adderaline

I’m not understanding a word you are saying

that makes two of us, i guess? i don’t know what it is you’re trying to say i was saying. to be more clear, i’ve been seeing a lot of talk in this thread arguing against the “video games cause violence” claim, as if that was what the lawsuit was about. i don’t think the contents of the article present the families’ lawsuit as primarily concerning that particular claim. i then attempted to describe what i believe their actual claim to be.

i’ve emphasized the words i think are relevant here:

These new lawsuits, one filed in California and the other in Texas, turn attention to the marketing and sale of the rifle used by the shooter. The California suit claims that 2021’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare featured the weapon, a Daniel Defense M4 V7, on a splash screen, and that playing the game led the teenager to research and then later purchase the gun hours after his 18th birthday.

that Call of Duty’s simulation of recognizable guns makes Activision “the most prolific and effective marketer of assault weapons in the United States.”

the fact that Activision and Meta are framing this as an extension of the “video games cause violence” thing is certainly what they’ve decided to do, but it seems to be talking past what the complaint and lawsuit are about, which is the marketing of a Daniel Defense M4 V7 in 2021’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

the reason i emphasized the gun model is that that seems, to me, to be the core feature of the case the families are trying to make. not that video games cause violence, but that Activision bears responsibility for the actions of the shooter because the shooter played their game, then proceeded to kill people with the specific model of gun that was being advertised in that game. the fact that the article takes the time to reference another case where the specific naming of a gun model lead to a sizable settlement, and says this

The notion that a game maker might be held liable for irresponsibly marketing a weapon, however, seems to be a new angle.

seems to support my reading. that isn’t the same thing as saying video games make you violent, which is the claim a bunch of people in this thread seem to be shadowboxing.

i dunno, maybe there’s some ambiguity there? are you arguing that the lawsuit is about rehashing the video games make you violent claim, or what? i genuinely don’t know what you’re trying to communicate to me. i hope this clarified my stance.

some of y’all definitely aren’t reading the article. this isn’t a “video games cause violence” thing. they are suing Activision and the gun manufacturer Daniel Defense for marketing a specific model of gun in Call of Duty, and maybe? that the Uvalde shooter used that same model of gun in the shooting. i dunno if there’s merit to the argument, but like, categorically, this isn’t the “video games cause violence” argument y’all seem to think it is. its about a gun manufacturer advertising their product in a video game.

its from the DMX track “X gon’ give it to ya”. it came out in 2002.

that isn’t what the linked article says lol.

The thing is averages don’t mean shit when you’re talking about individual people, because individual experiences always deviate from the average, especially if you talk about average wealth where a few millionaires and billionaires skew the data for a lot of poor people.

i’m sorry, but “averages don’t mean shit when you’re talking about individual people” is such a cop out. statistical measures are literally THE MOST reliable way of determining truth that we have, and its basically the only way to prove something is real with high certainty. do you seriously think that professional sociologists don’t take outliers into account when talking about average wealth? that’s like, literally grade school statistics, the kind of analysis being done for measures of social well-being are built to account for confounding variables, and a discrepancy still exists when you control for pretty much every other factor.

But sure, let’s follow your logic. Black people on average are poorer and have worse jobs, so we need to discriminate in their favour. Well, statistically there is also a lot of evidence that black people on average commit more crimes than white people. So should I be scared of a black person I cross on the street? Following your logic, yes. Following mine, no.

i’m not following a “logic”, i’m presenting what the research has shown to be factual, or at least highly likely. we do know that black people on average commit more crimes. if you want to use that as an excuse to discriminate against black people, you can do that, but an evidence based look into why crime happens and what factors go into why somebody commits crimes does not support that position. because yes, criminologists and sociologists have actually examined the “why” of the statistical connection between criminal behavior and blackness, and didn’t just stop at “oh, black people are statistically over-represented in prison populations, that’s weird.”

we know that poverty is like, THE determining factor in criminality. people who are in desperate straits are far more likely to commit crimes, black or not. because black people are more likely than white people to be in poverty, they are also statistically more likely to commit crime. of course, being convicted of a crime then makes it harder to get work, and puts significant financial burden on the family of the incarcerated, driving the incarcerated person and their loved ones further into poverty, and increasing their likelihood to commit crime in the future as their circumstances worsen. that doesn’t account for everything, though. we also know that black people are significantly more likely to be convicted and sentenced when they do interact with the justice system, and white people can often avoid jail time that is inevitable for comparable crimes committed by a black person.

in fact, the systemic factors which drive the impoverishment of black people are the largely the same factors which drive criminal behavior in black people, and which punish black people more harshly if they do end up committing crimes. systemic racism. poverty. urban decay. the prison industrial complex. discriminatory laws. there is metric shit-tons of literature out there for you to read on this stuff, as you obviously have not done, considering that you wrote “black people are poorer than white people” and “black people commit more crimes than white people” right next to each other, and failed to even consider how those two statements might be related before defaulting to a 50 year old racist talking point.

i get that you’ve bought into the whole “actually its the LEFT who are the racist ones” talking point, and maybe even the “christian white men are the most oppressed group in this country” talking point, but there are thousands of empirical studies showing that people of color, and especially black people, are faced with specific challenges when it comes to acquiring a decent quality of life, and that these challenges cannot be explained away as anything other than an ongoing social process by which black people are deprived of resources by virtue of their identity.

Ah yes, selective discrimination based on race and gender is anti-racist and anti-sexist. So glad we advanced as a society enough for this to make sense in some people’s heads…

i mean, you seem to have already made up your mind on this. there is a significant body of evidence backing up the systemic disadvantages faced by people who aren’t straight white men. the fact that you are unwilling or unable to seek out that data on your own, and instead insist that any measures to counter observable race and sex based discrimination are themselves race and sex based discrimination tells me all i need to know. what would you propose we do about the observable discrepancies in hiring? nothing? if its nothing, you suck.

We live in a time where there are black people that experienced extreme wealth in their lives and white people that know nothing other than extreme poverty (this one has always existed), and to take nothing of that into consideration other than just the skin color is idiotic.

statistically, white people are on average richer than nonwhite people, and men are on average richer than women. the fact that white people can be poor and black people can be rich means exactly fuckall on the scale of a population. and who says nothing of that is taken into consideration? you’re making that claim based on… what? intuition? prior biases? i’m sorry, but the idea that a corporation is going to spend money on hiring somebody just because they’re a person of color, a woman, or both is just mind blowingly ill informed. that has never been how race-based hiring works.

But hey, thank you for admitting that it isn’t actually about improving productivity and output at companies, but just to tick percentage boxes so that your virtue signaling intake is filled for the day.

there is quite a bit of research to suggest that diverse hiring practices positively impact productivity, but even if it didn’t, we should still make policy decisions to reduce the impact of systemic discrimination, because that improves the lives of people who are systemically disadvantaged. but whatever, yeah, people only make these kinds of policy decisions to signal virtue, its not like there are any problems with how our society is organized, or people who need help.

to be clear, race-based hiring is a concession constructed by the ruling class. it is an acknowledgement that systemic discrimination exists without a commitment to guarantee the well being of all people. all people should have the opportunity to thrive, and i would advocate for much more far reaching policy for all kinds of disadvantaged groups. but there are specific systemic forces discriminating against minorities that ought to be addressed, and they will not go away unless we take steps to make them go away.

its a policy designed to combat centuries of racism and sexism which has put people at a measurable disadvantage. its actively anti-racist and anti-sexist, but i imagine you’re just looking to be outraged. the reality is that a lot of companies will basically just hire white men for most roles unless they have to do otherwise. this is one way of trying to fix that observable injustice.