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Trump Meets With Video Game Industry, Watchdog Groups to Talk Gun Violence
President Donald Trump met with video game executives and watchdog groups on Thursday at the White House to talk about gun violence, one of a series of meetings planned by the White House in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shootings.
The meeting started with the showing of a series of particularly violent video clips, according to two participants who were there, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center and Melissa Henson, program director of the Parents Television Council. Both are media watchdog groups.
[...] "This is not a simple thing," Bozell told Variety. "This is not to say that the video game industry is the alpha and omega of the problem, but they have to be part of the discussion."
[...] The White House released a statement afterward. "The conversation centered on whether violent video games, including games that graphically simulate killing, desensitize our community to violence." They also released the video that was shown.
The White House posted the video to YouTube. As of this submission, it's got 53 kilodislikes.
After industry meeting, Trump highlights alleged game violence effects
If game industry representatives hoped their meeting with President Trump today would help change his mind after recent statements of concern over violence in video games, they came away sorely disappointed. In a statement following that meeting, the White House said that President Trump "acknowledged some studies have indicated there is a correlation between video game violence and real violence."
"During today's meeting, the group spoke with the president about the effect that violent video games have on our youth, especially young males," the White House statement reads. "The conversation centered on whether violent video games, including games that graphically simulate killing, desensitize our community to violence. This meeting is part of ongoing discussions with local leaders and Congress on issues concerning school and public safety and protecting America's youth."
The White House statement goes against the overwhelming consensus of the research community, which has shown wide agreement that exposure to violent games in youth has little to no relationship with violent outcomes later in life.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 14 2018, @12:18PM (12 children)
I don't disagree on disciplining your children but male children and female children are not the same. The physical and chemical differences in their brains necessitate different approaches to dealing with them in general and in teaching them how to function as a decent human being in modern society specifically. Currently we're treating them all as if they were female and expecting them to behave as such. That's a recipe for disaster even without the lack of discipline that's given us a couple of generations of narcissistic little shit-stains.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 14 2018, @07:24PM (10 children)
Our boys are damaged from birth. This is all going to sound weird coming from the resident lesbian, but I'm really, really worried about our baby boys. Adults treat infants differently depending on sex, there's the horrifying habit we have of circumcising boys (often without anaesthetic!), and from before they can speak, boys are essentially told "toughen up and deal." I remember watching my kid brother get circumcised, and was about ready to assault the guy doing it. NO ONE messes with my little siblings, dammit.
We don't seem to let them express themselves properly, and we're also closing off the improper avenues of expression. Frankly I'm surprised *more* boys don't become anything from bullies to serial killers. And now with the economy so fucked that even with BOTH parents working there's barely enough to go around, who are the role models for them?
I don't know what the solution to this is, but I do have one proposal: redirect the extra energy and concentration into building things. Bring back wood shop, make trade and vocational programs honorable life paths, teach our boys to be proud of hands that create and heal rather than dominate and destroy. Get men into nursing, pediatric practice, pharmacology, teaching. My brother turned out okay as a musician, but there are lots of other boys and men who aren't so lucky.
...and, because it needs to be said, this is mostly other men doing this to them. Name me the (sane) woman who would ever think of cutting up her baby, flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, like that. No, this crap stems from a 19th-century military-industrial complex and a social-efficiency curriculum in schools designed to churn out worker ants and cannon fodder.
My girlfriend doesn't want children, and if we ever adopt, it's likely to be a girl. But if it is a boy, you can be sure we'll be keeping all the above in mind. All our babies are precious, the only innocent people in the world, and we need to protect and strengthen them as they grow.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 14 2018, @08:30PM (1 child)
Never gonna happen. We already spend too much on those lazy, shiftless. future drug addicts and criminals (and we know they are or they wouldn't be too poor to go to private school) in the public schools.
What we really need is to get rid of all taxes and let the free market take care of this. It is regrettable that two or three children won't have their potential wasted, but stealing from the deserving folks to pay for worthless (read: poor) takers is causing serious problems in our society.
Instead of public schools, we should have workhouses for the undeserving, starting at around age seven or so. I don't understand why it's not obvious to everyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 14 2018, @08:52PM
Wow. Poe's Law is getting another work out today.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 14 2018, @08:45PM (5 children)
A fair bit of what you have to say I don't disagree with. You are, however, coming at it from a woman's perspective. This is perfectly reasonable being as you in fact are a woman but reasonable is not necessarily the same thing as correct. There are a whole heaping pile of evolutionary reasons, both biological and cultural, that men think and behave differently than women. Given that these traits were in the men most successful in propagating their genes throughout the world, I'm inclined to think moving away from them is not a good idea without an extremely good reason.
As for specific areas of contention...
That's just you lacking the proper perspective. Teaching boys to be emotionally strong does not make them mentally ill unless you're using the female brain as your standard, which you most assuredly should not. Visibly expressing an emotion is no more objectively mentally healthy than simply feeling it without advertising it. It's just different. Ditto allowing your emotions to override rational thought. Actually, there's a very good argument to be made that you have mental health issues if you do allow your emotions to override rational thought.
I've nothing against creativity. It's a big, big part of what's gotten us where we are today. But someone has to be prepared to do the dirty work that needs doing as well, be it cleaning out your septic tank or turning someone offering you harm into a pile of cooling meat and entrails. Traditionally that's been us of the XY persuasion because we're more physically suited to it and we're more expendable as far as species health goes. But you can't have it both ways. You can't say we need to stop doing the dirty and dangerous jobs in favor of the nicer ones (not even in part) unless you're willing to take up the slack in the dirty and dangerous ones; if they go undone, society as you know it ceases to exist.
I don't think it's a bad thing that women are, on average, kinder and gentler (barring threats to their family). I don't think it's a bad thing that men are harsher and more aggressive on average either. There is a time and a place for both; they compliment each other. One without the other is not as well equipped to deal with life as both together.
On a larger scale, both empathy and aggressiveness can be taken to a point where they cease being an asset and become a liability. We're currently getting to the point in western society where the pendulum needs to start swinging away from empathy or shit is going to start breaking down in a big, bad way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 14 2018, @09:01PM (4 children)
Ohferchrissakes...this pop-evo-psych bullshit again.
You have a problem with the naturalistic fallacy, I can't help but notice. If your standard of good is "whatever works for breeding and propagating more," you ought to stop harping on your favorite targets (Muslim immigrants--excuse me, "invaders"-- and inner-city/poor people, especially black ones). After all, they breed more than "your sort of person." So it follows based on what you just said that they're evolutionarily superior and ought to replace you. Whoopsie!
You also seem to conflate emotional strength with keeping a stiff upper lip. That's only one part of it, and while there is a time and a place for it, telling men to do it all the time results in violent outbursts. People get hurt or killed because our boys and men are not taught *real* emotional strength--which begins first of all with understanding precisely what it is they're experiencing! You can quit strawmanning (straw-womaning?), too; you've implicitly, if not explicitly, said women and "female brains" are overemotional and allow emotion to override rational thought. That's bullshit, and anyone who grew up poor with a working mother knows exactly how bullshit it is.
On top of that, you have a weird zero-sum mentality about men. You seem to think that if more men go into nursing or teaching or pharmacology, somehow fewer men will do construction or soldiering or other "dirty" jobs. This isn't necessarily so, and if anything I'd argue it wouldn't change the number of people in "dirty" jobs much if at all. What it would do, however, is get more men involved in building their communities and by extension their own connections to said communities.
Besides which, we're coming up on the point where we can 3D-print small and medium buildings, and most of war these days seems to be about directing your murderbirds to the appropriate coordinates and dropping explosive Hell, a trend that will only continue and accelerate with the development of drone warfare. Not like it takes a man to drain a septic tank, either. And, you think nursing isn't dirty work? In my observation it's the doctors who refuse to get their hands dirty. It's the nurses who end up cleaning up after the patients who've just exploded out both ends and are cursing them to Gehenna and back through a meth-fueled haze of rage.
Your last line...is insanity. You think, with everything we've seen in politics and economics and finance since the 70s, that the pendulum is winging too far TOWARD empathy? Good Christ, are you insane? It's been going the exact opposite way for over 45 years! Empathy is not weakness; if anything it takes more strength, more knowledge, and more moral fiber, to be able to truly get inside someone else's head and figure out what makes them tick. No, it's weaker to just act on your own and do what the hell you want. You are a tremendously poor judge of this sort of thing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 14 2018, @09:55PM (3 children)
That's a fine example of both aggression and hostility. They're not the same thing by the way. Mistaking them for such is how women trying to assert themselves in business wind up being called bitches or worse by everyone around them. Understanding the difference mostly comes naturally to men. Women, apparently not so much, though it's possible it can be learned I suppose.
Also, you are aware that you are both more aggressive and hostile than most male children being raised today, yes? I wonder, do you think that makes them flawed or you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 15 2018, @02:16AM (2 children)
Oh cry harder. If I'm going to jump into the deep and with a bunch of greasy basement-dwelling fedora-tipping bitter incels and all their libertarian horseshit, I'm not going to pull any punches, and may indeed start mimicking their behavior somewhat as a form of camouflage. Ever think about that, carrion-breath?
Or, for that matter, did you think about replying to any of the actual points that were made, instead of whining about how meeeeeeeean I am and why can't I just be a nice girl? Noooooo, of fucking *course* not. That's fine, though; it means you don't have anything substantive to reply with.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by FatPhil on Thursday March 15 2018, @09:43AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @01:12PM
It is possible. I used to frequent this gay hole in the wall bar. It was full of all types. But one common thread was that virtually all were some form of an eclectic hipster.
One of my good friends there was this hot butch women. We always had good conversations and frequently would buy each other drinks. We had a moment in the bar once. But she quashed it. However it festered. We loved the company. And then on day her girlfriend really pissed her of and we were drinking heavily. She kissed me and soon we were at her place. Her girlfriend was home and we fucked like mad. And it was aggressive on both side. We put two hole in walls. She punched or slapped when she thought I was about to orgasm and it hurt and I would go limp and we started over. She also would bite me so hard it drew blood. This was the start of a two year friend with benefits relationship. They get into a fight and we would enjoy wild sex. But it was always aggressive. Most fun I had ever had. Mind blowing. It all ended when she dumped her girlfriend and found another. A kiss here or there at the bar.
So it is possible. Just be wary though. It took me days to not ache. And the bite marks weeks to heal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 14 2018, @09:51PM (1 child)
Considering 98% of Jew+/-ish boys are circumcised in Israel and about 95% of Muslim boys everywhere else, you're basically suggesting most Semite women are crazy bitches. But to be fair (and antisemitic), I'd extend that to the men as well. And the livestock. They breed some crazy camels and goats in that part of the world... Though I hear good things about their cows for some odd reason.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 15 2018, @02:18AM
Not gonna disagree with you there. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are nuts, and the better they are at their respective religions, the more nuts they are. The Middle East has been a source of memetic and cultural poisons for 3,000+ years.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 14 2018, @10:25PM
I'm going to strongly dispute your claim that male children and female children are not the same for anything other than who is trying to bang who and who can pee standing up. This is based on my experience of working with boys, and comparing notes with my sisters' work with girls roughly the same age.
For instance, if you make a box of what is traditionally girls' clothing available for boys to play dress-up, and don't shame them for doing so, many boys will play dress-up and wear dresses and skirts, no problem. Similarly, if girls know they won't be called "dyke" for putting on heavy work boots, jeans, and a flannel, so they can work hard with a sledgehammer, many will do that without hesitation. If you teach boys to cook or knit, some will happily do that. If you teach girls how to play sports, some will happily do that. If it's hot out, and girls know they won't be getting a bunch of gross comments or ogling, they'll take off their shirts to cool off, just like a guy would. Oh, and about as many girls and boys have hygiene issues, and girls and boys are about equally bad at keeping spaces clean.
Oh, and there aren't drastically different strategies needed for disciplining boys versus girls, either. My guess is you think boys are more likely to need corporal punishment, but that isn't actually true, it's just more socially acceptable among adults to use physical force against boys.
Kids are individuals, and the main reason they try to fit into certain molds is that adults try to make them fit into certain molds. The way you maximize what they can accomplish is by not trying to force them into a mold they don't fit. And gender is one of those molds.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.