Anonymous asked:

Why do so many people seem to struggle to separate fiction from reality? Whether it is violence and sex in movies, videogames, or an anime girl getting violated. Everyone keeps acting like it is happening to an actual person rather that some pixels on a screen.

You fapped to a lot of fucked up shit, maybe you know?

A few years ago, I was listening to the radio in the car, and the host was interviewing some absolute idiot psychologist about the topic of porn addiction. The thing she said that sticks in my head is—and I quote—"We know the human brain can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality." And what was the basis for this claim? Well, she brought up a situation in Australia, where a certain type of beetle had been observed trying to have sex with discarded beer bottles, because they confused them for other beetles. And if that's not enough to prove her point, I don't know what is.

I think my favourite example of this phenomenon is the topic of violence in video games. For years, moronic Republicans kept trying to brand games "murder simulators", on the basis that if an impressionable youth spent all their time shooting people in the face, they might get the idea to start putting this into practice in other situations, like at school, or in a mall, or know-knows-what-else. The poor kids might not be able to stop themselves. Anywhere they go, they see a head, they just have to shoot it. Oh, hello, Mrs. Johnson. That's a nice hat you're wearing. BANG!

So during this time, you had brave, courageous game journalists rubbing all thirty of their IQ points together to oppose the idea. They argued vehemently that video games do not, in fact, lead to violence, and they cited whatever studies or statistics or expert opinion they could use as evidence. But then, of course, years later, they all caught the social justice bug and promptly declared that video games were extremely sexist, and causing misogyny in players. You see, the real reason why women weren't into video games as much as men is that they were being blocked by this invisible force field of misogyny, which was so strong that if they ever dared penetrate it, they would be instantly traumatized, and have no choice but to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in Patreon donations. How dare games contain prostitutes, or strippers? Women with breasts, and figures less than the width of a refrigerator?

And so, naturally, people challenged the journalists on this, asking how, if video games didn't cause violence, did they somehow manage to cause sexism? And there wasn't a good answer to this, because it's a fairly watertight argument. So instead, journalists began to decide: Video games do cause violence! Look at these other statistics and expert opinions that clearly show that people are affected by the media they consume! Obviously they lead to violent tendencies. Never mind all that stuff we said before.

And then, Donald Trump, in a totally uncharacteristic move, said something stupid online. He made a Tweet which, in part, blamed violent video games for criminal behaviour. This put those journalists in a deeply unsettling position: Either stick with their clearly righteous opinions, or be seen to publicly agree on something with Donald Trump. And gee, wouldn't you know it? All of a sudden, video games don't cause violence anymore! Obviously they don't. Man, what an idiot he is, huh?

So I guess what it comes down to is, people are stupid. They make up whatever suits them, for whatever side of whatever issue they've decided to take. If they want to think of the children, or fight sexism, or any issue like that, they'll just make up an excuse for why any fictional depiction of the problem has to change or go away. Although, that said, that doesn't explain why I really want to fuck a can of Coors.