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Yea, telling you it is fun to shoot people has no effect at all other than casual fun... telling you climate change isnt real also has no real effect.
The sort of people that would kill will kill whether thry played the video game or not. The sort of people that will deny science will deny science whether they heard some bozo doing it or not.
@freemo IIRC, obviously your statement is correct at one level. Many studies have shown pretty strongly that there's no causal link between, say, violent video games and real-life violence. But I think the relatively-recent rise in anti-Asian violence (a subject near and dear to my heart) points to a much subtler effect.
My hypothesis is that when X number of isolated people harbor anti-Asian hatred (for example), but all of society is collectively telling them that's wrong, they mumble and grumble and keep their hatred to themselves, but when that same number of people are no longer isolated, but find themselves supported in large numbers by something like a large online community, a prominent political leader, or both, well, clearly the mask comes off, and the violence becomes very real.
This is why people are rightly (IMO) worried about the limits of speech on the internet.
Another example: there have been people angry at the government for decades, but it seems like it took Facebook connecting them and feeding them information they wanted to see about how to act on that hate, plus a prominent political leader spouting related nonsense, for them to travel to Washington DC and try to overthrow the government.
Seeing hateful nonsense isn't going to turn you or me into a hateful person. It isn't going to turn anyone who isn't already hateful into a hateful person. But leaving it available provides a very thin patina of credibility, and since information on the internet is not generally divorced from the people posting it, it also provides a means of social connection when left in place.
One angry hateful person is a person. Angry hateful people online are literally the basis of a violent armed mob.
This is why I'm actually finding myself more and more against an "anything goes" policy online, while still very strongly supporting free speech in person.
If you're willing to stand on a street corner and speak what you believe is true, anybody that is willing to be seen associating with you can do so, and I don't think anybody should interfere. If you want to print a crank newsletter and pass it out, go ahead. In this is freedom!
But it takes nothing, less than nothing, to post nasty stuff online, where it lives side-by-side in the same interface with good information, granting it that very thin patina of credibility I mentioned, and associations are anonymous or hidden until it's too late.
I don't think that's so simple. I think all of this [waves at everything] demonstrates that.
To my broad recollection, there's been a bunch of research on the subject, but since neither Freemo's post nor mine was really *about* that except tangentially, perhaps you'd find more satisfaction with a search?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=violence+video+games
For example, the first result from that seems to suggest views are mixed with regard to young people and violent video games.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/violent-video-games-and-young-people.
Of course, this runs into the issue of correlation vs causation, which is always thorny and won't be solved in a comment thread.
Assuming you mean video games and not gay marriage then no big deal. Most people have at least a few backwards ideas. If the worst you have going for you is you think kids shouldnt play violent video games then you are well ahead of the curve.
Now if you think gay people should be legally denied the right to marry who they wish, now thats a pretty cruel opinion that would be far worse, but again, most people have a few nasty opinions, doesnt make it right, but all i can do is hope people who think that one day learn not to be cruel, and until then ill do my best to change their mind.
And just to put it out there, of my many dozens of muslim friends every single one of them supports the right for other people to enter i to gay marriage. Many feel that it woukd be wrong for thry themselves to be gay ir marry the same sex, none of them woukd ever be such a monster as to deny that for others, especially when nothing in their religion requires them to impose their personal choices on others.
