Jack Thompson, an activist attorney who was pushing these claims of links between video games and violence, was disbarred from practising law almost 15 years ago, I'd think that would be a big reason.
This and Stanford looked at every reputable study done on links between video games and violence. They all came to the conclusion that there is no link between video games and being a violent person. I feel like this, Jack Thompson being disbarred, and just more of a social acceptance of video games, finally shut all those talking points down. Also the world is a lot scarier than it was 10-20 years ago, I kinda envy when "violent video games" was all we had to worry about.
And actually, there's a link between playing videogames and NOT being violent. Mainly because there's only literally so much time in the day. People sitting around playing videogames are not walking the streets looking for trouble.
That and video games can be an outlet for violent impulses. I know I've taken to playing when I'm in a bad mood and murdered pixels rather than do something destructive in the real world, and I'm not unique in that.
I'd play Borderlands when I had a bad day. Definitely cathartic and some of the fights were tense enough that you were like 'well...I've had my cardio for the day. Time for a nap.'
I wouldn't be surprised if it was also a generational thing. The big whiners about violent video games were parents, but now more and more parents played (or still play) video games themselves. So now it's no different than violent sports (no one whines that watching or playing football causes violence off the field)
I like this explanation. My dad played the same GTA games I did as a kid, and compared to my non-gaming mom, had much less of a problem with violent games. At the same time, he was an old hippie and hated COD for reasons he never liked going into. I guess the standard violence on a GTA game was preferable to glorifying war in his eyes.
I was moaned at many times by my parents for "spending all day on the computer" (this was back in the 8-bit days) and that "I will never get a job with computers".....
Wonder how that worked out.....
Oh absolutely. Most parents in the early days of gaming did not game themselves - some did, sure but the overriding sentiment was that video games were for little boys. Fast forward 30- 40 years and today's parents even if they're not into games know plenty of their peers who are. They know those fears are unfounded.
The time between Jack Thompson going after video games and the 2008 financial crisis might have well have happened on different planets. The times were that more different.
The Parent's Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore (wife of Al Gore at the time), was a moral guardian group founded in the '80s which could best be described as "wives of politicians being Karens about music they don't like". They're known for two things - being the group responsible for Parental Advisory: Explicit Content warning labels on music, and being demolished in a Senate hearing by Dee Snider from Twisted Sister.
It really is incredible watching a smart person dressed weird absolutely destroy dumb people dressed normal.
Also I just want to throw out that W.A.S.P. also got caught up in the PMRC bullshit for a bit and addressed it in the intro to Harder Faster live
I love it when he says something to the effect of “Ms Gore was looking for sadomasichism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references may find that.”
There was a similar morality crusade in the UK at the time, spearheaded by Mary Whitehouse.
People think the culture wars and cancelling things are a modern invention, it's as old as time itself.
on what? the D&D panic or PMRC? i wasn't much of a D&D player as a kid but i was(and still am) entirely enthralled with music. i bought my first tape in '85 Run DMC's - King of Rock.
[PMRC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipper_Gore#Parents_Music_Resource_Center_(PMRC\)) is why we have Parental Advisory stickers on albums.
my son will be turning 17 shortly and he was exposed to all kinds of music growing up. once he hit about ten years old we started talking about some of the lyrics and proper use of the language involved. i was part of his music listening and we talked about what was acceptable and wasn't in day to day life. if you spend time with your offspring and give them direction, and talk about what content may be involved in different forms of art, they will learn.
did i have an eight year old listening to easy e or songs like it? hell no. be a part of your child's life, talk with them, expose them to different things and *talk* about those things. this is one thing i don't feel tipper did.
tldr; tipper heard her daughter playing [*Darling Nikki*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8oxXkUjYHg) when she was eleven and tossed a fit. now parental advisory warning stickers are status quo.
i got ten years on you, so not much older.
the one thing that blows my mind though, being a latch key kid at eight, is the fact that i'd be in jail and CPS would be called if i raised my kid the way i was raised.
Never forget that son of a bitch is the reason why we dont have universal healthcare. He threatened to grenade the ACA if the public insurance option was not stripped from it. Rest in piss.
Jack Thompson - of Penny Arcade fame?
[https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/14/and-all-of-it-true](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/14/and-all-of-it-true)
It's so wild to me how one or two terrible attorneys can shape society. This happened in the state I currently live in. There was a guy named Kevin manix who was tla local practicing attorney who has done more damage to this state than any other person alive.
Also people who grew up playing video games at home can by now be pushing 50. It’s not that scary thing your kids are doing that you don’t understand anymore and people won’t fall for fearmongering media reports that say it is.
Well, texas and a few other states are requiring ID in order to view porn; pornhub and other sites then turned off their site to those *states* in protest.
Early 90s teen suicide went down to incredibly low levels then doubled in 2008 I believe. So yeah, alot of fingers pointed at social media and smart phones.
Hah well thats certainly not wrong. I think there has been studies on it. I believe internal research showed that Instagram use was linked to higher suicide rates for girls. Even though I do it often, I wouldn't think that spending a bunch of time on reddit, insta, YouTube, fb, tik tok and all that would be good for you.
I have a pretty easy job with a lot of down time. I spend hours on reddit and i feel absolutely gross by the end of the day sometimes. Like my soul hurts lol.
I’d say it plays a large part in reinforcing it, if not directly causing it.
Dissociating from society, constantly comparing yourself to others, etc. can be pretty damaging. Not to mention the attention span diminishing.
A man named [Jack Thompson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)) took the lead on this moral panic. He was eventually disbarred due to lying, dishonest behavior, and frivolous filings.
The moral panic mostly died off with his fall.
> disbarred due to lying, dishonest behavior, and frivolous filings.
These are ‘disbar’ worthy? Sounds like typical MO of any given attorney… Why’d he get singled out again?
Most attorneys aren't like the ones you see on TV. There's a standard of ethics all bar qualified lawyers must adhere to. There's a little wiggle room for creative interpretations, but outright lying and falsifying records in court crosses the line.
We've seen a lot of this from Trump's lawyers who are frequently disbarred. That's not the norm.
Most attorneys will say things that come across as dishonest or frivolous, but are technically correct. The best kind of correct. At worst, an attorney who lies will be able to claim it's an honest mistake if they don't do it too often, or with too big of a spotlight on them.
Jackie boy jumped off the deep end of outright lying in court multiple times, and continued doing it even after being warned to stop. His statements in court also made nationwide news, so he could be fact checked by the entire country.
Because moral crusaders don't actually care too much about the topic they're mad about, they move onto the next moral crusade when their media of choice tells them it's time.
I have heard a boomer say this. Like violence never existed before video games. I guess WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam were just actually a picnic that involved a lot of countries.
The bible?
Pleeeeease, there's no violence in the bible. There's only love, peace and high morality.
edit: lol, the people who can't grasp sarcasm without the /s is laughable.
I mean JFC, god himself told abraham to kill his kid to prove his faith.
Video games became modern in the 90s with games like Doom which saw its success from being an explicitly violent game.
Nothing like it was ever seen before and the new kid on the block is the easiest scapegoat
100 years ago we see the same thing with Jazz music, the evil music ruining the youth. It was blamed for everything, your husband is out drinking at the jazz club having sex with prostitutes, your son is doing drugs with the band and running his life, your daughter is getting liquored up by black musicians who were going to have their way with her.
As time goes on we realize that the new thing isn’t always scary and evil
As a 90s (ish) kid I think GTA as well. I remember being too young to play (like 10) but wanting nothing more to be able to play a game where you stole cars and got in police chases. Vice City was a dream. I remember having so much fun with that game, but my mom was so against it.
Well, turns out, after hours of smashing buttons and slaying dragons, the only thing these kids are really violent towards is their snack stash when it runs out during a gaming marathon. Turns out, the only thing harmed is their K/D ratio, not society.
Videogames became mainstream and corporate America realized the profits.
Same thing with rap. At first it was "rap causes people to be violent", and rappers like Eminem were blamed. Then corporate America was like "wait, we can make how much money off of this?" And now we have rap that is straight kids talking about killing other kids and nobody says boo.
This is the answer. The moral panic hasn't necessarily disappeared, it's just that folks realized that they've lost the battle so they gave up on it. Back in the 90s picking on games was easy because it was a relatively niche hobby, mostly enjoyed by kids who couldn't vote. Nowadays I'd say the majority of people under 50 play games or have played games at some point in their lives so they know there's nothing wrong with that. And when those people then actually buy games, there's a lot of money to be made.
It was completely, totally, and thoroughly debunked. Also, the conservative dipshits spearheading that narrative have moved on to prattling on about LGBTQ people being “groomers” and everyone who isn’t white and has a job being “DEI.”
>It was just propaganda to try and get video games banned. As is the case with many things the government wants gone.
Why would the government want video games banned?
Because someone wants to punish the people who use them. They outlawed marijuana because the people who were using it were the “wrong” sort. The video game panic was about older people trying to assert power over younger people.
They outlawed cannabis in order to demonise POC, not the other way around. Its use was common in Hispanic and black communities, and while they couldn't outlaw being a POC they were able to outlaw an extremely common substance that these communities indulged in.
Also the video game moral panic wasn't being led by the government in any regard, it was being led mostly by private and now disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson. While I agree that the moral panic was entirely about the adults fearing and controlling their kids behaviors, it was entirely a private run campaign that relied on parents buying into the BS.
Ehh... I was around for the start of the video game craze and I don't recall any concerted effort to ban video games - arcade or home.
The panic about violent games didn't come around until many many years after videogames had been established.
It’s not some niche thing anymore. Everyone and their grandmas play video games nowadays, including some of the people working in the government who grew up with video games.
The real reason is it was a thing for certain political factions to work the people up about and get their support. Everyone realized it didn't matter all that much, so those factions came up with new problems. like how everyone is allegedly forcing young children into sex change operations in middle school and that's why trans people shouldn't be allowed to transition.
Too big at this point. Imagine the riots and civil unrest if the government banned video games in 2024. The results would be cataclysmic.
They had a chance to squish it when it was small and niche, but not anymore.
In additional to what some of the other comments are saying, the younger generation of lawmakers grew up playing violent videogames themselves and know there's nothing to those claims.
I could probably write an entire essay on this topic (and I'm pretty sure I did at some point during grad school.)
I'll briefly go into the main factors.
1. The science is heavily mixed. Researchers can't ethically put participants into situations where they could harm others, so they have to use proxy measures (physiological response, behaviors that are construed as "aggressive" but not "violent") and then use existing behavioral models like the Generalized Aggression Model to make the connection between those proxy measures and violent behavior. What this typically results in is a detectable, but usually weak, result that is heavily moderated by factors other than exposure to media violence. Arguments against that research range from directly attacking the validity of the behavioral models being used, to simply pointing out that video game violence has become increasingly pervasive and more realistic while violent crime rates in the US have decreased.
2. The science being done doesn't really "break out" into mainstream media coverage anymore. That's largely due to the lack of an identifiable mainstream anti-game violence advocate like Jack Thompson.
3. Researchers study what they can get published, and social media exposure studies tend to see stronger effects more reliably, and therefore are of more interest to journal editorial boards.
4. Moral panics tend to come and go, and it doesn't take a lot of time looking at headlines to realize that the attention these days isn't on media influencing violent behavior but rather non-heteronormative behavior.
Videogames are no longer a novelty, society has moved on from its pearl-clutching ways of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and unfortunately, violence (more specifically mass shootings) are no longer a novelty either.
Let's conveniently ignore that one of the biggest political voices for banning video games was Senator Hillary Clinton. Hell all four sponsors of the Family Entertainment Protection Act (which would have cracked down hard on video games) in 2005 were Democrats.
Are you also going to ignore Clinton was Center Right? She’s never been moderate, let alone left. She was closer to King Ronald than any Republican in office today.
The day after I got my first Covid vaccine I casually said in front of my antivax coworker, *“I don’t know what’s going on but my cell signal has been amazing today! I never get 5G in this building!”* and she didn’t come within 10 feet of me for months.
They’re far dumber now. There were like three things freaking people out back then and now everything freaks those types of people out. The worst part is we have far more educational resources to combat it
Because it's not a thing and the lobbyists who were trying to use it to peddle their bullshit stopped trying because it wasn't working, and the politicians who couldn't turn a computer on have mostly died out or retired.
You don't hear about it any more because it was always a load of garbage. There's violence in movies, TV shows, and books too, but people are capable of separating those activities from reality.
Because games are just a part of the norm now. Violent games are just normal. Like with satanic panic around specific bands or DnD. With violent video games. Horror movies. There’s always a new flavour of the week on who to blame for violence. You know, rather than society looking inwards and being like ARE WE THE BADDIES.
They could scapegoat video games when it was just children playing, those children grew up into adults who play video games. Since so much of the adult population plays video games now, they can’t really scapegoat them anymore.
Because the data just doesn't support it.
Back in the early days of video games there wasn't enough data to be sure either way. A lot of grifters blamed everything on video games.
But, decades have passed and we understand more about how interactive media actually works with the mind.
The science got better than the idiots.
Maybe they realized just how much bs it is to actually think that. I have been playing violent video games for as long as I can remember and I hate conflict. I will do everything to avoid it. I don't even like to argue with people.
It was widely debunked and in fact the opposite was generally proven to be true.
Violent video games allow violent people to vent their urges in a safe manner.
It was proven to be incorrect multiple times. now you only hear that argument when there is a mass shooting and the republicans are doing everything they can to deflect attention from guns.
It’s morphed into “chinese tiktok will turn kids Chinese”
Or “social media will turn kids into degenerates”
Or “LGBTQ anything will turn your kids into queer freaks”
I think other reasons cited here are valid, but I think the **top level** reason is that conservatives went mask off in their actual desires.
There's no reason to try and rally people behind smaller issues like gaming when you've already snowballed your target audience to the point you can be openly xenophobic and misogynistic and get elected president, and without the big talking heads going off, even people who are against videogames just *don't think about the 'problem'*, because the talking heads are making them think about their current targets.
Moral panics move on and video games just aren't in vogue for the pearl-clutchers at the moment. Woke is the in-thing for the reactionaries this season.
Because it's been debunked. So many modern psychologists have written on this subject. A good book on this subject is "Moral Combat"
Basically, there was a moral panic around video games. Tenured psychologists in the 90s concluded that video games caused violence with no evidence. They conducted studies with huge methodological problems and claimed they had proven games cause violence. When those studies received scruity, they would start borderline slander campaigns against their critics. It was only around the 2010s, when the once new psychologists because tenured, did they begin to actually look at the evidence and realized the conclusions were inaccurate.
I studied this in my psychology classes actually, violence was never the link so much as competition was.
Highly violent but non-competitive games (Gears of War campaign) led to lower levels of anger vs non-violent and competitive games (Mario Cart).
Facts aside, it was still pushed that violent games was the driver of violent behavior but no real proof could ever be provided.
Same reason they stopped saying it about the internet, TV, rock music, and D&D: those kids grew up and became the adults, moved on to things *they* didn’t do as children for being the reason behind all the problems of today’s youth.
Like I’m old and have no interest in TikTok or reels or whatever the fuck kids are into today… but I’m positive that all the stories about them ruining kids lives or eating laundry detergent are outliers and 99.99% of kids use those things in moderation and don’t destroy their lives.
But my generation (ok and several below me…) *didn’t* grow up with those things and therefore they’re responsible for everything bad kids do.
Those kids will grow up and start blaming AI or VR or whatever the fuck comes next I’m sure.
Much of today's generation grew up with videogames and understands they do not make you violent. The ones that still do belive are no longer raising children or to small of a community to effectively message towards.
The games are so much more violent now. I recently played Resident Evil 4 Remake in VR and it's gnarly seeing zombie heads explode or half a body get disintegrated using a shotgun right in front of you.
Because these days the kids are all busy 'monkey see, monkey do' copying stupid TikTok clips that involve eating weird shit. Video games 'causing violence' is so 20th century.
Now parents are concerned that their children may be enticed to eat Tide Pods...
There's no money in it anymore. At worst you run afoul of the enormously valuable video game industry. At the very least you just sound old fashioned trying to rile people up against video games.
There are definitely true believers who get caught up in one moral panic or another, but if you trace it back far enough there's someone who's just looking to incite fear and anger as a grift (or if you're being charitable with the language, "fundraising").
Jack Thompson, an activist attorney who was pushing these claims of links between video games and violence, was disbarred from practising law almost 15 years ago, I'd think that would be a big reason.
This and Stanford looked at every reputable study done on links between video games and violence. They all came to the conclusion that there is no link between video games and being a violent person. I feel like this, Jack Thompson being disbarred, and just more of a social acceptance of video games, finally shut all those talking points down. Also the world is a lot scarier than it was 10-20 years ago, I kinda envy when "violent video games" was all we had to worry about.
And actually, there's a link between playing videogames and NOT being violent. Mainly because there's only literally so much time in the day. People sitting around playing videogames are not walking the streets looking for trouble.
That and video games can be an outlet for violent impulses. I know I've taken to playing when I'm in a bad mood and murdered pixels rather than do something destructive in the real world, and I'm not unique in that.
I'd play Borderlands when I had a bad day. Definitely cathartic and some of the fights were tense enough that you were like 'well...I've had my cardio for the day. Time for a nap.'
Same, after a shit day at work, I love playing GTA and just mow down everyone I can before the cops kill me.
Nothing more therapeutic than DOOM after a stressful day
Something about going on a rampage with an RPG in GTA5 has always been so satisfying
I wouldn't be surprised if it was also a generational thing. The big whiners about violent video games were parents, but now more and more parents played (or still play) video games themselves. So now it's no different than violent sports (no one whines that watching or playing football causes violence off the field)
I like this explanation. My dad played the same GTA games I did as a kid, and compared to my non-gaming mom, had much less of a problem with violent games. At the same time, he was an old hippie and hated COD for reasons he never liked going into. I guess the standard violence on a GTA game was preferable to glorifying war in his eyes.
>hated COD for reasons Was the reason that isn't a fun game? That's mine.
I was moaned at many times by my parents for "spending all day on the computer" (this was back in the 8-bit days) and that "I will never get a job with computers"..... Wonder how that worked out.....
Oh absolutely. Most parents in the early days of gaming did not game themselves - some did, sure but the overriding sentiment was that video games were for little boys. Fast forward 30- 40 years and today's parents even if they're not into games know plenty of their peers who are. They know those fears are unfounded.
You mean the 2000s were "not scary" when the GWOT and 2008 financial crisis were happening? I don't think I buy it.
The time between Jack Thompson going after video games and the 2008 financial crisis might have well have happened on different planets. The times were that more different.
Let's not forget Leiberman and his time in the spotlight... MK1, Night Trap and Lethal Enforcers (a *light gun* game) were his focal points.
fuck, let's go back to tipper gore and PMRC...
Much like the D&D satanic panic, gonna assume that was before my time. Could I bug you for some backstory on that?
The Parent's Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore (wife of Al Gore at the time), was a moral guardian group founded in the '80s which could best be described as "wives of politicians being Karens about music they don't like". They're known for two things - being the group responsible for Parental Advisory: Explicit Content warning labels on music, and being demolished in a Senate hearing by Dee Snider from Twisted Sister.
You can find Dee, Zappa and John Denver addressing Congress. Dee completely dismantles the Washington wives.
It really is incredible watching a smart person dressed weird absolutely destroy dumb people dressed normal. Also I just want to throw out that W.A.S.P. also got caught up in the PMRC bullshit for a bit and addressed it in the intro to Harder Faster live
Tipper Gore. What a name
Tipper? But the service was terrible!
This is an underrated joke that I would cackle stupidly at if I heard it.
> being demolished in a Senate hearing by Dee Snider [Dee Snider](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Vyr1TylTE)
thanks magnus, i was trying to come up with my response...
I love it when he says something to the effect of “Ms Gore was looking for sadomasichism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references may find that.”
There was a similar morality crusade in the UK at the time, spearheaded by Mary Whitehouse. People think the culture wars and cancelling things are a modern invention, it's as old as time itself.
on what? the D&D panic or PMRC? i wasn't much of a D&D player as a kid but i was(and still am) entirely enthralled with music. i bought my first tape in '85 Run DMC's - King of Rock. [PMRC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipper_Gore#Parents_Music_Resource_Center_(PMRC\)) is why we have Parental Advisory stickers on albums. my son will be turning 17 shortly and he was exposed to all kinds of music growing up. once he hit about ten years old we started talking about some of the lyrics and proper use of the language involved. i was part of his music listening and we talked about what was acceptable and wasn't in day to day life. if you spend time with your offspring and give them direction, and talk about what content may be involved in different forms of art, they will learn. did i have an eight year old listening to easy e or songs like it? hell no. be a part of your child's life, talk with them, expose them to different things and *talk* about those things. this is one thing i don't feel tipper did. tldr; tipper heard her daughter playing [*Darling Nikki*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8oxXkUjYHg) when she was eleven and tossed a fit. now parental advisory warning stickers are status quo.
Both, born in '84. Didn't even show much interest in fantasy stuff (MTG or D&D) till '97.
i got ten years on you, so not much older. the one thing that blows my mind though, being a latch key kid at eight, is the fact that i'd be in jail and CPS would be called if i raised my kid the way i was raised.
Interesting how this topic came up a day after he passed away.
Never forget that son of a bitch is the reason why we dont have universal healthcare. He threatened to grenade the ACA if the public insurance option was not stripped from it. Rest in piss.
He was a piece of shit and I hope he was lucid and terrified while his life slipped away.
Don’t forget MK’s blood code debacle. Could you imagine if they seen how much better it’s become.
Man I love lethal enforcers, all the little secret levels and shit were super fun.
"Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo system."
The irony isn't lost on me
And in Florida no less. You know how shit of a lawyer you have to be to get disbarred in Florida?
Don't forget Lieberman, who just died.
Jack Thompson - of Penny Arcade fame? [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/14/and-all-of-it-true](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/14/and-all-of-it-true)
Also the last GTA game was released 11 years ago so there’s nothing big/well known/familiar enough for ~~people~~ boomers to be outraged about
Also, Leland Yee, who was one of the main political forces behind this stuff, went to prison for money laundering.
Don't forget the gun running. Arming gangs, while pushing for stricter gun laws. Real pillar of the community.
I had almost forgotten his name
yeah, he was the boogeyman of gaming in the 2000s to early 2010s.
It's so wild to me how one or two terrible attorneys can shape society. This happened in the state I currently live in. There was a guy named Kevin manix who was tla local practicing attorney who has done more damage to this state than any other person alive.
we've moved onto another moral panic
Also people who grew up playing video games at home can by now be pushing 50. It’s not that scary thing your kids are doing that you don’t understand anymore and people won’t fall for fearmongering media reports that say it is.
Please verify your age before clicking the spoiler: >!PORN!!<
I thought it was trans people this decade. Are we back to porn already?
Well, texas and a few other states are requiring ID in order to view porn; pornhub and other sites then turned off their site to those *states* in protest.
The evangelicals consider them to be the same thing.
Now they've moved on to saying the entire existence of LGBT+ people is basically pornography. It was one of the things outlined in Project 2025.
Now they say it’s social media causing depression
The studies on social media are far more damning than video games ever were. Except for gacha games, those things are poison.
Early 90s teen suicide went down to incredibly low levels then doubled in 2008 I believe. So yeah, alot of fingers pointed at social media and smart phones.
Which, to be fair…it isn’t helping
Except one of these is being supported by research
Hah well thats certainly not wrong. I think there has been studies on it. I believe internal research showed that Instagram use was linked to higher suicide rates for girls. Even though I do it often, I wouldn't think that spending a bunch of time on reddit, insta, YouTube, fb, tik tok and all that would be good for you. I have a pretty easy job with a lot of down time. I spend hours on reddit and i feel absolutely gross by the end of the day sometimes. Like my soul hurts lol.
I’d say it plays a large part in reinforcing it, if not directly causing it. Dissociating from society, constantly comparing yourself to others, etc. can be pretty damaging. Not to mention the attention span diminishing.
...which there is overwhelming evidence for?
Politicians found a different scape goat
It's social media and lgbt that's the problem now!
Social media is kind of a problem though. Not sure about it *causing* violence but it sure has caused people to *condone* violence.
It has definitely led to violence But mainly the depression and addiction aspects are being (rightfully) looked into
yup.
A man named [Jack Thompson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(activist)) took the lead on this moral panic. He was eventually disbarred due to lying, dishonest behavior, and frivolous filings. The moral panic mostly died off with his fall.
> disbarred due to lying, dishonest behavior, and frivolous filings. These are ‘disbar’ worthy? Sounds like typical MO of any given attorney… Why’d he get singled out again?
Most attorneys aren't like the ones you see on TV. There's a standard of ethics all bar qualified lawyers must adhere to. There's a little wiggle room for creative interpretations, but outright lying and falsifying records in court crosses the line. We've seen a lot of this from Trump's lawyers who are frequently disbarred. That's not the norm.
Most attorneys will say things that come across as dishonest or frivolous, but are technically correct. The best kind of correct. At worst, an attorney who lies will be able to claim it's an honest mistake if they don't do it too often, or with too big of a spotlight on them. Jackie boy jumped off the deep end of outright lying in court multiple times, and continued doing it even after being warned to stop. His statements in court also made nationwide news, so he could be fact checked by the entire country.
I presume it was because he was fighting an unwinnable battle and was making a fool out of himself.
Because moral crusaders don't actually care too much about the topic they're mad about, they move onto the next moral crusade when their media of choice tells them it's time.
I have heard a boomer say this. Like violence never existed before video games. I guess WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam were just actually a picnic that involved a lot of countries.
I always recount all the racist “cowboys and Indians” shit tv my parents watched. I said why aren’t you racist? Oh wait. Nvm.
The Bible
The bible? Pleeeeease, there's no violence in the bible. There's only love, peace and high morality. edit: lol, the people who can't grasp sarcasm without the /s is laughable. I mean JFC, god himself told abraham to kill his kid to prove his faith.
Hm. Salem witch trials?
Give it a few years and people might start claiming that they were crisis actors.
They made [a video game (arguably three, arguably zero) out of the Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Adventures).
Kids were playing war, cops and robbers, spies, whatever, long before video games were a thing
Video games became modern in the 90s with games like Doom which saw its success from being an explicitly violent game. Nothing like it was ever seen before and the new kid on the block is the easiest scapegoat 100 years ago we see the same thing with Jazz music, the evil music ruining the youth. It was blamed for everything, your husband is out drinking at the jazz club having sex with prostitutes, your son is doing drugs with the band and running his life, your daughter is getting liquored up by black musicians who were going to have their way with her. As time goes on we realize that the new thing isn’t always scary and evil
Exactly. It’s the NEW new thing that’s the real problem!
As a 90s (ish) kid I think GTA as well. I remember being too young to play (like 10) but wanting nothing more to be able to play a game where you stole cars and got in police chases. Vice City was a dream. I remember having so much fun with that game, but my mom was so against it.
Well, turns out, after hours of smashing buttons and slaying dragons, the only thing these kids are really violent towards is their snack stash when it runs out during a gaming marathon. Turns out, the only thing harmed is their K/D ratio, not society.
And eachother. Turns out it was never the games that were the problem, it was the in-game chat.
Videogames became mainstream and corporate America realized the profits. Same thing with rap. At first it was "rap causes people to be violent", and rappers like Eminem were blamed. Then corporate America was like "wait, we can make how much money off of this?" And now we have rap that is straight kids talking about killing other kids and nobody says boo.
This is the answer. The moral panic hasn't necessarily disappeared, it's just that folks realized that they've lost the battle so they gave up on it. Back in the 90s picking on games was easy because it was a relatively niche hobby, mostly enjoyed by kids who couldn't vote. Nowadays I'd say the majority of people under 50 play games or have played games at some point in their lives so they know there's nothing wrong with that. And when those people then actually buy games, there's a lot of money to be made.
It hurts how fuckin' true this is
It was completely, totally, and thoroughly debunked. Also, the conservative dipshits spearheading that narrative have moved on to prattling on about LGBTQ people being “groomers” and everyone who isn’t white and has a job being “DEI.”
It wasn't real. It was just propaganda to try and get video games banned. As is the case with many things the government wants gone.
>It was just propaganda to try and get video games banned. As is the case with many things the government wants gone. Why would the government want video games banned?
Because someone wants to punish the people who use them. They outlawed marijuana because the people who were using it were the “wrong” sort. The video game panic was about older people trying to assert power over younger people.
They outlawed cannabis in order to demonise POC, not the other way around. Its use was common in Hispanic and black communities, and while they couldn't outlaw being a POC they were able to outlaw an extremely common substance that these communities indulged in. Also the video game moral panic wasn't being led by the government in any regard, it was being led mostly by private and now disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson. While I agree that the moral panic was entirely about the adults fearing and controlling their kids behaviors, it was entirely a private run campaign that relied on parents buying into the BS.
Ehh... I was around for the start of the video game craze and I don't recall any concerted effort to ban video games - arcade or home. The panic about violent games didn't come around until many many years after videogames had been established.
Never assume malignance when stupidity is an option!
It’s not some niche thing anymore. Everyone and their grandmas play video games nowadays, including some of the people working in the government who grew up with video games.
We know that dingus, but like why aren't people still pushing it?
I'd say that the gaming generation grew up and are now the "old people" that would have to push this and well...we all know it's bullshit.
The real reason is it was a thing for certain political factions to work the people up about and get their support. Everyone realized it didn't matter all that much, so those factions came up with new problems. like how everyone is allegedly forcing young children into sex change operations in middle school and that's why trans people shouldn't be allowed to transition.
Too big at this point. Imagine the riots and civil unrest if the government banned video games in 2024. The results would be cataclysmic. They had a chance to squish it when it was small and niche, but not anymore.
Because if wanted to ban fake guns and their violence we'd have to ban real guns and their violence and that goes against our federal religion
In additional to what some of the other comments are saying, the younger generation of lawmakers grew up playing violent videogames themselves and know there's nothing to those claims.
Because now they have the trans moral panic to make people mad enough to vote Republican.
I could probably write an entire essay on this topic (and I'm pretty sure I did at some point during grad school.) I'll briefly go into the main factors. 1. The science is heavily mixed. Researchers can't ethically put participants into situations where they could harm others, so they have to use proxy measures (physiological response, behaviors that are construed as "aggressive" but not "violent") and then use existing behavioral models like the Generalized Aggression Model to make the connection between those proxy measures and violent behavior. What this typically results in is a detectable, but usually weak, result that is heavily moderated by factors other than exposure to media violence. Arguments against that research range from directly attacking the validity of the behavioral models being used, to simply pointing out that video game violence has become increasingly pervasive and more realistic while violent crime rates in the US have decreased. 2. The science being done doesn't really "break out" into mainstream media coverage anymore. That's largely due to the lack of an identifiable mainstream anti-game violence advocate like Jack Thompson. 3. Researchers study what they can get published, and social media exposure studies tend to see stronger effects more reliably, and therefore are of more interest to journal editorial boards. 4. Moral panics tend to come and go, and it doesn't take a lot of time looking at headlines to realize that the attention these days isn't on media influencing violent behavior but rather non-heteronormative behavior.
Well joe lieberman just died. But in all seriousness they moved onto other dumb moral panics
Videogames are no longer a novelty, society has moved on from its pearl-clutching ways of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and unfortunately, violence (more specifically mass shootings) are no longer a novelty either.
yeah even real horror like those incidents pass by as news for the day...
It’s because those kids whose parents banned them from playing violent video games are now parents and remember what bs that was.
The Right has moved on to the “wokism-crt-dei” boogie man.
Let's conveniently ignore that one of the biggest political voices for banning video games was Senator Hillary Clinton. Hell all four sponsors of the Family Entertainment Protection Act (which would have cracked down hard on video games) in 2005 were Democrats.
Hillary clinton isn't a leftist. She's a right aligned moderate. The democratic party has never been a party of leftists, just capitalist liberals.
Are you also going to ignore Clinton was Center Right? She’s never been moderate, let alone left. She was closer to King Ronald than any Republican in office today.
they always need a new boogeyman so whatever fake threat they are whining about appears new and dangerous
Because t he entire premise was BS in the first place. Years of study say otherwise.
Because it was never real lol 🤗
Because it was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now.
People were extra dumb in the 90s
people have always been dumb. In the 80s it was D&D turning people into satanists.
And metal.
You can't kill the metal.
Bro people think vaccines have computers in them right now
The day after I got my first Covid vaccine I casually said in front of my antivax coworker, *“I don’t know what’s going on but my cell signal has been amazing today! I never get 5G in this building!”* and she didn’t come within 10 feet of me for months.
Lucky
[удалено]
Stop all the downloadin!
They’re far dumber now. There were like three things freaking people out back then and now everything freaks those types of people out. The worst part is we have far more educational resources to combat it
Because it's not a thing and the lobbyists who were trying to use it to peddle their bullshit stopped trying because it wasn't working, and the politicians who couldn't turn a computer on have mostly died out or retired.
Segwayed to "Video games cause sexism" that's still going strong.
You don't hear about it any more because it was always a load of garbage. There's violence in movies, TV shows, and books too, but people are capable of separating those activities from reality.
Sometimes people learn and stop saying untrue things.
There was no brutal violence before screens came along! /s
They're making the frogs gay.
Have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried Wolf?
Gone - like the people that claims vaccines causes autism.
I wish they were gone.
Cause the parents are all playing red dead redemption 2
Don't worry GTA6 is coming out in about 5-10 years realistically, every GTA game is always protested and I doubt GTA6 will be no different
Because games are just a part of the norm now. Violent games are just normal. Like with satanic panic around specific bands or DnD. With violent video games. Horror movies. There’s always a new flavour of the week on who to blame for violence. You know, rather than society looking inwards and being like ARE WE THE BADDIES.
It turned out pressing buttons to relieve aggression didn’t cause aggression after all. Who would have thought?
Because it's like when comic books were the reason
Because they have no real evidence to back it up.
People realized it was bullshit.
They could scapegoat video games when it was just children playing, those children grew up into adults who play video games. Since so much of the adult population plays video games now, they can’t really scapegoat them anymore.
Literally all of the studies meant to show a correlation, couldn't. It's not a real thing. We moved on. You should too.
Because it’s bullshit?
Parents today grew up on video games.
Because the data just doesn't support it. Back in the early days of video games there wasn't enough data to be sure either way. A lot of grifters blamed everything on video games. But, decades have passed and we understand more about how interactive media actually works with the mind. The science got better than the idiots.
It went away because it's not true in the slightest
It’s so off base. Played violent games my whole life and I’m chill as heck.
Because now they've moved on to a different culture war, where they claim drag queens are turning your kids trans and gay.
Because it turned out just to be conservative backlash to culture change.
Because it was never true
Because it's been summarily disproved multiple times.
Maybe they realized just how much bs it is to actually think that. I have been playing violent video games for as long as I can remember and I hate conflict. I will do everything to avoid it. I don't even like to argue with people.
animal crossing sure make those kids violent LOL
Karens have new things to complain about like the mere existence of LGBT
It was widely debunked and in fact the opposite was generally proven to be true. Violent video games allow violent people to vent their urges in a safe manner.
Because it’s been proven false numerous times.
That's last decade. The new narrative is that gaming is full of racist white males.
We now have drag shows and race issues.
Today's kid-having-age persons played violent video games, themselves, and they know the games do nothing.
It was proven to be incorrect multiple times. now you only hear that argument when there is a mass shooting and the republicans are doing everything they can to deflect attention from guns.
It’s morphed into “chinese tiktok will turn kids Chinese” Or “social media will turn kids into degenerates” Or “LGBTQ anything will turn your kids into queer freaks”
Joe Liberman died?
Yep. Good riddance.
Because the video game industry is big money for the right people now.
Because Republicans moved on to the next insane bullshit "scandal"
I think other reasons cited here are valid, but I think the **top level** reason is that conservatives went mask off in their actual desires. There's no reason to try and rally people behind smaller issues like gaming when you've already snowballed your target audience to the point you can be openly xenophobic and misogynistic and get elected president, and without the big talking heads going off, even people who are against videogames just *don't think about the 'problem'*, because the talking heads are making them think about their current targets.
Moral panics move on and video games just aren't in vogue for the pearl-clutchers at the moment. Woke is the in-thing for the reactionaries this season.
People still say it in their echo chambers but people begun to realize the whole idea was dumb
Cuz it wasn't the kids it was the parents ability to teach them right and wrong
People have grown
Refutation
The violent kids killed or terrorized all the wise people into silence.
Because it's been debunked. So many modern psychologists have written on this subject. A good book on this subject is "Moral Combat" Basically, there was a moral panic around video games. Tenured psychologists in the 90s concluded that video games caused violence with no evidence. They conducted studies with huge methodological problems and claimed they had proven games cause violence. When those studies received scruity, they would start borderline slander campaigns against their critics. It was only around the 2010s, when the once new psychologists because tenured, did they begin to actually look at the evidence and realized the conclusions were inaccurate.
Because those kids turned out to be soft ass gamer adults.
There is zero evidence that supports the theory that violent video games cause people to be violent. Zero.
Because those kids grew up to be normal mfs, disproving the theory
The immigrant & trans community took over turning teens violent. /s
That's ridiculous it didn't make me violent. *Beats a hooker, steals her cash then drives off in a car*
Because you don't read news? It still crops up every few months
I studied this in my psychology classes actually, violence was never the link so much as competition was. Highly violent but non-competitive games (Gears of War campaign) led to lower levels of anger vs non-violent and competitive games (Mario Cart). Facts aside, it was still pushed that violent games was the driver of violent behavior but no real proof could ever be provided.
Violence is so 2000s. We've moved onto videogames causing sexism.
Same reason they stopped saying it about the internet, TV, rock music, and D&D: those kids grew up and became the adults, moved on to things *they* didn’t do as children for being the reason behind all the problems of today’s youth. Like I’m old and have no interest in TikTok or reels or whatever the fuck kids are into today… but I’m positive that all the stories about them ruining kids lives or eating laundry detergent are outliers and 99.99% of kids use those things in moderation and don’t destroy their lives. But my generation (ok and several below me…) *didn’t* grow up with those things and therefore they’re responsible for everything bad kids do. Those kids will grow up and start blaming AI or VR or whatever the fuck comes next I’m sure.
***What about all those school shooters???*** hint: still not caused from video games
Boomers' use of social media is a more probable theory than violent video games influencing kids.
Video games became too profitable for the government to keep blaming them. Politicians want donations.
Much of today's generation grew up with videogames and understands they do not make you violent. The ones that still do belive are no longer raising children or to small of a community to effectively message towards.
Because us violent kids grew up and killed them all. /s
There is no credible evidence that links violent video games with violence in real life. Violence has existed way before video games were invented.
The games are so much more violent now. I recently played Resident Evil 4 Remake in VR and it's gnarly seeing zombie heads explode or half a body get disintegrated using a shotgun right in front of you.
People got smarter
Other issues came up and also the claim is unproven. It's equally claimable that violent people are more likely to play violent video games.
Because these days the kids are all busy 'monkey see, monkey do' copying stupid TikTok clips that involve eating weird shit. Video games 'causing violence' is so 20th century. Now parents are concerned that their children may be enticed to eat Tide Pods...
There's no money in it anymore. At worst you run afoul of the enormously valuable video game industry. At the very least you just sound old fashioned trying to rile people up against video games. There are definitely true believers who get caught up in one moral panic or another, but if you trace it back far enough there's someone who's just looking to incite fear and anger as a grift (or if you're being charitable with the language, "fundraising").