I have to admit that I am having a hard time with this
reading because I find it incredibly redundant! I’m not having any Ah-Ha!
moments and it is infuriating. This is basically going to be a disjointed
collection of a few of my thoughts. Enjoy.
I remember talking about prayer apps and prayers posted to
facebook and twitter and some of the ideas people had about it were that people
who posted things like that are pompous or showy etc. Which made me think more
about why and it made me realize posting like that gives a weird sense of
validity to the prayer. When Rachel Wagner talks about a response saying, “your
prayer has been sent”, it makes sense. The authenticity is dependent on that
passage through space.
Religion has gone from a top down format something new. Last
week I proposed that those in charge of creating church websites, forums, and
blogs now help a power that was reserved for people high in the Church. In
another way, with the influx of all these virtual forms, I think its also true
that because more people can connect it’s a shared space. In this shared space
there is still concrete rituals and values but the emphasis on the priest,
rabbi, etc. is dissolved.
The only yay part of the reading was chapter seven on the
correlation between video games and violence. I was talking with Dr. Little
about the idea of whether video games CAUSE violence because I was thinking of
writing about it for my paper. She told me about a study that found video games
weren’t the cause of violence but they enhance the aggression already found in
the study subjects. I is interesting to read this chapter and notice that
things that happen the fact that people
can be so greatly affected by what happens inside the magic circle they carry
it through to the real world.
I enjoyed the idea in that chapter too--which I think is interesting because it has been an issue for so long. As someone who loves video games and has done and seen a good deal of terrible things (I've also saved the UNIVERSE, I'll have you know), I have always been under the impression that people who think game violence is the reason their child is violent is a complete cop out.
ReplyDeleteIt is awesome that you talked to Betsi about this because she recently guest spoke to my research methods class about ideas for papers, using a study on aggression as an example. She said that a test was created in order to antagonize the people being studied. These people were divided and studied in two (I believe) different rooms--a very clean, feng shui way, and the other was a complete mess. As predicted, the subjects in the messy room showed many more signs of agitation and aggressive behavior than did those in the nice room.
That being said, I can understand why people would point to video games as the cause of violence, but I definitely agree that it has more to do with the mindset of the person. In the experiment I mentioned, both types of participants were made frustrated by the test, but it was the majority of those in the cluttered room that acted out.
I always used to be disgruntled by just hearing that video games contribute to real-life violent acts. The act of violence in itself predates video games and even humankind itself (T-Rex vs. T-Rex, RAWR!),
ReplyDeleteIt's understandable how a mentally/emotionally derailed person might use the outlet that video games provide and have a flood of amplified anxiety, adrenaline, and sleep deprivation that could make their already existent issues more apparent and known to others.Video games can provide a flood of emotions and feelings while playing (frustration, sadness, anxiety) dependent on either narrative within the game or actual game play structure.
If you're playing Pac-Man and Dig Dug and you're an hour in, and suddenly some newb starts to bug you and you consequently lose-you might just lose your *poop*. Alternatively, if you're introduced to a group of friends in the narrative of the first Kingdom Hearts game and are suddenly separated from them in a bizarre and unfair twist of fate, you might feel confused, anxious, and maybe a bit sad (depending how empathetic you are).
But beside what happens in the magic circle and what is experienced, it all stays there unless brought up in conversation. The only reason someone would act out something experienced in a video game in a serious way is because they're either a 6 year-old that got their hands on a GTA game or they were mentally/emotionally derailed in the first place.