Easy on the violence

[Rnett]

I guess Germany is getting tough about the online violence.:scratch:

Germany plans Crackdown (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16070177/)

[Dschi-Rex]

First: Sry 4 my terrible english...

Hm?! Never heard of that...
I think it's a Hoax, but I don't know for sure.
I'll keep an eye on that, looking for more news about that topic.
---
Ok I think it's a mistake.
There are discussions about a "killergame"-forbade (is that the right word? :scratch:) but it has not yet been applied.

What I've heard now was that Bavaria's minister or whatever wants to continue the discussion about a restriction/forbade (still don't know the right word) of "killergames" like Counter-Strike.

Nonsense!

I hope I didn't miss the topic!

[Rnett]

No, you hit the nail on the head.:go:

Forbid or forbidden as in verbeiten.:angel:

[catt]

Actually, the whole thing is ridiculous. It is true that there is a discussion about so-called killergames in Germany at the moment.
This is connected to a recent school-shooting (if you can call it that at all).

So, the discussion there is right now is a very forced one by media and politics. Politicians are inapt to admit the real reasons why such things happen, so killergames are scapegoat. They've never been good at admitting any mistakes, have they? Of course the media is going wild over it, finally they are having some news again so they just spread it out and pretend there is some urgent need to discuss this "problem".

However, certain computer games will not be forbidden. It's just the media pushing this up really.

[Dschi-Rex]

First of all: Sorry again for wrong english words, because I'm a 15 years old http://www.uni.edu/becker/flaggermany.gif who learned his english at school :lol:

school-shooting (if you can call it that at all).
I think it's "amok run", no? :scratch:
EDIT: Oh no, school shooting is the word they used in the text :lol: sorry

@ topic: Whenever there is a school-shooting, they're taking the shooter's PC. Then they find "Killergames" on this PC and connect the school-shooting to these games. They think these games are downgrading the inhibition threshold to do something violent. But... politicians actually never played one of these games. So they can't judge about that. It is said that killergames are games, in which you can mutilate women and childs and rape them and so on. Ever seen a computer game like that? No? Thought so. Politicians are fat old geezers who have no idea what they're talking about. :angry: Even Postal 2 is not soooo violent that you could rape someone. And this game IS already forbidden.

Bavaria is like a free state in germany, so they can have their own laws.

If "killergames" will be forbidden, whose fault will it be the next time? Television? Bread? Water?

PS: Bavarians minister plans to judge the possesion of "killergames" as if someone owns child-pornographie. :nono:

[FrankishHero]

Ironic how most of the killer games focus on killing Nazi's, isn't it..?

[kaktuskiss]

First: my englisch is not the best! I hop you can understand me :biggrin:

The discussion from politican and media about killergames is so selnsless! There are so many sozial problems, why humans killing other people. But toforbidden the "risk"- games is the simple way. And the simple way is the lovly way from all politicans of the world.
I think it is the wrong way to redress the problem of broken people!

[Moryarity]

This discussion is revived time after time.. :nono:

The much more important thing that should be cleared is how a youngster of that age is able to get rifles. This is far more important, than if he played certain games....this discussion is so annoying.....games are not the cause for such deeds. These deeds are caused by social and psychological problems..instead of forbidding games, those "politicians" should develope a clear strategy for psychological assistance in schools to avoid such situations. It is not even clear, if that boy ever played CS..all, that was said, is, that it has been found in his rooms...I myself have half a dozen games I own, but never even played :wink:

I also like to play games, in which you have a certain amount of "fighting" although I do not play FPS..but I like playing games like Tomb Raider..getting my beloved Magnums and a lot of Ammo or activate god modus in some adventure based game and destroy all the orcs :rofl: :wink: but in real life I could never hurt anyone.....

Forbidding video games is merely a fight against the symptomes, but the problem itself is not addresed by such actions..

[Dschi-Rex]

Yes, exactly.

I'm playin' those games the hole day (that's an exaggeration :wink: ) and I don't get thuggish. I've been on a fishing trip and I couldn't even kill a fish by hitting it on a rock. So how could I kill a man?

The much more important thing that should be cleared is how a youngster of that age is able to get rifles.I think it was "eGun" wer you can get free and sport weapons, but real guns, too.

[kaktuskiss]

Hallo

I have here a bit funstuff vor this thread. The only problem is, its in german. Sorry. I hope you can understand it all.

http://www.karpfenschleuder.de/flash/killerspiele.html

[catt]

Yeah, I already know that one it's hilarious.

Actually, I think kids being able to obtain gun is not the problem either. If you really want to shoot somebody, you'll find a way to get your hands on weapons, not matter if you can get them legally or not. I also don't think that the rules could be any stricter in Germany without forbidding people to have weapons at all.

I wrote "school shooting" in " " because I don't really consider it a school shooting. Basically all that guy did was kill himself, I understood he had a lot of ammunition and explosives with him but he never really used them. Of course it could have ended totally different too, so I don't want to trivialize it. I do feel though that the whole thing has been exaggerated in the media. Running amok for example is an uncontrollable rage, which was certainly not the case here (and is not in most school-shootings). Nevertheless it was all over the media.

I think this is the problem: We live in a society that is all and only about having money. Having money means you can buy whatever you want, it makes you popular, it makes you a success. It's not really about the person you are anymore. It seems that today we are not allowed to be anything less than perfect. You are simply not allowed to make mistakes anymore, you'll so easily be left without a job and any hope for the future. It's already difficult enough to make a living if you are good at "basically everything". But what have you got to look forward to if you live on welfare or if you already grew up struggling at school, without any perspective to ever get close to all the wealth laid out before us in the media?
Naturally people get frustrated and naturally they are looking for some way to get rid of their anger.
What we need to do is to show kids that each of them has a personal value, regardless on how big their income is later on or how many people know them etc. Life is (and has been) mostly about pushing your way through, not caring about the ones you are pushing aside. I think we need to change our attitude towards life and success to prevent such things from happening.
But this is something that can't simply be achieved through politics (and it certainly is not in the interest of most politicians).

Oh well, just my 2 cents...

[Angryminer]

To me such violence is not directly related to violent computer games. But indirectly, I'll elaborate:
Most violence is caused by a discrepancy between the self-percieved social status and the way other people treat us. That is a biological thing. If we feel socially superior to someone we will express that, so we get the social status we earned. But if other ignore this and still treat us as if we wouldn't have that social status we automatically get frustrated and angry, unless we use different strategies to maintain our percieved social status, like saying "He's stupid, he's too stupid to see that I'm actually better. I don't need to justify myself".
Think of typical situations where violence comes up. It's always about a 'misunderstanding' of the social status between two people. Two soccer fans think their teams (thus they too) are better then the other. The other doesn't accept that. They either react by saying "He's stupid. I don't need to justify myself because he's too stupid anyway. My team is better" or through violence.
As long as we feel that our social status fits there is no need for violence. That would be counter-productive.

Youngsters have an excessive need for social acceptance and social status. That's what drives many of the stupid things we do when we are young. If you find yourself mistreated and denied any social acceptance you try to gain that social status some way. This may succeed, it usually does. Sometimes it doesn't. That doesn't yet start violence with the reasons above.
A violent attitude arises when someone with near to none social acceptance percieves himself as socially higher. There are a number of reasons for that. Someone could participate in a sport outside of his usual social enviroment, get a lot of assurance there, but still be mistreated in that other enviroment. Books can asure the reader of his higher social status compared to others. Even parents can cause their kids to think of themselves of socially superior. There're prejudice about only childs that address this. The belief of a higher social status without a real counterpart can be indoctrinated, or gained through assurance of a seperate social group. This is where I speak about computergames.
Computergames allow anyone to get social acceptance. Point your mouse correctly, with a lot of skill, and people will congratulate you to your abilities. You are a valued member of a (virtual) social group. But this virtual social status does not apply to the real social community.
The person percieves himself as a valuable member of the community, backed up by assurance from his virtual community, but recieves no social acceptance in his real community. By the way that is a reason why such people like to withdraw into their internet community, which worsens their situation in their real community, increasing the discrepancy.
But it is also a reason for frustration. Nature wants us to claim the social status we feel fitting (Common words: "I will show it to them" - Show what exactly? The social status!). Violence is a way to do that. Now a small beating in the schoolyard isn't something to write about in the media. It happens very often and is most natural. (Which is why I feel that my explanation must be somehow valid.) But the persons we talk about in school shoutouts usually aren't 2 meters high and beat up other people. They wouldn't be in a low social status if they did. If they could they would just bully random kids and feel great about it. Our social victims can't physically defend themselves. Thus they need to take other measures to show their self-percieved social status.

So actually every source of a discripancy between the self percieved social status and the actual social acceptance is a source of such violence. Not just shooter-games. Also books, political propaganda, etc.

This post is actually a lot too short to elaborate on all critical points, but it is a rough draft of an explanation.

Angryminer