This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637
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You mean constantly displaying sexuality as evil and interest in it as sinful leads to a unhealthy sexuality? Say it ain’t so
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Yeah. It’s always been perplexing me that people who seem mentally okay in other ways can seem to think fiction and reality are basically the same thing.
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Glad to see this opinion organically. I have been feeling like its moving more and more toward censure. I always thought japan pretty much had it right and then they took a step back. If its not real, its not real. I honestly don’t care about any fictional stuff be it writing or painting.
if someone is not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality, then the problem is much deeper than pearl-clutching religious fanatics insist on believing, and will NOT be solved by abolishing all the “bad” fiction
We’ve been trying to make this exact argument to the exact same group of people since the earliest days of D&D and I’m sure someone was having the same conversation about some other thing before that. 😠
They used to think novels were bad for women in the 18th and 19th centuries bc they worried they were too dumb to separate fact from fantasy
https://archive.nytimes.com/op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/when-novels-were-bad-for-you/
Don’t worry, maga will get us back there soon enough…
not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality
religious fanatics
The line is a circle
i think if less tolerance for religion became more commonplace, it might be better for mental health in general honestly.
I think the issue is not “religion” because that’s hard to define. What do you count as a religion and what not? It’s kinda not clearly defined. I.e., you can “believe” in science, yet does the belief make it a religion?
I think what’s more the issue is the fact that people cling to nonsensical statements and are unwilling to look at things the way they are. I.e. a recurring theme of religion is that it absolves people from thinking, i.e. from making their own thoughts and relating those to reality. That is the thing that must be dealt with.
In other words, people must be taught to think and analyze the world around (and inside of) them. That is what leads to wellbeing and happyness.
religion is an issue. and its not difficult to define.
i agree with your second paragraph. its why i think its time to start being less hospitable to any and all religion.
the less religion the world has, the better that people can be educated as you’ve said.
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Funny, but this just poses further questions. I.e. is it the absence of religion that causes wellbeing, or is it wellbeing that causes the absence of religion?
I was told the story by a stranger once: The reason why people cling to religion is because they are unable to live their own life, i.e. they struggle and can’t live in the moment, because it would be too depressing, so they cling to religion to seek an escape. Religion absolves them from thinking and therefore from recognizing the world around them, and so it’s an escape. So, in this view, bad times cause religion, but not the other way around. At least it’s one possible explanation. I don’t know whether it’s true.
I’m just saying, don’t confuse correlation with causality. Correlation does not imply causality in general. (though in this case it probably does)
As someone who grew up in the brainwashing, I can fucking guarantee you religion causes suffering and shame and a disconnect from the human that we all are. It is completely causational.
No, that doesn’t mean it has a 100% rate of suffering, but it’s damn close.
Isn’t this just the equivalent of the “shooter game discussion” that we had a few years ago?
I.e., some people argued that playing shooter games would make the people more inclined towards gun violence and we’d see more shootings IRL. but that didn’t happen, as we know a few years later.
it’s quite straightforward then to assume that sexualized video games don’t really lead to more sexualization IRL, i guess.
The violence discussion comes and goes every couple years. It has since the 80s at least. It’s never had any ground in reality, it’s just fear of whatever media they don’t understand.
RFK Jr., noted brainworm host and multi talented repeater and innovator of quackery, said that shit within the last 24 hours lol
I saw, but this is the admin to bring back up such heinous bullshit.
Oh I was offering that as supporting evidence for your point lol. There’s roughly nothing (besides reason and compassion) these folks can shit out of their mouths that will surprise me anymore.
Fair enough and agreed. I don’t have much else to talk about with this, so have a great day, captain!
As for RFK, I hope he has has a horrible terrible fucking day, the cretin.
How dare you! You can’t throw facts at puritanical arguments; that’s illegal.
Something, something, can’t prove a negative… While valuable research, it doesn’t prove no harm is done. It can only provide evidrnce that the harm they tested for didn’t appear to happen. That is a kind of important difference.
no its the right wing influencers backed by russia doing this. they are responsible for getting men into Right wing politics, and by extension hating women is one of thier goals too.
right wing influencers are exploiting mistakes that the left did, they are filling in the role of fighters for male rights for example
I mean…. It’s cringy as fuck, but harmless.
As a dude, I exclusively use female characters to get gifts in multi-player games
It’s almost like sex is a natural part of human existence and it being taboo is the bit that really fucks people up.
I read the following neat metaphor once: People are like sponges, and if you take away the juice from their lifes, they become thirsty and suck even more.
One hell of a comment but true
Okay but what games are considered sexualised and how many people are actually playing them?
Cyberpunk certainly qualifies both. It’s got explicit sex, and it’s got a large player base. But while uncouth and perverse things happen, you can’t really be party to them. You tend to show up after. Maybe your choices might lead to some, but you’re not there for it. The only sex involving the player is generally wholesome. Except, you know, the ghost of Johnny Silverhand riding shotgun and not necessarily consenting to it (especially when you hook up with the cop).
Then there’s Skyrim. Bigger player base but no sex outside of mods. And there are plenty of mods, but if you look at the player count among people using those mods… it’s nowhere near the player count of Skyrim as a whole, or Cyberpunk, or even a lot of the other games. And from there it drops off sharply.
So… what sexualised video games?
I’d also say the way sex is portrayed throughout Cyberpunk 2077 is important to the setting. Sex is everywhere, but none of it is particularly fulfilling. That the PC can find a healthy sexual relationship at all almost seems like a one in a million chance in Night City. Capitalism pushes forms of sexuality that can be monetized. Capitalism can get you laid, but it can’t get you happiness.
(I totally get the criticisms that the game is a mediocre experience. It is, but it’s not without value, either.)
Sexualisation is not the same as sexual content. Widowmaker in Overwatch is a sexualised character, because she is portrayed as sexually attractive, seductive and generally in such a way as to have her viewed as a sexual being. There are other characters who are not sexualised.
It’s almost like there’s another reason for censorship
I mean sexualized movies with skimpy ladies and jacked dudes, and smut books are not harmful broadly speaking, so I don’t really see why video games would be different.
They are causing harm, but not by being sexual. By posing unrealistic standards
It really depends on the character, IMO. Like Superman or Batman or Black Widow better be at least fit as hell, because their characters are fit as hell and are supposed to be much more capable than the average person.
Not that they should be super unrealistic, either. Like Christian Bale as Batman was totally fine. He doesn’t have to be a meathead or gymnast, and neither should Black Widow. Though, with that said, it would be cool for Hollywood to hire more actually fit women than every woman being a pretty twig… Black Widow and Batman probably should have gymnast level builds if they’re to truly be realistic for the physical feats they pull off.
Though every other “normal” character? Yea, hire some chubby and “ugly” people too for crying out loud. Some shows do well with casting, but damn.
yes, sadly
I’m not sure why this is being downvoted because setting unrealistic body standards is absolutely terrible for society
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Who said that was a requirement? It’s still a fact that it causes harm
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Me arguing something can be harmful for society doesn’t mean I’m arguing it has to be abolished in its entirety. I’m not sure why you think everything has to be black and white since obviously there’s room for artistic use- remember you are the only one who thought that, or perhaps it just wasn’t obvious for you. And can you explain how unrealistic body standards is not bad for society? It isn’t far fetched seeing young people compare to beauty standards they are bombarded with. It doesn’t only happen in video games but in tons of visual media.
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I propose it’s not the fiction that’s posing unrealistic standards, but the people who can’t tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction, is by definition, unrealistic.
The issue is the many people who complain when a game or other media have women that look like actual women. Calling them men because they don’t look like the perfectly sexualized women in media that they’re used to.
Yes they can’t tell the difference, but they’re still doing real harm.
Banning sexualization is not the solution, but the prevalence of it in media to the point it is expected and people get angry when it’s gone is a problem as well.
Yeah, I really think it’s a type of media illiteracy, and it’s much larger than just sexualization.
Like, I grew up in the church, and remember when they adopted the Left Behind novels into church canon as prophecy. It’s the same kind of not being able to tell fact from fiction, and my parent’s church encouraged it because they were a bunch of con artists.
Yea that’s all churches. Even the good ones with preachers/etc that try to help. They could have the community without the brainwashing, but then there wouldn’t be devout fools opening their wallets every week!
Fiction can easily be realistic- You’re thinking of fantasy which is unrealistic. Fiction means it’s not a true story, not that it can’t be realistic
If you swap the words “fiction” and “fantasy” in your post, it makes the same amount of sense.
Have you ever read historical fiction? Stories like jane eyre are not real but they’re sensible. A story can be fiction and realistic. You can write a short story based on stuff you’ve researched and seen and it’s still fiction.
“can be” ⇏ “has to be”
And it’s not fiction that sets high standards, but the people watching it, that are doing so.
Now you may say that the people are setting those standards only because they are watching said stuff.
But that is just rephrasing, “the people watching fiction are incapable of having their own imagination”.Back in school, I had a classmate that had a much greater height than others, due to steroid usage.
Now if you say that his parents did that because they watched “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”, I’ll say it was not released yet and I have no reason to believe that they bought comic strips from another country and went ahead and made a ‘gag’ piece a basis for their standards.Nah, fiction needs unrealistic elements. You can have realism in fiction, but fiction is defined by its deviance from fact. If a movie were completely realistic, itd be a documentary.
It is possible to have a realistic story in fiction. For example, Mad Men is a tv series that’s pretty grounded in history but the characters and everything that happens to them are the product of the writers and their research. It’s not a documentary, it’s fiction, but quite realistic.
I envision ‘realistic’ as a spectrum. If it is 100% realistic, it’s a documentary, if it’s 100% unrealistic, it’s probably a fantasy movie or something, and most works of fiction fall somewhere between.
characters and everything that happens to them are the product of the writers and their research
Like, you understand this is my point, right? The plot is not real, and that’s what makes it fictional?
What you’re saying is sound and I agree the plot not being real is fiction; the only problem is you said fiction required unrealistic elements and most people see “unrealistic” as basically fantasy
This can’t be your honest take…
What’s wrong with it?
Well, it’s inaccurate. Fiction does not require unrealistic elements. There’s just scads of fiction out there—across multiple genres—that’s set in a real time and place, and doesn’t involve anything fantastical.
You said sexualised movies, I thought you meant movies in which human actors are jacked, sometimes to an unhealthy extent. That’s also the problem with a lot of actresses and also influencers, who are after plastic surgeries, in the perfect light, with a lot of makeup on, posing unrealistic standards for impressionable kids
Somebody else said that, not me. But regardless, it’s still a problem with people not being able to recognize fact from fiction. Makeup is not the problem, the problem are people who expect you to to look like that without makeup. Boob jobs are not the problem, the problem are people who think there’s something wrong with you if you’ve not had one.
If they replaced everything with mocap tomorrow so actors didn’t have to look the part any more, the problem would still be that people look at Marvel and think it’s an accurate depiction of reality.
Then the problem surely is media literacy?
Like I said in another comment
Yeah, I really think it’s a type of media illiteracy, and it’s much larger than just sexualization.
I’d say a touch of bigotry, too. Some people genuinely do not like ugly people to the point of it being a freaking mental disorder…
I would think repression is worse for people but it’s neat.
Much as I’d predict support for that conclusion, I feel like there’s room to doubt the survey process used - as has often been the case for studies on gamer behavior.
This is meta-analysis.
Sure, it’s not a high quality study. But there is only so much effort countering this baseless fear mongering deserves. This study may already be more effort than it deserves.
The fear mongering doesn’t end. Violent movies cause violent behavior. No they don’t. Violent games cause violent behavior. No they don’t, actually research show gamers are less aggressive. Now it’s sexualized games that cause harm. And every time, they don’t even really care about the research anyway.
I was beating my meat to Natalya’s (Goldeneye 64) cone-shaped tits at age 10. It may have been arguably better for me than jerking off to droves of actual tits.
…Not that I wasn’t doing that also…
She had nothing on Xenia’s polygonal proportions
The Box Bra, by Croft.
the original cybertruck
Every now and again you’ll see a Tomb Raider cosplayer who has stuffed a box up her shirt and it’ll never not be funny.
You hear that, sexists? It’s all in you. Can’t blame the games. 🙂
