Using less extreme negative content to justify extreme content pretty well illustrates how these things build on each other.
As with many things it is a question of degree. There is nothing too bad about the horror genre in itself, but when people wallow in this kind of content, there is no doubt that it is damaging.
If "wallowing" is the source of the issue, than you would need to prove that certain content has more capabilities of getting people to wallow in it.
Also, you would need to prove that the problems are linked to the content and not linked to the wallowing. Overdoing an activity is usually a problem, no matter the activity.
You do not know why people play such a game. You do not know if they wallow in it. You argue backwards. You dislike this content and try to find ways that justify banning it for other adults. Your angle was the slippery slope, and that games are somehow educational and such games do not guide people properly.
But if your angle would be true, we could apply it to other genres as well. What good guidance do games give, where you play a criminal? Popular example is the GTA franchise. Also, tv shows where the hero is a criminal. Breaking Bad comes to mind. You think people liking that show are guided towards indulging or overcoming something? I dare say they are guided into liking the show
I am not justifying the content. I am critisizing the arguments used to ban it. They were used decades ago for games I played.
It is indeed obvious that you like to argue.
I was not suggesting that some content causes people to wallow in it, I was saying that something that is relatively harmless becomes bad when it is indulged in too much. Certainly some genres appeal to people who like to wallow in negativity, but that is beside the point.
You continue to use other less extreme content in an attempt to justify this filth. Your intention might be to be contrarian, but the effect certainly is a ham-fisted justification. I need provide no further description of the slippery slope, as you continue to do that quite well without realising it.
What same treatment would that be? The movie is available in the US. Are credit card companies and stores being bullied for accepting payments for that movie too?
That movie is a horror shocker movie which aims to disturb. It's distribution is "banned" in many countries. Germany is famous for doing such things and they now have it categorized in the same category in which also all porn is: forbidden to advertise. It previously was forbidden to sell. A sales place could not legally sell you a disc with the movie on it. It would have been a crime.
The game is a run of the mill incest porn game with artificial pictures and a dose of non con/blackmail. The aforementioned strict Germany would not have a problem with the game. Can't sell it to minors, but that's it. It is fiction and even depiction of minors would be ok in the game, as long as they do not look like real people. The game was approved on Steam, and Steam is known to have a high entry bar. The developers overdid their marketing on that angle and got backlash. A lot of it. To the point where people would call it a rape simulator and rile up the angry mob with a lot of false claims and false evidence and the usual fallacious arguments and non arguments against games, that I lamented so often in this thread.
Well, hiding bad influences from children is all good and well. I would not want an impressionable youth to see someone starting a fire for fun.
Making a social media campaign to ban things, is not gonna achieve that.
Especially, if the thing is already something labeld as not for minors. Or "adults only".
I suspect it is about followers and power. If you have an angry mob at your disposal, that makes the instigators of that mob happy. It trains their skills at manipulating those mobs. It makes the mob more acceptible for agenda. It gives identity. "We are the people that are morally superior, since we not only ignore that disgusting thing, we fight it!". And you eventually have a dumbed down mob, that listens to everything you say, if you say it emotionally.
Some of those people are genuinly in it, because they believe they are doing something important. And this important thing would justify their means. So they accept having means like lying and fabricating false evidence. Using flimsy studies and even making biased studies, while the scientific consens says, that there is nothing.
I saw similar things happen during the pandemic. People were against masks. So they fabricated false evidence to scare people. Because their stance of masks = no freedom just was not enough to justify risking other people's health.
And I see similar things in politics and ideology, where very loud people say lies, more lies and rile you up, so you stop thinking and start following.
This is not a thing specific to left, right, liberal, conservative, social justice or my country first. Emotion over fact. Push some triggers in your followers and get what you want. Push some triggers in non followers and maybe gain more followers.
So much of what is argued is just not true. Outright lies often. You can look at just about every topic where people get emotional. Or rather, where they start emotional. Defending your "identity" is such a thing. Be it your religious identity, gender identity, national idenitiy, identity as a moral superior being and so on. As long as it is your core beliefs.
So of course you can rile up a mob consisting of religious motivated people or people with high morals, or people not understanding video games and so on. Just give them an easy target.
That the religious types are involved is especially ironic, since a lot of sexual things were viewed vastly different a few thousand years ago. What we now call rape myths was accepted social norm back in the day. A raped women would have been put to death when raped inside a city, because she apparantly did not scream loud enough, so that would mean she wanted it and therefore was guilty of adultery. Even incest seems to not have been a problem there, if you read episodes like that of Lot. In context, the angels just nuked Sodom for being depraved. But Lot offering his virgin daughters up for gang rape or the daughters later drug raping her father for the purpose of having incest children ... nope, the angels did not have a problem with that. It was not even written in a way to show what the survivors of Sodom did, was bad. What's the teaching there? It's ok to fill your relative up with alcohol to have sex, so you can have children? Hmm. Actually, that would make sense according to the ends justify the means principle.
Oh and to clarify, that principle has a tiny kernel of merit in some situations. But if you apply it in a situation where you only think you are right, and justify faking evidence, because you could not find actual evidence, that is not merit. That is fallacious. More than that. It is in my eyes more evil than the evil those activists claim to fight. At this point I want to stress again, that it is fiction we talk about.
People created videos and spoke with great conviction about things that weren't in it, which showed that they hadn't even launched the game. Some did such extensive "research" that they presented graphics from a completely different game
I was saying that something that is relatively harmless becomes bad when it is indulged in too much
... that is trivially true. "too much" already makes it a true statement. When is "too much"? When it becomes bad.
You continue to use other less extreme content in an attempt to justify this filth.
I did no such thing. I am not saying x is ok, so x+ should be ok too. I am saying if your arguments hold true for x+, they should also hold true for x.
Three of your points were:
If x+ is out there, more x+ will be put out there. (1)
x+ is bad and people should be guided to overcome fantasies about x+. (2)
When people wallow in x+, that is bad. (3)
Yes? Are these your points? If so, they are all problematic.
1. You need x+ to be popular to spawn more x+. x+ is not popular. Look at popularity of horror games on Itch to see how that works. They are on page 1 and new ones are created by developers wanting to make a popular game too. It is the popular thing that spawns imitations, not the unpopular one.
2. You assert that people fantasize about it. Then you demand they be guided to overcome this. That is less of an argument and more how you wish the world to be. So I was interested how you apply this wish to other bad things. You did not answer. For it to be an actual argument against x+ you would need to show that people would fantasize about x+ because of a game about it, and furthermore that this leads to actual harm. For all you know someone playing that game might play it precisely to overcome any real life desires about x+. I would assume most play it for the appeal of the renderings and because the taboos and bad things of real life make fiction about it more interesting.
3. You are begging the question by starting with a player that wallows in such games too much. You would need to prove an addictive quality of a thing or something like that to have an argument. Like alcohol. There is danger of addiction and intoxication there. So of course, if someone who drinks "too much" that is a problem in several ways. Or gambling. Playing video games is not known to have similar problems. Besides the trivially things, like overdoing it, but you can overdo anything. Even collection stamps.
So again, no, I am not justifying content. I am critisizing how you argue against the content. Decades ago the content I played was heavily critisized by people not understanding games and fiction. They only saw people playing games where "you kill humans". And they argued how bad that was and called for bans. Mind you, those were popular games. If those type of arguments were untrue for those mainstream popular games, why should they now be true for nieche games.
