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
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
How dare you! You can’t throw facts at puritanical arguments; that’s illegal.
I mean…. It’s cringy as fuck, but harmless.
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
Well, they cause me harm, because I feel that the developers are trying a cheap trick to get me to play their games. And also, popping it open in some places is unacceptable.
Otherwise, there’s places for those types of games.
You hear that, sexists? It’s all in you. Can’t blame the games. 🙂
I would think repression is worse for people but it’s neat.
I dunno if it’s just cause I’m older, but sex scenes in games and movies seem so unnecessary, what are they even there for? I was playing cyberpunk and nudity isnt a big deal but why were those sexually explicit ads necessary to the story?
I don’t know if you could have chosen a worse example. The sexual ads in cyberpunk are part of the worldbuilding and statement about society and capitalism. They absolutely are necessary to the story.
Something basic like the Mass Effect series helps sell the idea that you really did form a fully fledged relationship over the course of the game. As for Cyberpunk, the setting is literally designed to be dripping with sexuality. It’s not necessary for the story itself, but if you removed all the sex ads the setting simply wouldn’t reach the same level of “megacorporations maximizing psychological exploitation techniques”.
The point is, sex and sexuality is rarely ever part of the narrative. Take it away and the story is still the same.
the fact that it made you uncomfortable, or at least thought that it was too much is the point. in the future the author/designers are making a comment on sexual exploitation for profit is commonplace and has been normalised
it’s there to make the setting similar to those familiar to us from universes like blade runner, altered carbon, (to a lesser degree) firefly. it’s the standard sci-fi canon that future corporatocratic society is filled with these things: the money buys whatever you like - the basest of desires are on the table no matter what
and it’s also there in all of those universes as a comment on exploitation and morality: just because you (or rather a select few) can buy it doesn’t make it right
it may not often be part of the narrative per se, but it’s an integral part of universe building: you can’t have narrative in a void, so you need to build a convincing universe to tell the story inside
Cringe isn’t the uncomfortable that I think they’re going for. I avoid any relationship content in all games.
the setting is an important part of the narrative too. the tasteless commodification of sex is absolutely relevant to the overall story the game is telling.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ve never seen gender or relationships be relevant to the story of any game I’ve played.
You have (cyberpunk 2077), you just failed to comprehend it.
V’s gender is entirely irrelevant in the fact that they are either male, female, or neither- because it doesn’t matter- And not one romance or relationship option has fuck all to do with the plot. It’s just side baggage and annoying cringe.
You can complete the game and not have ever had a single line of dialogue on relationships.
Therefore?
Irrelevant.
I don’t know that necessity is a relevant bar for inclusion in games. There’s certainly a discussion to be had, and maybe that’s the point.
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
now do a research on the effect of lolis (young sexualized girls) in japanese media and whether it has an effect. i wouldn’t be surprised if the outcomes were similar, yet lots of people still whine about it.
Pedo alert
perfect response to their argument.
what i meant that people don’t always care about the facts (of whether it actually does harm) as can be seen by your response.
You’re not wrong on it increasing pedophilia but nobody’s going to respect pandering to or defending pedos. As … should be obvious.
I mean, if it decreases rates of sexual abuse I’m all for it.
Theres an argument to be had about AI generated cheese pizza, and large pieces of plastic being child shaped. Ive always been of the opinion that its fucking gross, but if it was to save even one child, it would be worth it.
Yeah, its morally icky. But Ill take icky morals, over actual hurt children. The government where I am disagrees, and has made both of these things illegal. I understand why, I just cant help but wonder if having access to these things could stop actual children being hurt? Like if theres a market flooded with AI generated pictures, it might, at some point, drown the market for actual pictures. Theres always going to be pure evil in the world, but if we can get the numbers down. Surely it has to be worth a try?
I dunno’ about worth a try, because I don’t want anything to do with bringing that vile of shit in to this world, even fake stuff.
Though if the science tracks like it does with violence, it should in general lower actual offenses slightly. Though there are always fuckheads out there that will want the real thing.
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
It’s not the onus of a piece of fiction to be “good for society”.
Who said that was a requirement? It’s still a fact that it causes harm
It’s still a fact that it causes harm
You can’t declare something as a fact just because you want it to be one.
Who said that was a requirement?
It’s embedded into your argument. If you do not consider it a requirement, then your discussion is irrelevant.
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.
And can you explain how unrealistic body standards is not bad for society?
You’re replying on a thread specifically citing a paper on how videogame sexualization was found to bring no harm to society. Either provide evidence otherwise, or settle down with the unfounded repeated claims.
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.
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
“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.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.
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.
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!
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?
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…
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.
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
i would argue that religion itself plays a large part in developing these problematic attitudes from early childhood, especially towards sex
You mean constantly displaying sexuality as evil and interest in it as sinful leads to a unhealthy sexuality? Say it ain’t so
- set the rules in opposition to fundamental human (i.e., mammalian) instincts
1b. punishment is unimaginable suffering for eternity - everyone lives a guilt-ridden life full of shame
- leverage for control in every aspect of life (i.e., slave congregation)
- ???
- profit. a fucking lot
side effects of psychological damage, suicide, sociopathic tendencies, etc. don’t matter in the slightest to the people collecting your tithes and controlling your behavior-- so, rather the same as social media
tl;dr: people in a perpetual state of unfulfillable desire are easy to control
- set the rules in opposition to fundamental human (i.e., mammalian) instincts
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.
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.
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…
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.
the owner class wants it that way. if you can get people to throw reason, facts, evidence, and everything else out the window in order to genuinely believe that 2+2=5, then you can tell them anything you want, and they will kill people over the matter. see: literally all of maga
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.
not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality
religious fanatics
The line is a circle
Skimming their data tables (don’t have access to the journal outside of work), it feels like a really broad hodge pdge of semi-related studies (which the authors essentially admitted).
But it also kind of misses the point. The problem isn’t titties or dicks in video games. The problem is the culture around it and what it reinforces and it very much goes far beyond video games. Big jiggly titties? You are a mature game. Dick size slider so you can rock a magnum dong that needs a monster condom? You are progressive. What? Both of those are just more male gaze?
And all of that is normalized. You won’t see a significant change from the baseline because that IS the baseline.
You know what you almost never see (outside of those “problematic gay games that turn the kids into litter boxes”)? A sexy twink. We all made the same joke about Lies of Timothee Chalamet being one of the better souslikes of the past decade but it is also very telling that we mostly see our twinks in full stillsuits or twelve layers of Victorian clothing. Look, but have enough chastity belts that nobody needs to be worried about being able to touch. And the moment you have a woman who doesn’t have an hourglass figure? See: The Last Of Us 2.
Which is the issue. We have a cult of toxic misogyny that insists everything MUST be male gaze and the only acceptable nudity is big titty girls and guys who look like Ahnold. And any divergence from that is “ruining games” or “being woke” to the point that we don’t even GET those games outside of the rare case of a game nobody cared about becoming popular (I’ll always cite that Yasuke was a recurring character in Nioh long before people turned him into a culture war).
Its like saying that gas stoves cause no meaningful decrease in air quality but having every study take place in the home of a pack a day smoker.
A sexy twink.
Plenty in gachas, jrpgs, and such, imo.
We have a cult of toxic misogyny that insists everything MUST be male gaze and the only acceptable nudity is big titty girls and guys who look like Ahnold. And any divergence from that is “ruining games” or “being woke”
I think in heated discussions about “DEI slop” people mostly complain about women being desexualized rather than anyone else being sexualized. Do you have any examples of games where in addition to women being sexualized there were twinks or someone else being sexualized and people insisted that only women should be sexualized but not those other groups? Think of BG3 - it goes beyond regular “male gaze” but it’s still widely beloved because it’s more inclusive to wide range of appeals including regular ones.
Funny you bring up gachas because in most of them the cast is overwhelmingly women.
Genshin has plently of male characters (F to M is ~1:2 iirc), and there is a variety of niches covered: cute twink-like types like Venti, hot tall guys like Diluc, etc. Anyway, vote with your wallet. It’s only natural there are more girl characters if that’s what larger chunk of playerbase want.
Even in your example there is way more women than men
I personally wouldn’t call 1:2 “overwhelmingly”, but even so, if there was just a single male Venti in the whole game, it wouldn’t in any way make the claim “Plenty in gachas, jrpgs, and such” untrue, because these games combined have a lot of sexy twinks to pick from.
And any divergence from that is “ruining games” or “being woke” to the point that we don’t even GET those games outside of the rare case of a game nobody cared about becoming popular
I would argue the origin is sales. E.G. the publisher wants the sex appeal to sell, so that’s what they put in the game. Early ‘bro’ devs may be a part of this, but the directive from up top is the crux of it.
And that got so normalized, it became what gamers expect. And now they whine like toddlers when anyone tries to change it, but that just happens to be an existing problem conservative movements jumped on after the fact.
TL;DR the root cause is billionares.
Like aways.
No, that is not the cause of the problem they are talking about. They’re NOT talking about how those details are the norm. They are talking about the bro culture that many CHUDs have where deviation from those “acceptable” forms of sexualization are directly demonized. They’re not talking about general attraction, but the active vitriol some dumbasses have for non-hot characters.
You know what you almost never see (outside of those “problematic gay games that turn the kids into litter boxes”)? A sexy twink.
So you never played JRPGs ?
You mean the homeboys that are almost always wrapped in about forty buckles and, at best, exist as a viewpoint character for the harem of big titty anime girls?
But yeah. East Asian media tends to have fewer massively jacked protagonists. But it is still the fundamental male gaze. It is just that East Asian dudes tend to be less likely to spend dozens of hours a week working on glamour muscles.
Maybe we need more women working in game design. I don’t know the figures, but I’m guessing they are underrepresented. We probably need more diversity in games generally. It feels like this should be obvious to studios too - the more diverse your team, the more likely your game is to appeal to a diverse audience = a larger pool of customers.
That was always my experience. You can force people to do hundreds of hours of sensitivity training and explain to them why making the acronym for their solver “SLUR” is inappropriate. But if you just focus on increasing the diversity of your hiring pool and ACTUALLY hiring the best and the brightest, so much of that solves itself because now there is someone to explain that China and Japan may have a lot of shared culture and history but are very much not the same country or why that word is totally a slur and so forth.
I don’t know the actual metrics per studio (and most that DO report it are heavily skewed because they put the administrative staff in with the creative to juice their numbers). But, mostly, every time I think about “popular gamedev” it just reeks of startup culture. The idea that if you were part of a successful team then you should lead your own and that this game was made by one auteur rather than a giant team and so forth.
And that has the exact same problems we see at so many startups as a whole. The person who was real good at coding is HORRIBLE at management and has no understanding of what HR is even for and so forth. Which leads to the kind of shit that was deeply frowned upon in a conference room at 3 am becoming corporate culture and leading to “cube crawls” and the institutional abuse at companies like Blizzard or Ubisoft.
One thing that sticks with me that has only been vaguely alluded to by the more “woke” games media outlets. Ikumi Nakamura kind of became a sensation when she went full kawaii during a press conference for (I want to say) The Evil Within and all follow up interviews revealed she was a fricking genius with amazing ideas and really strong arguments for why certain features were there or not. Then she mysteriously disappeared. She alluded to it being the stress of game dev and “politics” but considering the next time we saw her (at a completely new studio) she was still doing horror but ALSO had a kid…
explain to them why making the acronym for their solver “SLUR” is inappropriate
I’m gonna need some context please
Maybe we need more women working in game design.
eardrums immediately shattered by screams of Gamergate reactionary media
If you have a way to make (qualified) women study software engineering and other game dev related fields, please do share. I would love that.
But you can’t fix lack of women and generally diverse people skilled in game dev during hiring. We have seen the results of trying multiple times.
Wow. Every dog in the tri-state area suddenly started barking. I wonder why…
But yeah. That is some bullshit that comes up every time anyone tries to address the diversity issues. “Well, if there were more intelligent black people, maybe we would hire a black or two” level comments.
In my experience, most first year undergraduate courses for STEM related degrees more or less match the demographics of the university itself. Depending on how rigorous the program that can change drastically as the weeding out courses happen, but it generally is “close enough” by the time they are in the 400s and going to special guest lectures by us industry a-holes.
The problem is what comes after. There is a reason there are Black Engineering and Women in Engineering mailing lists. Because so many companies (and graduate programs) basically want a “diversity hire” and nothing else. So you might have a class that graduates with 40% women entering a workforce that will hire 5%, at best. And… the good groups talk about this and encourage people to have a plan B. Whereas men (at least up until recently) know that if they just keep trying they’ll get hired eventually because 95% of those jobs are for them.
And grad school (less an issue for game dev) has the added problem where so many advisers are complete creeps with tenure. But that is a different mess.
No. Whatever the field, if you actually work towards having a diverse hiring pool and actually hire on merit, you tend to have an employee demographic within a stones throw of the regional breakdown. Because, yes, socioeconomic and institutionalized racism do give certain ethnic groups a serious disadvantage. But when you are hiring for roles with undergrad or graduate degrees? The best of the best are the ones who actually DO tend to find a way to bootstrap themselves up (or have parents who did). And… long term that goes a long way towards fixing things. It isn’t the complete solution but it REALLY helps.
A very good friend of mine who I worked with heavily on doing exactly that at our old company loved to joke about it as “reverse-gentrification of the work force”. The idea that if you get a diverse foothold into a “neighborhood”, it spreads. Those pesky women are more likely to know other pesky women who are a great fit for a role. And the kids of the Walker family are suddenly growing up in Silicon Valley and going to private schools rather than fighting for scraps at PS 118.
rofl that is NOT a dogwhistle, you actual dipshit… Software engineering, to this day, is infact, in actual living reality, underrepresentative of women and minorities. As a matter of fact.
You can bitch about reality not matching your expectations, but many of us work in the fucking industry and you’re working off a mountain of shitty assumptions.
Makes me think why those big tech corporations are suddenly supportive of that regime in DC.
In my experience, most first year undergraduate courses for STEM related degrees more or less match the demographics of the university itself.
I don’t know anything about other STEM fields or other countries, but where I live, most sw engineering courses don’t have above 5%. (And I guess even fewer men in the medicine field. Some fields just seem to attract specific genders, idk why.)
But yeah, dismiss reality I have seen with my own eyes as “The dog whistles! The dog whistles!” And then act surprised when no one outside your echo chamber takes you seriously.
You speaking of the culture around is really important. That culture is part of the coomer and gooner problem which seems innocent and harmless/inoffensive to others but it is much more insidious. It essentially creates less of an actual reason to interact and a false sense of body expectations.
Essentially the otaku/neet problem japan is facing. People don’t know how to interact with the opposite gender and when they do, they do so with their sexual interest as the prominent reason. Most people innately reject this forwardness based on appearances and the rejected will not understand how it is their fault they got rejected. There is little to no decorum or respect.
It’s essentially a self feeding, lust-driven antisocial cycle that creates angry and dejected incels. It feeds into the other frustrations and creates a very spiteful and resentful person. I personally believe this is intentional after observing 4chan trends, as it creates easy people to manipulate. (Fappening grand invitation on Fox news, then the pepe dogwhistle to embolden those who are racist, while outraging those miscontrued - which eventually just is embraced)
Extreme emotions create easy to predict reactions, just point them at the person you want them to blame.
It’s not innately videos games or media, but creating an entire culture that completely surrounds them does. Lust is one of those material prisons that is naturally inclined as it gives you good feelings. The internet overall has allowed kids to get endulged into this culture without any real risk or entry cost, long before they are of adequate age to understand the intimacy of reality.
So
Lust is one of those material prisons that is naturally inclined as it gives you good feelings.
This reads to me like a very heavily christian-biased thing. The christian bible says the original devil in the world took the shape of a snake (representing lust) that led eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and then they were kicked out of paradise.
What you’re forgetting is that lust is a part of the natural world that was already there before god existed. The christian bible says sth along the lines of “the world was created 6000 years ago” and what it really means is that humanity or the human spirit was created 6000 years ago with the rise of the first civilizations and empires.
But the natural world did already exist way before that (nature is billions of years old), and lust was a natural and essential part of that. It is not so much that lust is a “mistake of god’s creation” and kinda “sneaked in” or something, rather, god declared lust - which was already present - a sin, and by doing so, they tipped the natural balance of things. Maybe that is a thing to consider. It is not so much that lust is an invader and offender in the world, rather it is the human spirit that tipped the balance and therefore caused a millenia-old war against the serpent. And that has something to do with what you’re saying, even though you’re packing the arguments into very modern language.
I forget nothing, it is natural and that is why I am arguing against overindulgences and not the basic principle. Then again you can only see materiality in the context of god because your inner self is so small.
I am saying that overindulgence and fixation in lust becomes a prison. Why?
Look at marketing and media, it becomes a distraction for people and their vested interest. Intentionally meant only to distract and detract, afterwards one can lead you anywhere. Even to stagnate when look at waves at all current fascist developments but if you are so well versed then you know the Christian narrative is deeply against it. We literally get the fascist pig insult from the demon Legion, a commentary on the brainwashing the Legionnaires/Rome as a state pushed unto their citizens via fear and deprivation.
Only difference is now the person willingly goes to it because they wanna see some fat titties online with no effort, so when they try and fail to get real fat titties - they become angered at the disullusionment and blame the person rather than their own ineptitude. Division is good for those in power.
Lust is only called an invader or offender in your words. I call the culture that constantly pushes this into media and marketing as detrimental. Along with how easy it becomes for kids who are alone, with 2 working parents who can hardly raise a kid, they will fall into sheol and toss away years because it is immediately rewarding in their brains.
Let me make the example clear. Sugar is good for you, it is the most easily bio-available form of food for your cell. Protein needs energy to digest and fat is not soluble alone nor immediately usable. So it is a great thing, it even feeds your gut biome!
Now how can it bdcome bad? Over indulgence. Sugar causes a dopamine hit, kids bored at home regularly snack and eat a lot. If not some countries (you know the one) add sugar to their breads, peanut butter, and almost anything else. Why? Addictive and makes it taste better, it’s why medicines go down easier with a spoon of sugar or however the saying goes. Well, this bombardment of sugar overfloods your dopamine receptors, raising the levels of dopamine they need to actually trigger joyous feelings.
It is inherently harder to feel happy, not a good thing. Even though sugar is a good thing.
Sex is fine, lust is fine, it is the overindulgence and ineptitude that is wrong with incel culture. They are gooners who blame others and take no responsibility nor do in moderation. They feel only rage.
Explaining this made me realize it also feeds into that cycle, as it is a big factor. I would jork my shit until I was shooting dust and aching, but kept going. I was massively overweight and had diabetes, both kinds. I was killing my pancreas and building a resistance to insulin. Why does it feed into it? If you are unhappy, jorking it gives you a fleeting and immediate controlled dose of happiness when you are a depressed sack of shit like I was.
I just want to make it abundantly clear I am not with this person.
Titillation is good. Masturbation is good. Sex is good (when between consenting parties).
The issue is not that there are tits and hints of dicks in games. The issue is that there can only be the kind that caters to a very specific male gaze and anything else unleashes a holy war.
Lust is one of those material prisons
Sweet fucking Eothas
I never disagree with that, it should exist and should be allowed. However, it flows abundantly and becomes the primary reason for a lot of gamers.
At least in the past it took some effort to mod as they followed some form of decorum. Allow the nudity and it changes no difference.
Yes, lust is a material prison to gooners. It literally is how we get the incel problem who feel they are mandated sex for being male yet understand little about actual social situation.
Not because of games, but because they are facilitated to get that release and enjoyment constantly with little to no trouble. Specially vulnerable are the young who suffer from a lack of understading for the higher value in self control and moderation.
Then again, you focus on video games and not the culture spoken of. Get defensive if you want, I can at least acknowledge my own pitfalls and spread the awareness I was made of aware of through my own tribulations with this. What I see develop online further and grosses me out as it was a culture I participated in and now I see the harm.
Specially vulnerable are the young who suffer from a lack of understading for the higher value in self control and moderation.
you could also easily turn this the other way around and say
specially vulnerable are the young who suffer because their sexual needs are kept away from them, through strict oversight from parents
who decides what is good and what is not? the people should decide it themselves.
Incels have as much to do with sexual desire as rape does. Because that is inherently what the incel mindset is. It is that others (almost always women, sorry, “females”) don’t deserve any agency and must exist solely to service people with the abrahamic god given right to sex. It isn’t about getting your rocks off. It is about asserting power and dominance over someone by raping them.
Horny people jack off. They go to bars to hook up. Hell, they even go to rub and tug joints. Incels get angry that (again, almost always) women aren’t servicing them and that they are forced to “goon”. And there is one endstate when it comes to deciding that someone needs to have sex with you regardless of their consent.
Exactly, and the material prison I speak of with lust is this mental state with the incels. Surround someone with nothing but sex that is purposely meant to sell you something and dxploit your basic animal desires, you create a situation in which you make it easy for incels to form.
Incels forming in large clusters supports and pupports these bad habits of each other, then enabling the behavior further. In turn also normalizing and trivializing it as a subject matter.
You for some reason are making this about you and other normal people who have the cognicent ability to be rational. The issue isn’t you nor is it video games or any one thing specifically. It is the bombardment that exists in marketing which in turn leads to the media as well being overblown with it to sell. My argument essentially is the same as sugar that the rest of the world would criticize America with.
You put sugar in everything. It is causing a dopamine constant release, in turn raising the bar for it to actually make you happy. Hence, most people with sugar overload have a harder time finding joy. Most people don’t reslly understand the biochemical response to things we ingest, and much of it is the same with porn.
If an incel ever actually had sex with a woman he didn’t pay, he would realize how starkly different reality is. That porn is edited and made perfect with angles that cant really be matched and is a completely different experience. They don’t enjoy sex or jerking off as much as they enjoy the momentary disullusionment with their reality.
Video games just have a bigger influence with porn fixation due to it allowing direct 3D models and translation into SFM or blender animations. Along with it being fully fictional and having the same effect as hentai, being fully digital allows full control about what is and isnt. Losing the flaws of reality that make it beautiful. There is a reason hentai is more popular with kids, just how games are.
Sex is great but this glorification and marketive exploitation is not that. I don’t know why you felt the need to involve any gods in the dialogue of human pitfalls due to corporate gain and political actualization. It’s almost as if the same group who I blame for facilitating, and using, the issue to their benefit are the same followers of the name you invoked. I wonder(the answer is yes) if they have made outcries and dogwhistles that specifically speak to these folks.
Anyways if you do not like the god that is, make a god that isnt.
Look at gacha games. There’s an entire industry revolving around selling anime girls, and when you realize that’s what the business model is, it’s not surprising how toxic their fanbases have become. I’ve suspected that some of these devs are even deliberately trying to filter their audience to the most desperate gooners.
Oh absolutely, I am a huge gooner. Had 12tb in an organized server with sections and whatnot. /r/playitfortheplot is legit just a bunch of gooners who give no shits but for sex and often miss the point of games.
A dude literally called Nier Automata a gooner game. Like bro it is one of the deepest games about what it means to be human. Sacrifice and duty. Yet the dude only saw tits and cared not at all for the narrative or reason. Mindless ghouls.
It’s almost like there’s another reason for censorship
