# Can certain kinds of thoughts and fantasies be described as evil?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-certain-kinds-of-thoughts-and-fantasies-be-described-as-evil/1001010
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 1, 2024, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-certain-kinds-of-thoughts-and-fantasies-be-described-as-evil/1001010 "2024-05-01T13:27:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 15

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### Author: ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-certain-kinds-of-thoughts-and-fantasies-be-described-as-evil/1001010/15 "2024-05-01T23:19:15Z")

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> [@Sitnam](#):
>
> But GTA V is just a city, a universe, where a kid can cause mayhem and destruction for fun and the people he affects are not important in any respect. They don’t even acknowledge the existence of the player. That plays on the minds of 10 year old boys still behind in empathy.

GTA V is rated Mature (17+) in the US.  
If a parent is cool with their elementary school kid playing GTA, that’s their decision / discretion. But it’s a bit weird to complain it isn’t suitable for a 10 year old though, when it is explicitly not designed to be.

> [@Sitnam](#):
>
> So no, playing these games is not 1% of the way to a mass murdering psycho. But more than 0% of the way to the sorts of anti social ideas that will harm society as a whole in the near future.

When do you suppose that will kick in? Because what’s actually happened since video games have become popular is that violent crime has dropped, precipitously, across the developed world.  
People have been predicting that violent video games will inevitably lead to more violence and the _exact opposite_ has happened over the last 40+ years.

One counter argument to this might be that mass shootings in the US have gone up, considerably, over this period. But the key thing is _in the US_; violent video games are popular in most of the developed world, and there has been no such increase in mass shootings.  
What _does_ track the increase in mass shootings very well, is sales of “modern sports rifles”, like the AR-15.

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