172. INFLUENCERS - Why Violent Video Games Must Make Us More Violent
Anyone who studies the AQA Philosophy A-level course in Moral Philosophy will have come across the issue of ‘simulated killing’ and its ethics. It’s one of those deliciously tricksy philosophical areas because on the surface it’s about killing, but as the killing under discussion is merely simulated (such as in a video game, a movie, a play, etc.) and not actual, no harm is done. How can it be bad? Especially on consequentialist grounds.
Every year discussion of this issue comes to the idea that there might be actual violent consequences in real life even if the simulated killing itself is merely simulation. That my playing six hours of Call of Duty each day might result in zero actual casualties while playing the game and therefore the simulated killing itself seems potentially harmless but what if all that simulated killing desensitises me to killing and so I end up one day actually killing people as a result? Perhaps by joining the army to do in real life what I have been doing virtually since childhood? Or, perhaps, as we see with militia groups in America, by seeing everyday life as a combat zone and violently reacting?
When you speak to a classroom of teenagers about the possibility that playing violent video games might make them violent, you can immediately see the smirks and ready yourself for their knee-jerk defensiveness. After all, they are the smirks and defensiveness you, yourself, have given in response to the same suggestion your whole life. These students play those video games themselves, and they haven’t gone out and killed anybody. Just as you, the teacher, have played such games and - despite the lofty numbers of simulated dead left in your wake - have thus far in your life had no actual blood on your hands. Movies too. Just like your students you have sat and watched the latest John Wick instalment just to see how many people Keanu Reeves pretends to kill this time. You have seen slasher movies like Saw and Scream and been eager to see the latest absurdities of simulated murder the latest movies will bring. And, of course, you have watched some Shakespeare in your time. Bloody deaths and tragedies full of simulated violence. Perhaps you have even acted in some and simulated the killing yourself? The idea that such stuff leads to actual real world violence is easy to shrug off because we all do it and none of us are violent in real life.
Except….
Except we somehow hold this belief in our heads alongside other, contradictory knowledge. Knowledge of the media’s definitive power to influence us. Knowledge that annually nearly seven hundred billion dollars is spent on advertising precisely because when humans see stuff happen in their entertainment they tend to want to emulate it. Lifestyles, clothes, the latest consumer products… product placement is so powerful because seeing things used by others is likely to make us want to use them ourselves.
We even have a word for this in the modern day - influencers. Those people who use social media to talk about, and model, certain ideas and products and thus encourage others to follow suit.
The success of advertising, influencers, and other forms of mass marketing through media show us starkly the impact that seeing simulations of reality can have on shaping our actual realities. Indeed, the human mind is interesting in this way. Once it sees something to be possible, it unlocks the ability to make that possibility so. Once upon a time no one could imagine running a whole mile in just four minutes. No one had done it. Then in 1954 Roger Bannister did it and showed that it was possible. Since then nearly two thousand more athletes have run a four minute mile, influenced by Bannister showing them what was possible. Magician and juggler, Penn Jillette has noticed something similar about juggling. The tricks people of his generation once did to awe and amaze audiences are no longer as jaw-dropping as they once were thanks to YouTube. The limits of possibility in juggling have been stretched and, importantly, shown to everyone online, so now the latest generation of jugglers have a different understanding of the idea of what is possible.
We know that media can influence in this way for another reason: representation. The fight for better representation of previously marginalised groups in society speaks to the power of the media to shape and influence our real life actions. If I see only white, male, straight people filling certain roles on television then I believe only white, male, straight people can perform those roles in real life. Show me something different, and diversify that simulated reality on TV, and suddenly real-life doors are opened in the actual world. Visibility creates possibility. The gay, Asian, non-binary person who worried about their place in the world dominated by heteronormative white European men sees a gay, Asian, non-binary person in a position of power on TV and suddenly realises the world is actually their oyster. That is the whole point of such representation: not just reflecting reality, but reshaping it into the reality that we actually want.
Hence the cognitive dissonance I worry about when it comes to our knee-jerk defensiveness about the influence simulated violence might have on us. Because if the entertainment we consume has all this other very clear power to influence our thoughts, habits and attitudes, then we are left with two possibilities when it comes to the portrayal of violence:
A) We will, logically, be influenced by the violent stuff too.
or
B) We are, for some reason, not influenced by the violent stuff in the way that we are influenced by everything else.
For B to be true rather than A, however, we need some further explanation as to why this one aspect of our entertainment fails to act in the same way as everything else we are exposed to. Or, we need to be able to prove that, despite not exactly knowing why, it just is the case that there is no such influence on our lives.
I have already said that neither us teachers or our students who have played violent video-games or enjoyed violent movies and plays have ended up killing anyone in real life, but that is obviously not true for everybody. Some students and some teachers exposed to this stuff obviously have killed people in real life, for sometimes the news headlines talk about students or teachers committing such crimes. Just not all.
But this might be the same success-rate that there is for the other stuff too. Not everyone exposed to advertising, social media influencers, or diverse representation is transformed by the experience. We can all think of a product marketed at us incessantly that we have not bought. But that does not negate the powerful nature of the possible influence. Many people are influenced, even if not everybody is. And even those of us who resist the influence can only do so by letting the new idea in our head to actively resist it. By choosing not to buy product X I am still thinking about product X.
It’s also worth noting that things like advertising and representation work best when aimed at target audiences. If we look at the target audience of most violent media it tends to be aimed towards young men. And if we look at the statistics on which demographic in society tend to be the most violent it is usually young men.
It is also worth considering here our definition of violence. While there are definitely more of us out there consuming simulated killing and simulated violence in our media than are out there actually murdering or committing conventional forms of violence on people, one could look around at the baked-in structural violence of our current world and ask a serious question about how we became so desensitised to all this suffering. From stepping over yet another person without a home on our city streets without even batting an eyelid, to repeatedly voting in political parties who tell us explicitly that they will take away desperate people’s benefits and block access to safety for asylum seekers, one could question how we became so effortlessly callous. How we can read every day about a war here, a natural disaster there, a deadly disease in a faraway country that could be prevented for just the price of a high-street coffee, a person denied urgent medical care because there is no money to pay for it while others fly private jets to private islands and live in private luxury…
‘No’, we say, ‘those violent video games and gory movies didn’t make us more violent’, as we arm our police forces with more and more weapons and legislative powers to terrorise people on the margins of our society, as we export weapons to and sign trade deals with human rights abusing countries, and as our kids watch real-life beheading videos and videos of actual park and playground assaults online. ‘The media can influence us’, we tell ourselves, ‘but not like that’, as we watch wages fail to keep up with the cost of living and merrily live our lives knowing some of our neighbours can’t afford to heat their homes this winter. That some are forced to rent places thick with deadly black mould. That others are sharing food for one with their hungry family of four while others throw whole meals away each week into their over-stuffed bins. ‘We haven’t been made more violent’, we assure ourselves, as we drink the carcinogenic ‘forever chemicals’ and plastics in our water that made a small minority of people some money at the cost of our collective health. ‘Not us’, as the planet continues to warm because of our inaction on climate change, knowingly devastating wildlife and causing deadly weather events around the globe. ‘Not us’, as we still struggle to come to terms with our terrible, bloody, legacies of colonialism, genocide, slavery and domination and acknowledge the true role of violence in getting us where we are today.
As someone who has played violent video games since childhood, been a fan of the simulated violence of professional wrestling for over thirty years now, watched many slasher and action movies, and even in my time as an actor/improviser personally performed actual simulated violence on the stage, I would love to say this stuff hasn’t influenced me and made me more violent. But as I look more carefully at the casual violence I accept daily all around me without comment, it starts to feel like maybe I, and my students, protest too much.
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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