[CW: violence/gore]. As the title suggests, is there a left case to be made against ultra-violence in video games? I’m thinking mostly about MK11 and MK1 fatalities, as opposed to less gratuitous and less hyper-realistic violence–in Dark Souls or something. Whenever this topic is brought up, other factors usually take up the oxygen in the room: People might immediately think of family-values conservatives, such as the Media Research Center, who act like wet-blankets towards entertainment. Or we think of nerdy Joe Lieberman, who showed the 1993 Sub-Zero spine fatality to Congress (lol). There was Hillary Clinton who decried the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the host of rightwing politicians who blamed Doom for the Columbine shooting (clearly as a way to absolve gun legislation from any culpability). So this is what I mean when I say that the conversation on video-game violence has been ceded entirely to these dudes, as opposed to something left spaces can discuss without sounding like squares or censors. This came to mind after I was reading about the video game designer who developed PTSD after working on Mortal Kombat 11. His dreams became excruciatingly violent, and his day-to-day was interacting with coworkers studying medical anatomy and watching videos of slaughtered animals. That can’t be good for anyone. I guess what I’m asking is: should leftists see this as harmless fun, or something problematic? And, will photo-realistic Fatalities exist in the communist future?
When I was in highschool i got really obsessed with the concept of conditioning as taught by my psych class - operant conditioning and stuff being described in the simplest terms possible - and that led to weird places later in life. You can read between the lines if you want, but that’s not why I’m here. I only wish to convey the start of a lifelong journey of deliberate self conditioning, taking the reigns of how I think and do in a way a lot of people surrender to their environment, chance, and genetic factors, i chose to control as much as one can.
This is hard work, it comes easier to some than others, but it gives me an understanding of how our inputs inform our outputs.
The major behavioral changes I really invested myself in were shedding ‘male’ coded thought pattern and behavior in favor of the feminine, but from the moment I undertook that work, I found that my inputs, largely dictated by circumstance and male socialization in the past, were informing my own plasticity - the flexibility of who i could be, because in some level the inputs - the media, the conversations i had - the people i surrounded myself with - all contributed to a reinforcement of what was already there, and continued development along axes i no longer found personally fulfilling.
so… i cut myself off from a lot of media. I was busy already, the free time I had no longer made sense as something i would waste on passive entertainment and matters that didn’t improve myself somehow - video games became very unimportant to me, between hormonal changes and a dissatisfaction with my own mental treadmill - and especially violent games, violent media, pornography, etc.
My behavior changed. Say nothing of the hormones - the constant exposure of these elements normalized and reinforced toxic tendencies, and de-sensitized me to real human suffering that, within some months of re-ordering the inputs in my life, began to fade away and give way to a much more genuine expression of self.
I believe violent video games worsen us as humans. I believe the media we consume is largely tailored to reinforce worldviews that, even if only grudgingly, accept casual cruelty and violence at every level of society, and especially convey a sense that this is how it needs to be - and this is how American capital has largely captured the hearts and minds of its citizenry - even those of us unwilling to actually cooperate find ourselves pulled and forcibly immersed in this context that’s reinforced by this kind of media.
So to me, no - the communist utopia of the unwritten future has none of this fucking shit in it - because this shit makes us worse people.
That’s hard to square. I know. This garbage is the easiest dopamine pump we have, and at this point your treats are load bearing things - you would actually wanna do something stupid to remediate your material conditions if you didn’t have them - and that’s the point - this is the shit that makes you sleep. This is the shit Nada comprehends in black and white plain text when he puts his glasses on. You have to step away and refuse it to break out and perceive the tomorrow you yearn for with the religiosity of a devout Catholic seeking divine union.
i have largely cut myself off from such media as well, only this is a new thing for me. I worry that some of the things I have seen through films, television, video games, etc, over my lifetime will haunt me forever! I worry that I will age and remember random horrific scenes from a movie or something, and forget that it isn’t a real memory of my own.
Ever since I stopped…I’ve come to develop the opinion that the world will never be free until they cease poisoning our brains from cradle to grave…it’s disgusting what capitalism has done with the help of media technology. we wonder why our friends and family are absolutely helpless in the face of modern media. it has warped all our brains, imo, and I wish that I had had the sense to try what you did earlier on.
This sort of thing, I believe, is why it’s so common, even obligatory, for grimdark “prestige” entertainment to have a redundant message of “this world sucks but attempting to improve it is naive, childish, stupid, and/or wrong and may make this world even worse,” which results in any character in the fiction attempting to improve society somewhat being shown as a fool, an idiot, or just a villain by comparison to the rest of the cast.