, e.g. in Ukraine (2004-2005) & Syria (2016). Although one story of democratic success was in Tunisia in (2010).
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Re: Pretty sure its because you broke democracy Ma (Score:2)
In a way they were. They were protesting a system that doesn't appear to care about them, their futures, or even their lives. If they felt respected they would not be rioting.
Contrarian opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't begin to suggest that violence in video games desensitizes people to violence in the Real World, but analytically, it doesn't likely make people more attuned to courtesy and uncommon decency, either.
I know for sure every young man was trying to box outside the theatre after watching the 1st Rocky movie. I remember when carjacking & school shootings didn't exist, and then someone did one with full media coverage, and there were many more to follow.
Everything I needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten. Monkey see, monkey do.
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Unless someone goes on a shooting spree. Then it’s never video games.
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Long before school shootings, there were school bombings. [smithsonianmag.com]
School shootings get a lot of publicity because they are horrifying and of course we really, really hate it when kids are hurt. That's exactly why shooters pick schools, to hit us where it really, really hurts. That, and the relative lack of armed security in such schools. But, the cold hard truth is, death by school shooting is a vanishingly small cause of death in the USA. The numbers are so low, that "school shooting" doesn't even show up [wikipedia.org] in co
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I think you took the bait and didn't notice the hook. I don't think there's that much that can or should be done about school shootings that isn't already done. The idea of yet another restrictive law or regulation every time there's a shooting is ridiculous. I think we are way past the point of diminishing returns and into the territory of causing more harm than good with meddling.
Violent crimes will never completely go away, and those people who think they can eliminate them are selfishly profiting off
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True, and long before the game Postal, there were postal workers going "postal" to murder coworkers. I've been playing Murder Macron in His Place of Work and having extremely dark thoughts, maybe I'll car bomb his house.
And damn, if you don't get sarcasm, please, please take 5 minutes to look up the word. Up until a minute ago, I wasn't sure if Macron ran France or Canada. Sorry, I forgot, you are that important.
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I don't begin to suggest that violence in video games desensitizes people to violence in the Real World, but analytically, it doesn't likely make people more attuned to courtesy and uncommon decency, either.
What about action movies?
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Everything I needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten. Monkey see, monkey do.
Anyone who believes this really should read up on Albert Bandura's work on observational learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] tl;dr - It's waaay more complex & we see that the vast majority of people who grew up around violence reject it outright because they also grow up with the consequences.
An alternative expla
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Let me offer a suggestion: there is a problem with violence in our media (including video
Video games to blame for violence (Score:2, Insightful)
“If diversity is a strength, why do things always get objectively worse as a society is made diverse?”
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Most of the happiest places on earth are some of the least diverse. Like Norway and Finland. Go figure.
Well yeah. They don't have white people being mass shooters.
Re: Video games to blame for violence (Score:1)
Norway has the record for deadliest mass shooting in the world. 77 people, and nobody shot back.
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77 murders? That’s like 3 month’s worth for Dallas.
Re: Video games to blame for violence (Score:3)
The ratio of "shootin back" ain't great for the USA despite having more guns than people. Also 61 died in the Vegas shooting. Feel free to nitpick that, just rememeber we have a looooooong list of shootings we can pore over.
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Norway has the record for deadliest mass shooting in the world. 77 people,
Surely the parent poster knew that? How could anyone make such an ignorant comment.
And the mass shooting was a sort of retaliation against the ruling class, who were responsible for mass immigration from third world countries, that had seen crime rates climb dramatically in parts of Norway.
If anyone was serious about examples of homogeneous populations, they would choose Japan and Korea.
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No, Norway's shooting was mental illness, caused by a single mother that went so overboard with child abuse that her son became demented enough to think that killing 77 people was a good idea. I dare you to read the killer's history, it's utterly tragic.
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demented enough to think that killing 77 people was a good idea.
Demented people don't spend years planning an attack that strikes at the heart of the (perceived) enemy.
Like Bin Laden and 9/11, this was no random act of violence, but a plan born from ruthless logic. Killing the children of those he saw as traitors to Norway. Both claimed to be acting to change the world, to have a political outcome.
Call them evil, call them mistaken, but they are not mentally impaired.
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You didn't read a damn thing, did you?
By the way, you said impared, I didn't. Of course you make sense if you move the goal posts.
Warped thinking. Distorted thinking. Insane aims but rational tactics. All are possibly under the purview of mental damage. You never read a thing about his history and the damage that was done, did you? At some point, with enough abuse, it's illogical to expect a person to not be damaged or distorted. This was such a case.
I suggest you read it.
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You said he was "demented". I'm not quite sure what point you were trying to make, if not saying he was crazy. Your language suggests your emotions may be clouding your thoughts.
It is normal, especially when we are angry, to want to believe that people who do terrible things are mentally ill. We want to believe we can stop it happening again.
That he acted alone was certainly abnormal. People usually only commit such violence in groups, when their peers approve. War, terrorism, crime gangs. So no surpr
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I wholeheartedly agree with you. Sane people can and do horrible things, often. You made the mistake that I think they can't or don't. I'm only talking about this specific incident when you immediately broadly generalized to other incidents.
I think most such horrible acts are done by relatively sane people. The evidence of this specific incident leads to the conclusion that this is an exception to the rule you put forth. Really. Go read the evidence. I can't imagine anyone staying sane after what he
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I can't imagine anyone staying sane after what he went through.
Many would not, but he clearly did, in the sense that he was sane by what I consider normal definitions. The court found so too. Any argument over that is just semantics. I guess "emotionally damaged" would apply, but that is a vague term. All we can really say is that the behaviour, ie mass murder, was abnormal.
The things he said are not that rare, and nobody could have been expected to predict what happened.
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Parent poster said Norway doesn’t have male white shooters. I just disproved him and you guys went nuts.
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Now do Rwanda. It’s not very diverse either.
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It has hutus and tutsis. That's all you need for fighting to break out.
Re: Video games to blame for violence (Score:2)
And importantly, incitement to ethnic violence.
People said the "voices on the radio" told them to go nuts and slaughter their neighbors.
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How about Singapore?
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Singapore had race riots in the 1960s, hundreds killed.
Now they have forced integration, including race quotas within apartment buildings.
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What's their homicide rate in comparison to others? How much worse than a racially homogenous country, such as for example Russia, are they?
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What's their homicide rate in comparison to others? How much worse than a racially homogenous country, such as for example Russia, are they?
Try to say what you mean. Because that makes no sense literally or otherwise.
Bad Title (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Blames Video Games On Violence" means violence caused the video games. That was not Macron's assertion.
I was just about to say this lol.
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In related news: Bad Slashdot editors are blamed on poor editing.
Re: Bad Title (Score:2)
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It'd be original claim at least.
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We need leaders who will bend a knee. (Score:4, Interesting)
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It was heavy metal music, the devil, and Twinkies (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're a rare left-wing anti-Macron guy, unless you live here. And you don't sound like you do.
Most of Macron's difssenters are French. They can't really explain why they don't like Macron -- it's mostly French politics to hate the incumbent.
He's the only leader who tried to create the peace a lot of you left-winger's go on about.
France is an outlier in terms of rioting. It's a socialist paradise if you're white, straight etc yet they riot about 5x more than any other country. The rioters are generally
Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
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There were no video games when the first French Revolution happened. He can always hope to be luckier than Louis XVI and get to keep his head attached.
If there had been video games the famous saying would be "Let them play video games!"
Oui! (Score:2)
He's right. Kids shouldn't learn about violence from video games. They should learn it from the government. Right and proper.
No one can moan like Macron (Score:2)
Re:No one can moan like Macron (Score:4, Insightful)
How can anyone read the room so badly and still get elected?
Simple. The competition was worse.
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What I will never be able to get is how the f all these airhead politicians get elected, and why is such big majority of people still so gullible, even after seeing politicians do everything but keep their empty promises. Anyone can make a sweet speech to attract the voters, but the only thing that matters is what they do after being elected. Having said that, what is completely, insufferably incomprehensible is when the same airheads get elected twice. I mean what about "fool me once - shame on you, fool m
Debunked nonsense (Score:2)
The only thing ever found in actual studies is the opposite effect.
Spin the wheel-o-blame (Score:2)
And it's ... drumroll ... video games!
Not a failed decolonization, not stuffing people into projects on the periphery of cities, not using them as cheap and expendable labor, not giving them zero chance for an upwards social mobility, not having them deal with perpetual racism, not ...
What you have here is not too different from what the US was facing and still in some part is. It's the same racial problem the US has. These people are not some sort of immigrant who "have no right to be here". What you're de
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And it's ... drumroll ... video games!
The classics never go out of style.
Re:Spin the wheel-o-blame (Score:4, Insightful)
In Europe only the rich live in city centers. Most people live in the periphery. The cars and the shops that the protesters are destroying belong to people who live in the periphery as well, and probably it was everything they had managed to build in a life of work.
They were never taken by force into France as animals and made to work for free to build France's economy, as it was done to African Americans. They came to France by their own will, looking for a better future. Their colonies weren't "abandoned" by France, it's them who rejected to be part of France, and rightly so.
France has a generous welfare state, it's no neoliberal paradise.
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France is a very special case in Europe. People in the French colonies were French. They were not forcefully taken to France, but they were forcefully made French. This had a nontrivial effect on the general sentiments towards the people in Africa, and of course, hey, if I'm French already anyway, I can as well go to France proper which is, and there's very little arguing here, more developed than any of their colonies were. Especially if you were already working for a French company, staying wasn't really
Headline writer strikes again! (Score:2)
How degreed academics demonstrate their bias (Score:4, Funny)
Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the impact of such games on the public, [...] So why do politicians turn to the familiar refrain? Ferguson said it is a way for elected leaders to shift the blame away from failing government policies. "It gets people talking about the wrong thing. They're thinking about video games. They're not thinking about gun control
...in a nation (France) that makes it difficult to impossible for its citizens to possess firearms. I guess the American professor thinks the problem is that French gendarmes shouldn't be armed with handguns. Could he possibly be suggesting that "gun control" is a failed policy to reduce deadly violence? /s
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In France it is nigh impossible to collect data about racism because collecting data about races on official forms is illegal.
They could start with that.
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Re:How degreed academics demonstrate their bias (Score:4, Interesting)
Could he possibly be suggesting that "gun control" is a failed policy to reduce deadly violence? /s
"Your rare instance of gun violence is equivalent... no... even worse than our regularly scheduled gun violence!"
Proves he is a Politician and not a Leader! (Score:4, Insightful)
France is being (Score:3)
Culturally enriched.
Apparently they're no longer enjoying it. Must be the video games.
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Culturally enriched.
Apparently they're no longer enjoying it. Must be the video games.
Too much "vibrance"?
You all have it wrong (Score:3)
IT's OK. The title clearly states he's blaming video games on violence, not the other way around.
Projecting much? (Score:3)
They are ruling classes had enough (Score:1)
So you going to see an increasingly large number of incredibly stupid things like this along with other authoritarian measures in a desperate bid to hold on to the power that they've built up over the last 40 years.
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In this case, it's the non-working class.
France refuses to believe that racism exists. (Score:1)
Racism exists whether you ask on the census or not.
French "universalism" - which believes that the French language/culture "civilizes" people - is idiotic.
There might be no causal link... (Score:1)
Another Day, Another Change Of Mind (Score:2)
Bullshit !! (Score:2)
9 out of 10 (Score:2)
9 out of 10 cunts agree they are not the problem.
Disenfranchised populations (Score:2)
No, it's not video games.
From the outside (and I am outside both France and the US), the situations look very similar. Both have large groups of people who - for whatever reason - have formed insular subcommunities. In the US, the obvious group are the urban blacks, who have completely failed to join mainstream society (but there are others as well - look at the homeless camps). In France, the obvious group are people who immigrated from the Middle East or Africa to France (or whose parent did), and have f
Explain the French Revolution (Score:2)
Oh Rly (Score:2)
Oh, because I thought what caused a mass outbreak of riots is the police shooting an unarmed teenager after stating that they would shoot him even though he was driving AWAY from them. Odd how Macron seems to have missed that point as being the cause of the riots.
Something that sorta rymes with "Holla"? (Score:2)
France has 2 segregated populations (Score:2)
France only has a population of about 68mil, so allowing the immigration of Millions of North African/Muslim immigrants has created a huge population of people that do not integrate at all with the rest of the country. No amount of democracy or police action will fix this cultural divide.
Oh bull-fucking-shit! (Score:2)
A huge population of fighting age illegal immigrants coming into the country.
From a generally radically Islamic background.
This shit was ALWAYS going to happen.
The French have ONE chance to fix this.
If they don't, they quite simply don't exist anymore.
In its place will be the Islamic nation of Frankistan.
Mobilize the army.
Round up these insane people. Imprison those who've injured or killed people.
Eject those of rioting and minor property damage from the country.
If they're not sure where they went? Pick a
Who still listens to Macron? (Score:2)