^ ban video games. and everything that has an effect on brain chemistry.... so ban everything
This is a total strawman, of course media has an effect on society.

Unfortunately thats a totally separate question from "did batman cause this spree killing."

And unfortunately again, the answer to that question is totally moot imo. The idea of policing ideas to influence a society is much more evil than this kids actions.

Violent media increases aggression

The fact that you're accusing me of strawmanning while going on as if anyone here is suggesting policing ideas is a bit rich to say the least

Doesn't this sort of make his point? The Joker was completely glorified in that Batman movie. We as a culture latched onto and were frankly kind of obsessed with the gruesome, twisted chaos the character inflicted. The killer-- a psychopathic villain-- was one of the most popular costumes of its time. Why don't we see any Hunger Games-inspired killings? Because the focus of that movie isn't the sick, fascinating mind of the villain.

So then what is your point? Bring the intellectual honesty, please.

e: sorry this is really passive-aggressive and dickish. What I mean is just that any argument that includes "the movies inspired him this way/games made him familiar with AR15s/whatever" sort of inevitably comes back to controlling those things to prevent stuff like this. Those things are ideas, and are literally the most important thing to protect imo.

Perhaps, but I'm not sure it's clear that cultural coarsening of this sort is actually happening. It could be that entertainments are more visible (and certainly more technically capable) in our times. But stories glorifying warriors and strong men seem like they're probably pretty ubiquitous throughout history. I also think that random acts of violence like this one stand out more because a) technical advancements in media make discussion of them ubiquitous, and b) for citizens of Western nations this is probably the least violent period in history.

Clare,

Those links show that this stuff causes small changes in brain chemistry or how people interpret stuff but it's a huge leap from that to Holliday's assertion that the glorification of violence in TDK may have influenced the gunman here (beyond how his violence expressed itself). It's also a huge leap to go from those small changes in brain chemistry to an actual causation of violence/crime in the real world.

I have a co-worker that has a very similar Joker obsession, going so far as to quote creepy lines from TDK for months at a time at work. He owns several high powered weapons and is the exact type of weirdo I can see doing something like this.

When we told him about the shooting, (he hadn't heard) he started grinning. So, yea, I tend to believe the movie choice might not be coincidental. I think it has an appeal to a certain type of crazy.

Unless you're just going to render the team meaningless by claiming any action movie glorifies violence, I don't see anything specifically about TDK that does that.

Even if you grant that entertainment can have some slightly push towards violence, I don't think it's nearly enough to limit artistic expression. The reality is that 99.99% of people do just find and can cope with far more violent imagery than Batman without doing something like this.

Again, if you're looking for a think to change to stop this from happening, mental health is always going to overshadow anything else.

THIS!!!!

It's America, we're always looking for something or someone to blame. Batman has violence, therefore it's Batman's fault. It's rap musics fault, it's rock n rolls fault, south parks fault, etc.

The simple fact is we had violent and psycho people before any of this stuff and we will have them long after its gone. Ted Bundy didn't play video games, Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't listening to Tupac, Jack the Ripper didn't have violent tv programs. If you want to make those type of connections answer why these people in the past did it? Answer why the crime rate went down as our movies, tv, video games became more violent.

Crazy people latch onto crazy things. The Bible is plenty violent enough and you're never going to be able to get rid of all the "bad" things. For 99.9999999% of society these things aren't going to make them do something horrible. Acting like people sick enough and depraved enough to do this type of thing WOULDN'T have done it without batman or something like that is frankly a mind blowing assertion to be made.

If you want to argue that we glorify violence, blah blah blah go right ahead. If you want to act like this is avoided if somehow the Dark Knight doesn't come out you're not being very realistic imo (trying to respect the rules)

i cant wait for the media reaction when police uncover thousands of bodies in trash bags in the ocean because of dexter

Why has the homicide rate not spiked in accordance with how much more video games people play now? It's fun to make random associations isn't it?

Dude is apparently still acting crazy and defiant in jail

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1119173

"He was spitting at the door and spitting at the guards,” the inmate told The News. “He's spitting at everything. Dude was acting crazy."

Dude is in solitary, LDO

"Two other just-released inmates said the concerns of Arapahoe Detention Center officials over Holmes’ life were well-founded.

“All the inmates were talking about killing him,” Wayne Medley, 24, said as he left the facility. “Everyone was looking for an opportunity. It’s all they could talk about.”

First, psych hospitals are not as bad as prisons (overall, at least), despite what many patients claim while they're there.

Second, this post seems contradictory to the one below.

I'm not saying anything about this guy's potential diagnosis or lack of diagnosis, but if you think he has schizophrenia, then he deserves at least a chance at treatment.

The obvious reason for the lack of any 24-man fight-to-the-death tourneys is only twelve of the participants were men.

No, you don't have the balls to actually come out and say TDK caused the shooting, all you're saying is that violent media causes people to be violent. So what? What's the next thing in your argument?

So directors such as Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, who have depicted ultra violence in their movies are probably responsible for 1000's of homicides?

yeah it is pretty contradicting mostly because the first reply was just a short response where I think I assumed he took himself off the meds(because I believe that is when the most violent outbursts happen) but afterwards when someone quoted it I clarified my thoughts to the extent of if he was on his meds and let himself go off them..etc etc but to be clear: If he has the illness and is untreated, I agree he should be given a chance at treatment. (which with the crime he committed he would be held in a high security psych ward that is a lot like prison anyways but getting treatment and counselled)

And yes some criminal psych wards are worse than some prisons. Some of the criminally insane are extremely psychotic. When some of their tranqs wear down they can really get out of hand with attacking staff and other patients. Which usually leads to them being dragged to a quiet room and injected by needle with a powerful sedative to calm them down. I witnessed this once or twice myself when my friend was being held in there while going through the court sytem where a 30 day assessment was ordered

Even if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that violent movies CAUSE violence like this, it would still be unthinkable to restrict the rights of filmmakers and viewers just to prevent or lessen the instances of stuff like this, which is already super rare.

True. And when you throw in the fact that violent movies don't cause violence like this you're really wasting your time.

You were much better when you posted lolcats as facile arguments instead of words as facile arguments.

Clare:

I don't know if violent video games and the like are the issue - like SGT RJ said, they give a kind of reality to those fantasies. Regardless, I do think that violent entertainments are more a symptom than a cause - that these desires are within the human psyche and get played out on the screen. I think more concerning than the violence is the extent to which people get wrapped up in their own heads as a result of entertainments in general. Regardless, there was a great article over on Grantland about what people get out of ultra-violent video games: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...-shooter-games - no hard science, but I found it interesting.

Well said. That's often why you don't hear the end game proposals from the ultra conservatives that make that connection. Suggesting full blown censorship and gov control over artists is something Americans can't stomach (we are far from perfect but this is one instance where the line is drawn in the sand)

To be fair to Clare, I don't think he's saying anything more than what he's actually said.

Threads like this get terrible when we can't even have a conversation or have different view points because everybody freaks out too quick.