I’m about to leave to go play Gears of war 3 with a friend. He thought it would be nice to send me a video of two Mexican men being beheaded; one with a chainsaw and the other with a knife.
I very stupidly watched it. Afterward, I was shaking. It’s one of those things that will take a while to get out of my head.
I remember getting the same reaction when I saw a dog being beaten to death with a shovel.
Are you still affected by that kind of media?
Yes. Real violence still affects me. I can’t tell if it affects me as much as “before” because “before” would be when I was a small child.
I voted for “Still affected”. I would never intentionally or willingly watch a video like your friend sent you. (Not judging you - I just know I couldn’t handle it.)
You know that video of the guy on the aircraft carrier getting sucked through the airplane engine? Totally squicked me out and it didn’t really even show anything. I don’t even like watching clip shows where people get hurt cause it grosses me out. For the record, I have never seen the Joe Theisman (sp?) clip and I never want to. Oww, eww!
But meet me on the streets of Vice City or Los Santos and you’ll find out what a cold hearted killa I am. (My 22 year old son teasingly calls me Mama-G sometimes. Shout out to my Grove Street Homies!)
Sometimes if I’m having a crappy day I go home and fire up GTA and just run around killing people with a golf club (such a satisfying sound, too!). Or toss molotov cocktails into groups of innocent by-standers at the mall and laugh as they scream and flail. Works well on zombie games, too (like Left for Dead) and I enjoy their reactions almost as much.
I think for me the big difference is the distinction between an actually alive thing being killed/damaged and knowing that the ‘people’ I routinely enjoy slaughtering in my games are just code. Its an outlet for me specifically because I know I am not actually hurting anyone.
Its an electronic orgy of violence and destruction that I would be appalled to hear about if it were real.
I’m still affected in real life. I don’t even want to hear about that poor dog. But I’ve gotten a lot better about watching gruesome things in movies. Fifteen years ago, even a show like Buffy would have been too much for me.
I’m very, very much into “violent” fiction. That is, when I was 13, I responded with glee when ED-209 glitched and shot the ever-living hell out of that poor bastard during the demonstration to the OCP board in Robocop.
Yet, when it comes to real-world violence, I couldn’t be a bigger pacifist. And am usually so empathetic, that it makes seeing, let alone even hearing about such things incredibly uncomfortable for me. Humans, animals, and sometimes even bugs – I don’t like the thought of anything at all experiencing egregious suffering.
I have my own theories as to the psychology behind that, but I don’t think I’m atypical. If I could boil it down, I’m a morbidly fascinated person with a decent imagination. I can easily keep my reality separated from… Not reality. So, when I know it’s not real, I feel free to explore and even have fun with something that would otherwise shake me to my core if I knew it was real.
Yeah, sure. My favorite tv shows (e.g. Sopranos, LOST) trend toward the ultraviolent. I also enjoyed Resident Evil 3, although my tastes lean more to Sid Meier, Zelda, Mario, etc. I haven’t given the realistic fps genre much of a chance, but that has more to do with the hardware and time I have than anything else.
But about 10 years ago, this video was going around the office of a guy crossing the street with a stack of pizza boxes cradled in his arms. Guy doesn’t look - guess that was a heavy and awkward load - but charges into the street.
A car doing at least 35 mph enters stage left and slams into him. Guy bounces into windshield and goes a-flying over the car. Pizza flies all over the place.
Thing is, most of my coworkers found it frightfully funny. I found it very disturbing to know that I work with people who howl with laughter watching a real person get certainly badly hurt, likely maimed for life, and possibly killed. To say nothing of the poor fuck driving the car who has to live with this incident.
I didn’t say anything because I don’t want to be THAT guy. You know, the one who triggers draconian anti-fun policies because having any fun at all at work might offend “some people” e.g. me.
What did I do when I got home? Watched Sopranos, in which Tony strangles a rat in a parking lot.
I love slasher/horror movies, but real violence, especially against animals, makes me sick.
Yep. I’m a terrible driver and feel no remorse about the damage and injury I cause when I steal a car, or a bus, and drive recklessly to avoid the police - I often run pedestrians over on purpose, too. And I enjoy nothing more than having my character jump on the roof of cars and letting the hapless driver move him around the city as he takes pot shots at passers by. I’m not above killing a hooker for her knife either, then killing anyone who tries to jump in. And kicking a person until they’re down so you can rob them? no big.
But real violence? Lots of news stories make me cry. News stories contain actual people, video games and movies do not.
If it makes you feel any better, that video is just a well-done fake. It was part of an anti-speeding PSA in Australia.
Pretty much the same here. I grew up on Looney Tunes shorts, with their extreme slapstick humor, and tend to play video games where the violence is also highly cartoonish. But give the game a more realistic verisimilitude, and I’m probably going to steer way clear (e.g. instead of blowing up Bender the robot or Eric Cartman, I get to blow up little kids and grandmas? Nuh uh.).
It still affects me. Probably because violance (and explosions) in media is very often overdone. I can watch Jacky Chan kicking ass with a smile on my face, but feel sick of the sound of real fist against head (MMA for instance). The same goes for the 9-11 explosions compared to independance day for instance.
I understand what you mean. I wish I hadn’t watched it. Knowing how horrible it was made me feel compulsed to watch it, perhaps to show myself it wasn’t that bad. It was.
THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IS A DESCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO
One of the things that bothered me the most about it was how orderly and relatively calm it was. The victims were first interviewed and seemed calm. Then we see them sitting on the floor. The chainsaw is started. Both victims show no emotions. The chainsaw starts cutting into the throat of the first victim, his face contorts in pain as blood spills over his chest. The first victim then leans to his right against the second victim. The second victim has a placid face and says nothing, only looking at the first victim once. The killers use the chainsaw again, cutting the head off. Then they use a knife against the second victim who makes a few noises but no more. I didn’t finish the second victim’s homicide because I stopped watching.
I very much dislike seeing people get hurt when it isn’t their fault or where they did something they shouldn’t have done but got hurt in a way that’s disproportionate. But when people get hurt in a way that’s proportionate to how stupid/arrogant they were, I do find it funny. Think of th enumerable videos of guys doing something that’s obviously risky, stupid and ill-advised and going “Hey guys, lookathis!” and then having both their body and ego bruised.
I found it disturbing that my friend would send me this. This and the fact that he showed little empathy towards his cat have made me doubt how much I’ll see him in the future. It’s been 3 years since our friendship began and I really didn’t think he’d be like that.
No way, i couldn’t even read Like Water for Elephants. I mean, I am still sensitive.
I once stumbled across a video of what looked like captured soldiers being killed by having their throats cut; probably similar in tone to video the OP described. I found it quite upsetting (I wasn’t agitated so much as filled with sorrow). Movies or video games have never affected me that way.
I’ve seen 3 guys one hammer and that was pretty bad. But video games or movies do not affect me. I guess most people can tell the difference between staged/phony violence and real violence.
Oddly I find myself feeling a little sorry for a robot mule that gets kicked.
I’ll happily blow off heads in Fallout 3 and consume all sorts of violent media. But even some fictional stuff like the torture-porn genre ( i.e. Hostel and its cousins ) is too much for my stomach. Let alone the real thing - I could never sit through some of the actual disturbing crap out there, like terrorist beheading videos.
So, yep - still retain my human empathy.
I’ve watched a few of those beheading videos that are floating around the internet. I can’t say I was too affected by them. I certainly don’t find these types of videos amusing, but I don’t really get that “sick” feeling anymore.
Animal abuse on the other hand, I can’t watch at all. Those undercover farm videos that pop up now and again always make me feel ill.
I can happily watch A Clockwork Orange, Re-Animator, House of 1000 Corpses & The Devil’s Rejects. I can’t watch any of Faces of Death. When I went to the Museum of Death in L.A., there were some things I could look at- pics of the naked couple posing with her husband’s head, and things I couldn’t- the autopsy film, the Tate-LaBianca crime photos- especially for some reason, the AFTER-CLEAN-UP Morgue photo of Sharon Tate’s face- it wasn’t very wounded, the expression was calm, but somehow it just seemed so wrong knowing what happened.
I consume the most violent and gory horror movies with glee and love a good splatter game, but I still get disturbed watching scenes of genuine violence. I don’t even care to watch those videos of skateboarders faceplanting when doing stunts.
I’m a fantasy gamer, I like quick and dirty violence like Kill Bill-style stuff - blood and gore doesn’t bother me - but I can’t watch torture-porn movies or the parts where people are suffering over a prolonged period of time. I can’t watch that stuff without thinking of people being tortured in real life somewhere god-forsaken at exactly that moment.
As for real stuff, my empathy meter is set pretty damned high. I don’t even like killing bugs. It doesn’t even have to be physical hurt - just people in any kind of pain… it really bothers me. If someone around me starts crying, I cry too. Just hearing about those videos and knowing they exist makes me feel ill. I could never be friends with someone who found that entertaining.
ETA: To answer the question, as far as I can tell, violent media has had no discernible effect on my empathy for other people.