Mass Shooting - Dayton Ohio

[KingsGambit]

I think I understand where you're coming from on your hatred from sports now, though. My co-workers at my new job will go on and on about video games I've never heard of for hours and it grates on me. It made me directly realize that you must feel that way.

[Adrift]

I think I understand where you're coming from on your hatred from sports now, though. My co-workers at my new job will go on and on about video games I've never heard of for hours and it grates on me. It made me directly realize that you must feel that way.

I need a double-Amen for that. My boss has actually forced me to stick around in meetings to hear the guys all chat about the local college football team as my eyes glazed over.

[KingsGambit]

I need a double-Amen for that. My boss has actually forced me to stick around in meetings to hear the guys all chat about the local college football team as my eyes glazed over.

I think from a social perspective there can be positives as I think it can help transcend social boundaries. There's a young man I work with. I have nothing in common with him; we're in different generations, have different backgrounds, are different races. At first, I didn't talk much to him and saw him as somewhat standoffish, but when he discovered we have a shared interest in the NBA, we've begun talking quite a bit, and not even just about that. I think it's best for one on one conversation and not for forcing other people to listen to it though.

[seanD]

More and more I find it more difficult to watch football because of the violence inherent in it; it's more than just tackling; placing hits is a big part of the game. Baseball and basketball I have an easier time with; there's contact but not on such a violent level.

Actually it's the exact opposite. Rules about hitting in football are getting stricter and stricter to the point calls are getting highly vague and controversial. In fact, the declining rating numbers have been attributed to the whole flag thing, when I believe it's actually the ambiguous rules about hitting that are being implemented in the game.

[Teallaura]

You know what's strange, I can watch a guy's head explode like that famous scene in Scanners, and it doesn't effect me at all. I see someone giving blood on the news, and I start feeling faint and have to look away. It's very odd.

We had more guys with barely an inch of untattooed skin turn gray at the thought of giving a blood sample.

[Teallaura]

I wonder if there's some connection to the sorts of people that are attracted to those games in the first place. I've never been a gamer, and on the rare occasions I've played combat games, I've been shooting robots, spaceships, or monsters, not humans.

Way back in the Ice Age when I played the occasional game, I was eating little yellow dots and running from four really dumb ghosts...

[Teallaura]

I've always been conflicted about the "Golden Gloves" program --- getting kids out of gangs by having them get involved in boxing.... a noble effort, no doubt, but where does it lead?

I'd rather they wore themselves out punching while wearing big, padded gloves than have them work out their aggression with more efficient means like weapons.

The bigger worry is that they will do brain and ear damage in the process.


Maybe we could convince them to learn SCA style sword play - big rattan stick versus a ton of armor....

[Teallaura]

Film in general has a bit of a voyeuristic touch about it. Even if you weren't the stalker, some critics and directors suggest the audience is complicit because they allow the scene to unfold before them without doing anything to stop it (like turning the TV off).

An auteur Austrian director named Michael Haneke actually played with this theme in a film he made called Funny Games (which he later remade nearly scene for scene in America). The film is your average home invasion type horror, but unlike other horror films where we expect at least a few of the victims to get away, Haneke constantly robs the audience of any hope, and forces them to confront the fact that they are participants. He even breaks the fourth wall a number of times (including rewinding the film on the viewer in order to prevent the victims from getting the upper hand).

It's one of my least favorite films because it's so entirely hopeless, and the project is ineffectual because the type of audience he's attempting to confront and teach a lesson to typically wouldn't watch a sadistic mess like Funny Games, while the audience who would want to watch this type of film are usually sick enough that they get a kick out of how sadistic it is.

*emphasis mine

Learned a new word today!


And found two movies to add to my 'do not watch under any circumstances' list...

[Mountain Man]

I'd rather they wore themselves out punching while wearing big, padded gloves than have them work out their aggression with more efficient means like weapons.

Only they're developing a physique and fighting skills that will serve them well on the street.

[Teallaura]

Only they're developing a physique and fighting skills that will serve them well on the street.

Which is more of a problem if boxing is all they are being taught - and not the self discipline and control associated with sports.

[KingsGambit]

Actually it's the exact opposite. Rules about hitting in football are getting stricter and stricter to the point calls are getting highly vague and controversial. In fact, the declining rating numbers have been attributed to the whole flag thing, when I believe it's actually the ambiguous rules about hitting that are being implemented in the game.

Exact opposite in what way? As in baseball is more violent than football? I freely admit that football is less violent than it used to be; you can't get away with everything short of murder on defense anymore. That doesn't refute my central point.

[seanD]

Exact opposite in what way? As in baseball is more violent than football? I freely admit that football is less violent than it used to be; you can't get away with everything short of murder on defense anymore. That doesn't refute my central point.

Your "placing hits is a big part of the game" is wrong. Big hits are being penalized now. The ambiguous rules are there to try and curb "big hits."

[DesertBerean]

Has anybody heard if his parents are around? All I hear is his sister.

[Adrift]

I'm old, so it could have been 60 years or so ago. But, yeah, the trend has been that "you" are the stalker/killer.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention 1960s Peeping Tom. A British film about a serial killer who films his murders with a handheld camera as he's committing them. Directed by the amazingly talented Michael Powell who made films like The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and A Matter of Life and Death. It was way ahead of its' time and really hurt his career afterwards because the general public thought it was just obscene. Psycho and Peeping Tom coming out the same year, I could see that being an influence on your thoughts about when this "trend" started.

[Cow Poke]

Kids have been playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians" and "soldiers" FOREVER. "Bang! You're dead!" Is that really THAT much different from "paintball"?

Cosby even boasted about playing Cowboys and Colored People.