Uncensored Media Considered Harmless

The word "Internet" was uttered precisely once in last night's presidential debate, and I don't have to tell you the context. You already know the topic was Columbine, and you already know the Net was being blamed for mass murder. What our Republican candidate failed to mention is that his party's bogeymen, the evil Internet and its evil twin violent entertainment, have brought about a new era of peace. If we really want less violence in our schools, we obviously need more violence on our Internet.

"Columbine spoke to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line we begun to disrespect life, where a child can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet, and walk in and decide to take somebody else's life."
- George W. Bush, presidential debate, October 11, 2000

The term we're looking for is "manufactured crisis." That's what we need to start calling it, this supposed violence in our schools.

I don't need to provide you with more quotes from Bush, Gore, Cheney and especially Lieberman about how disgustingly violent our culture has become. You can't pick up a paper without seeing at least three people moaning about violent movies, the violent internet, and worst of all violent video games. They're infecting the minds of our children, don't'cha know. It'd be the new national pastime if it weren't 200 years old: grumping about those damn kids.

Let's counter disinformation with some real numbers. Here's an annotated timeline showing the increase in violent imagery, and the corresponding decrease in actual violence.

1993
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,438,200.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 49.1.

Let's consider 1993 our baseline year, the pre-Doom year. That blockbuster was not released until December 1993, so I think we are safe to assume that it did not begin darkening hearts until 1994 or later. By the end of 1993, the internet's two million host machines include 500 webservers.

Demolition Man, Kalifornia and Falling Down are in the theaters.

1994
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,424,200: a 1% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 51.2: a 4% increase from the previous year.

In 1994, shareware Doom, downloadable from the evil internet, shatters existing gaming records. Its bloody graphics and Satanic imagery shock and offend many who are easily shocked and offended. In an era where 200,000 is a great-selling title, 1994 sees the first of fifteen million gamers who download and play Doom.

Meanwhile, the web grows at an annual rate of 341,000%, becoming the 2nd-most popular type of data; among the three million machines on the net, there are too many webservers to count.

The movies Pulp Fiction, Timecop, True Lies, Children of the CornIII, and the politicans' favorite Natural Born Killers are all released in 1994.

1995
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,290,000: a 9% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 2,169.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 46.1: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

In 1995, the web becomes the most popular internet service among the net's four million machines. Shareware Doom continues to rack up downloads. Doom II: Hell On Earth, released last October, takes over as the violentest game ever, with an initial release of half a million units.

The Basketball Diaries, Braveheart, Se7en, and Die Hard3 are released.

1996
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,134,400: a 12% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,683: a 22% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 41.6: a 10% decrease from the previous year.

1996 is a banner year for violent images. Doom II continues on its track to eventually sell two million copies. Duke Nukem 3D, aimed at the young teenage male market, gives our nation's young boys a healthy mix of strippers, jokes, and mass slaughter with machine guns. Soon after, the breakthrough title Quake offers unprecedented visual accuracy: blood, gore, and murder are now illustrated with detail that makes Doom and Duke Nukem look cartoony.

Scream is released in theaters to tremendous success, along with Broken Arrow, CrowII, Sling Blade, and the excellent Fargo. Meanwhile, there are now 9 million hosts on the net.

The effects of all that horrible media violence in 1996 appear in 1997's statistics...

1997
Students' nonfatal violent crimes: 1,055,200: a 7% decrease from the previous year.
Total under-18 murderers: 1,457: a 13% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 38.8: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1997, there are 16 million hosts on the net. At year's end, QuakeII is released, and is quickly banned in Germany for its even-more-realistic violence. And Con Air, Face/Off, Starship Troopers, and Scream2 are released in theaters.

1998
Total under-18 murderers: 1,169: a 20% decrease from the previous year.
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 36.0: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

In 1998, Quake II hits its sales stride and begins corrupting young minds. Grand Theft Auto, one of the more vilified and censored video games, is released. The web crosses the 300-million-page mark.

Brace yourself for the movie list: Lethal Weapon4, Saving Private Ryan, American HistoryX, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ronin, Urban Legend, Blade, and the crappy remake of Psycho hit the theaters.

The result?

1999
Victims of violent crime per 1,000 population, all ages: 32.1: an 11% decrease from the previous year.

There it is. In the four years between the release of Doom and Quake II, the number of killers under the age of 18 in this country plummeted. A drop of 46% in just four years is nothing short of astonishing.

Long-term graphs are even more valuable. Click through to these, they're small and quick:

• The homicide rate, 1900-1998. We are experiencing the longest and steepest sustained dropoff in violence since the Great Depression.
• Homicide offenders grouped by age, 1976-1998. The number of teenage killers is steadily falling.
• Average age of homicide offenders, 1976-1998. The average age of the American killer has been rising since 1993.

Last month, I watched CNN as my friend Bennett Haselton got grilled opposite Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). After CNN's introduction telling us what to think - cutting straight from footage of Doom to footage of crying Columbine students - the Senator explained how violent games cause children to commit violent actions. He wants to keep dangerous weapons like Quake away from our kids.

That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.

How do the posturing panderers justify their crisis-du-jour? How'd we end up with the phantom of media-created child violence as a major election issue, while violence plummets?

The facts speak for themselves. If seeing violence has any effect on children's actions, it obviously makes them calm and peaceful.

So here's the slogan for my campaign: our kids deserve the best in first-person shooters. In my America, every family will have free movie tickets, 300 megatexels, and low-ping broadband. Let's put an end to frame rates under 30Hz. For our country - for our safety - we can leave no child behind.

(Sources: US DOJ 1, 2, 3; OJJDP 1, 2, 3; FBI UCR; Blues News; crime.org; poynter.org.)

Comments

Censorship is inevitable

[ronfar]

We do have a serious problem in our culture. Tipper and I have worked on the problem of violence and entertainment aimed at children. She's worked on it longer than I have, but I feel very strongly about that. And if I'm elected president, I will do something about that. But I think that we -- I think we have to start with better parenting. -- Al Gore, The Same Debate

The truth is that Americans, en masse, have decided that they want to give up the benefits of living in a free society in exchange for the "benefits" of living in an autocratic state.

The truth is that the Republicans decide, after the string of school shootings that the best way for them to defend their positions on guns was to ratchet up the Culture War. The Democratic presidential ticket is just as right wing on the Culture War as the Republicans are, there is no significant difference between the two tickets on the First Amendment.

I'm probably tilting at windmills with my Libertarian vote, but as far as I'm concerned a vote for the two party system is a wasted vote, and I don't feel like sitting home on election day feeling irrelevant as the Democratic and Republican sharks circle around the US Constitution deciding with part to chomp off next.

As a game developer recently wrote in Computer Gaming monthly, games are going to take the fall for Hollywood, because Hollywood has more clout with the old men than the Gaming Industry. The studies which supposedly "prove" that violent video-games lead to violence in real life are junk science (see my sig), but that won't matter to people who believe that creation science is not an oxymoron. (Or even to some others, who may scoff at people who believe in creation science but will choose to believe the nonsense behind these studies because it fits in with their world view, or gets them money and political power.)

America is not a free country, it is only free compared to worse places. When you go to a movie, you don't see the same one they can show unedited in Europe. When you play a game, you play a different version than they play in Japan. It's a new age of censorship, with the government putting legal muscle behind region based censorship.

We will continue to hear, from the fascists who now populate the Republican and Democratic parties that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." If you can put aside the reality of life in modern America and believe that, I envy you. Unfortunately, I am incapable of destroying my powers of reason to the point where I can agree with such a statement.

We are heading into a new dark age, and no one is putting on the brakes. Where is a public voice against censorship? Where is a cry for reason over emotion?

Not in American political life, that's for sure!

What's wrong with this post.

[rkent]

One of the first things you should learn (in any social science class, anyway) is that correlation does not imply causality. Wait a minute. Apparently someone doesn't get that. I'll say it again.

Correlation does not imply causality.

Saying "what we really need is more violence in the media" is a lot like Herrstein and Murray's conclusion in the Bell Curve that non-white people really *are* less intelligent. They conveniently forgot, as apparently you have as well, to look at confounding factors, and so they assigned race as a causative factor of low intellligence.

Now, I'm not accusing you of being a racist. I understand that what you probably MEANT was that "hey, the increase in media violence has not caused a corresponding increase in actual violence." I just wish you'd SAID that. Because what you DID say is that media violence somehow decreases actual violence. Which is preposterous, and not supported by anything.

The Real Issue

[Steve B]

This campaign speaks to a larger issue, and it's really a matter of culture. It's a culture that somewhere along the line, we have begun to disrespect the Constitution, where a "public servant" can walk in and have their heart turn dark as a result of being in Washington, and walk in and decide to take over everybody else's life.
/.

Re:The Real Issue

[bughunter]

You're right. It is a matter of culture.

This first example is becoming cliche, but stick with me a moment: In Japan, acts of violence and depravity are commonplace in anime and manga, and are accepted... yadda yadda. And their people commit one of the lowest rates of real violence in the world.

Contrast that with Germany, where entertainment that depicts violence committed by one human against another is verboten. Command and Conquer had to be retouched and its manual rewritten to depict its soldiers as robots, not people. Even then, it was sold only to adults. Forget about playing Panzer General. And God Forbid you even link to a web page that mentions Nazis in anything but a contemptful light. This is a reaction to their Fascist era, a time when elected German leaders executed 6 million minority citizens.

So yes. It is cultural. IANASociologist, so I won't get all Jungian and speculate about archetypes and cultural personality, but each society has to find what works -- and what doesn't -- for them. And in every society except stagnant, isolated ones, it's an ongoing search.

Now I'm going to use a word that will make a lot of you want to invoke Godwin's Law. But I'm not using that word in the sense in which Godwin usually encountered it. I'm going to use it in it's original sense. It's important that we, as informed citizens, be able to talk about this word, and know what it really means.

Get out your dictionary and look up the first definition of fascism - it's not about goosestepping and stiffarm saluting and gassing minorities. It's about efficiency. Fascism is the principle that any order, any rule, any law, is justified if it means the state will benefit: be more efficient, run smoother, be safer. Beginning to sound familiar? It should.

Because that's exactly what a lot of legislators have aimed for lately, without regard for individual liberty: anti-smoking laws, censorship of violence in media, drug wars, gun control, three strikes mandatory sentencing. Even worse, if it hasn't been effective at safety and efficiency, it's been successfully sold as such.

And it's not only state-oriented fascism, it's corporate-oriented fascism. Washington legislators are more than happy to exchan ge votes for the contributions of major corporations in order that they may run more efficiently. Laws are continually passed "for the good of the people" when they are really just good for business. To hell with the constitution, there's a buck to be made.

It's scary how the children of men who fought against fascism in WW2 are so willing to embrace it. It's scary how easily we've forgotten. Too many liberals, conservatives, and moderates alike are willing to sacrifice our liberties for safety and efficiency. My grandfather, a WW2 B-29 pilot, is probably pounding the walls of his coffin in frustration.

But that's the dark corners of the big picture. We still have defenders of the liberties endowed upon us by the constitution: From the EFF to the NRA. The entire state of Nevada and most of Texas. From PETA and Greenpeace to Larry Flynt. The Libertarian Party and even Nader. Anyone who argues for the rights of anything other than big business and "what's best for the country."

We aren't going to wind up like modern Germany. There's an equilibrium somewhere between libertarian anarchy and fascism, and we're seeking it. There are too many of us who paid attention in high school Civics class and know what's in the bill of rights. There are too many of us who own guns and know how to use them properly... and accurately. There are too many of us who entertain ourselves simulating small unit combat and tactics...

So you see, in the end, FPS and RTS games are one of the weapons in our arsenal against bad government. They fit right in alongside free press and the right to bear arms. No wonder they're being condemned by government. I suggest that these games -- weapon and combat simulators, really -- should be protected under the second amendment, as well as the first.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

[leereyno]

While I do agree that to draw a link between the presence of violent movies, games, music etc, and real violence is absurd. It is just as absurd to say that the presence of violence in games and movies caused the drop in real world violence.

With 2 million convicts in our prisons, an increase of 1 million from a decade ago, and the proliferation of firearms in the hands of honest citizens, I can't see how violent crime can do anything but go down. Those most likely to commit violent crimes are either in prison or smart enough to refrain so they don't get shot. Those who are neither are dead.

Youth have always been a great convenience for those who want to manipulate the public. Talk about how much something or another is going to hurt someone's kids and how you plan to stop it and you've got their attention if not their outright support. Whether or not that something is harmful to anyone at all is irrelevant if you can paint a dark enough picture of it. The internet is merely another "new threat" in a long list of other supposed threats that have been used over the years to dupe the stupid among our nations voters.

As someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground, I'm really quite angered by Bush's comment about someone having "their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet." What planet is he on? Or a better question might be what planet are the people on who he is obviously pandering to? Politicians repeat back what they think the public believes, not what they themselves believe. He's pandering to people who vote and who are not online. As a group, the elderly vote more than anyone else. They are also least likely to be online and most distrustful of new technologies and social change. So whats that add up to? Attacking the internet makes grandpa more likely to vote for you instead of Gore.

A new technology which has social impact will always demonized by those who don't understand it. The more quickly a new technology is adopted, the more vigorously it will be attacked.

The internet is simply the latest victim of this mentality. These attacks remind me very much of what happened when television became popular, or rock music. In both cases there was a "moral outcry" from people who didn't have a clue about either one. Television was figuratively demonized, and rock music was literally demonized. Television expanded our horizons, even if most people did watch the Gong show instead of Nova. Today very few people believe that television is inherently harmful to anyone, yet at one time many people believed just that.

The simple truth is that those guys in Colorado didn't kill anyone because of the internet. One was crazy, the other easily led. Psychologists have been working and trying for a very long time to understand the nature and causes of psychosis and other dangerous mental disorders. Last time I checked use of the internet wasn't among their leading theories.

Things like this just go to show you that quite a few people in this world are truly not very bright. I never used to believe that. I liked to think that most people were intelligent. I'd still like to believe that, but I can't. If the average IQ is 100, then close to 50% of the population has a double digit IQ. I don't think the IQ tests have been recalibrated anytime recently, so the average may be 110 for all I know. I do know that for every intelligent person out there, there is another person who is not too bright. It seems to me that our only real hope in the long run is genetic engineering. Imagine if the average IQ were 150 and pretty much no one had an IQ below 125. How much better the world would be without cretins dragging the rest of us down. I think it would be a very good world indeed.

Lee Reynolds

Re:Attack on the internet

[Chiasmus_]

You know, it's funny, but most of the people shooting each other over heroin and cocaine prohibition don't have computers.

I'm going to make a social observation. Normally, one prefaces social observations with, "I am not a racist; these are just the facts." However, what I'm going to say is probably somehow racist, so I will make no such disclaimer.

Anyone who's read the numbers know that upper-middle class kids with internet access do not commit the majority of crimes. The majority of crimes, actually, are committed by underclass minorities who do not have internet access.

Occasionally, a fairly well-to-do kid will snap after being picked on for long enough, and will pump bullets into everyone he sees. In 1991, two years before Doom, when the most violent game I had was probably either SPACEWAR.EXE or Pool of Radiance, I was actively plotting to drive my mom's SUV through my middle school playground at 80 MPH. You beat a kid up every day for long enough, and he's going to want to kill you. I don't think his cultural influences matter one bit.

Gun Safety

[Xenu]

That's how the Senator - who voted against secure handgun storage, and twice against child safety locks - positioned himself as our noble defender of children.

If you think Handgun Control Inc. has anything to do with gun safety, you have been smoking too much weed. Anyone who opposes their gun ban agenda is branded as being "against the children". The one program that has been proven to work, the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" program, has faced bitter opposition from the so-called gun safety advocates.

Re:jamie, jamie, jamie

[phantomlord]

I don't see how securing your guns at home, or putting safetly locks on them so that kids can't opperate them infrindge on your right to own/use them.

Back in 1991 (I was the ripe old age of 14), my mom's new husband raped her, grabbed a gun and told her he was coming to kill my dad, sister and me. Upon notifying he cops of his threat, they said they couldn't do anything until he actually came after us. My Dad and I loaded our shotguns, turned off the lights and waited for him to show up (which he never did since my mom filed charges and he was picked up on the rape count on the way here). Sure, we ended up not needing the gun in this case when our lives were threatened but what about people who've received anonymous death threats and the police refuse to help? Should they be forced to keep their gun locked away where they can't get to it? What happens when a (illegally obtained) gun-wielding thug breaks into your house at night to rob you? "hold on Mr. Robber, let me take my gunlock off before you shoot me." Even if the crook didn't have a gun, he could just as likely have a knife, baseball bat, pipe, whatever. Millions of crimes are PREVENTED each year because of the threat of a gun wielding defender.

I'm all for the 2nd amendment, and i think by law all head of households should be required to take a gun saftey course, and own a gun w/ammo.

Take this a step further. Teach kids in schools what guns actually do. We have fire prevention week in most schools and one day the fire department will come in and explain fire escape techniques. Why can't we have an officer come in and talk about gun safety one day a year? He doesn't need to teach kids how to clean a gun, aim effectively, etc... just teach them that guns kill and when you kill someone, they don't come back - EVER. One of the most effective things you can do is set a watermelon out in a field and shoot it to show what happens when a bullet hits someone's head.

But requiring that they be locked in a closet? That would only seem to be the common sense thing to do if you have guns and kids....my dad did it so i wouldn't play with something i didn't understand.

I grew up with guns in the house. My earliest memories of them were my dad telling me to NEVER touch them unless he was around and gave me permission. I was taught exactly what they did and how they worked. I learned to respect the awesome amount of damage they can do. I saw first-hand what a 12 gauge slug can do to a living body (deer). He gave me my first gun( a 22 rifle ) at age 7. I respected it as a tool of death and didn't screw with it like it was a toy. Why? I knew better. I was brought up in a culture that respected guns and educated me about them. Locking something away and pretending they don't exist(security by obscurity) NEVER really works... education(open review) is the best answer.