The Mean World Syndrome - Effects Of Violence In TV, Movies, Games etc.

The term "mean world syndrome" was coined by Dr. George Gerbner who did excellent research on how Violence in television effects society, he noted that people who watch a lot of TV think that world is a ruthless and scary place. And hence subconsciously they always remain in a state of fear and insecurity. When any difficult event comes in their life, they snap and takes the extreme step like murdering someone.

There were a lot of threads here on ATS recently regarding violent crimes committed by children's or where a child was victim of violence. You all know the case of Jared Loughner who shot at Gabrielle Giffords and killed an innocent nine year old girl, people were saying he has some mental illness like schizophrenia etc. But if you look closer you can see that nobody is born with mental Illnesses or violent tendencies they pick that up from the society they are living in.

Children see 8000 murders by the end of elementary school.
and 200,000 violent acts by the age of 18.

There was violence in Shakespeare and in fairy tales, so what kind of violence we are talking about here and how it is different.

Violence is shown as entertaining, humorous and glamorous.

How many times have you seen someones head chopped of or somebody being shot suddenly in the middle of a laughter scene. That's the main agenda behind showing violence in a stylized way in the whole media spectrum to make it look good as in that way it would easily embed itself in human mind.
These are the amazing facts which are discussed in this documentary:

So i ask you all that whether the violence in TV, Movies, Games etc is imitated by people or not, whenever they go through their tough times. And if govt. knows this that violence in media promotes violent behavior in society, why they don't take steps to ban it.

The more we desensitize ourselves the easier it will be to merge the planned violence which is yet to be implemented for us.

reply to post by vinay86
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They wont ban these things because their useful to them as is alcohol and cigarettes all these things lead to depopulation , thats why marijuana is ilegal because it has never killed anyone and has numerous benefits . Why do they STILL allow famine to occur ? Because they dont care about the loss of these poor human beings DEPOPULATION .



Bullets missiles , bombs , diseases is how they greet us , we.re truth seekers, the new preachers , from all walks of life that recognise there are evil forces at work tonight , the beast does not like the light it acts under the cover of darkness with YOU in its target .

Originally posted by vinay86

So i ask you all that whether the violence in TV, Movies, Games etc is imitated by people or not, whenever they go through their tough times. And if govt. knows this that violence in media promotes violent behavior in society, why they don't take steps to ban it.

Perhaps a handful of people do imitate TV violence, however, hundreds of millions of people do not. Also, in my opinion, government has no business banning expression in fields of entertainment.

Media/movie technology nowdays, makes violence very realistic. When I was a kid in the '60's, I would watch a cowboy shoot another cowboy, and there was no blood and guts, the bad guy just fell down. I ---rarely--- go to a movie, and have a small number of shows on TV, such as Sherlock Holmes on PBS, which occassionaly has the appropriate---violence for the act being investigated. A lot of movies and TV shows have violence that is unnecessary and innapropriate as well.

Originally posted by TheGhostViking
reply to post by vinay86

 

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They wont ban these things because their useful to them as is alcohol and cigarettes all these things lead to depopulation , thats why marijuana is ilegal because it has never killed anyone and has numerous benefits .

LOL the gov isn't trying to kill the population...they just want to control us. So making marijuana legal would be the number 1 priority. How lazy are potheads? Uh very.

And how does alcohol or cigarettes depopulate the earth? People die of natural causes 10 times more than deaths from cigarettes or alcohol illnesses or accidents...
Dying from cigarettes is a very slow death...if you smoke 3 packs a day your entire life you could still live to be 60 years old and have 10 kids....how is that depopulating the earth...? If our government really wanted to depopulate the earth they would put chemicals in the food that trigger infertility. That would do it much quicker...

I believe people should be allowed to watch and listen to whatever they want, BUT, I think social media, like TV and radio should be heavily controlled to not have overt violence, sex, or teaching of low morals. I mean, I do think social media plays a big role in forging how society thinks and what it accepts. I think Leave it to Beaver type shows should be on TV all the time. But pay TV like HBO, and theater films, and DVDs, CDs, should be free and open for adults to watch and hear what they want.

Without getting into the age-old debate of whether or not such thing are the actual cause of violent behaviour, it certainly does seem to bring out into the light those who are easily influenced by said media.

I've always been of the opinion that psycho-social history is still in it's "experimental stages", and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they're still gathering data on what types of personalities respond to violent suggestion with violent adaption.

reply to post by freedish


how is cigarettes depopulating the earth , bit of a strange question , I take it you dont see the irony that cigarette smokers are PAYING for a slow death and the price goes up for the "privilege" what abouth passive smoking ? look up Roy Castle freind , cigarettes is 1 part of it chum , i mentioned MANYothers why so touch about cancer sticks ? you mention the food supply HELLLO??? CODEX ALIMENTARIUS -- FLUORIDE is a poison freind and again YOU pay the water company for the "priviledge . HOW MANY children are dying from this war ? why ? is the world safer now ? NOT FOR THEM !!!!!

oh yeah do you know how many chemicals there are in a beautiful, cigarette ? around a 1000 , now i dont know what they all are but do you ? Im sure theyre all harmless though RIGHT ????? back on topic , i think tv is the worst , when i have children i will have to monitor what they watch .

violence in my view comes from within, not through sources such as media.
even though the media may portray examples of differing depictions that could play some part with violent acts being commited, it still rests on why, if a person who knows right from wrong, reality from fiction, wants to reinact or copy what they have seen through such media, there still then lies some other form of stigma attached which would compel such people to commit these atrocities in the first place.

As someone who thinks the mainstream media is a weapon and a promoter of sickness, I star and flag you for posting this.

Can't say I agree with everything said in the documentary, but I can admit to agreeing with more of it than not.

The media sucks. It has turned the majority of my peers in to idiots and if you refuse to play along and refuse watch the mainstream media- you can feel like an alien when speaking to the average "media user".

The media is disgusting and disturbing. I also think "media violence" isn't even half of the real problem with "the media".

MM

To those who say the media has little or no effect, I ask why then do TPTB keep such tight control of it? Why do they invest billions of dollars in it? Why is advertising such a huge industry?

Of course pouring thousands and thousands of violent images has an effect on people's psyche, as does the fact that TPTB always come out on top are ultimately all powerful. Now, what interest could they possibly have in bombarding us with such a message, especially the young people?

the media has a massive effect , materialism and peer pressure things that lead us nowhere trapped like the lab rats they want us to be , most people like us dont even watch tv anymore if we do, not for the reasons theyd prefer .

Whether people admit it or not they are always in a state of fight or flight mode, always in a uncertainty regarding their survival. They are never actually relaxed, most of this is due to what they grasp from their environment i.e. media even though most of the violence shown by it may not be even possibly present in the real world.

So what biological changes happens inside our body due to these added stress, the blood in our body gets pumped more into viscera systems i.e. heart, abdomen etc. and not in brain as a result concentration of people decreases and some times they take bad decisions like hurting or killing someone which they didn't actually wanted. How human behavior, cells and organs are effected by the environmental factors is wonderfully described by Dr. Bruce Lipton in these videos:

Google Video Link

Google Video Link

Taking Guns or Giving Guns would not do anything unless the fundamental causes of violence are considered.

Originally posted by Mr Mask
The media sucks. It has turned the majority of my peers in to idiots and if you refuse to play along and refuse watch the mainstream media- you can feel like an alien when speaking to the average "media user".

Agreed with you completely on that, many people today watch TV, movies etc. because their content is widely discussed in their friend circles, when they see their friends following the trends shown in media, they are left with no choice but to follow what their friends are following, and if they don't do that they may find themselves alienated from the society.

This compulsion to act according to what society is doing, is nothing but the self imposed rules of the society, in other words people are controlling themselves, it is very true that we are living in a prison in which the guards themselves are prisoners.

People say media is the mirror image of the world we are living in, but vice verse is not true i.e what is shown in the media is not what actually happens in the world. But people believe in media and hence believe that world is like that. That's a simple trick due to which people lead their lives according to what media says.

I would say the estimate of seeing 8000 murders by 18 is very low.
You can rack up 10,000 kills in an online video game in a matter of months.

Very realistic kills with blood spurts and crumpling bodies.

I get pissed everytime I see someone under 18 playing these games.

THEY ARE RATED M (MATURE) FOR A REASON. STOP BUYING YOUR KIDS WAR GAMES YOU IDIOTS.
Oh wait, its America. We have a volunteer force. We need to brainwash them into signing up somehow.

The most important thing is children s today right from birth are exposed to too much violence through media. Parents leave their kids in front of TV all day long. Research has shown that whatever a child learns up to first six years of his life has a profound impact on his belief systems, which remain with him throughout his life.

reply to post by vinay86


All i would say is that i do not watch the garbage and i have been passive all my life. Of course there are also stories of how villages got tv, and then they got crime waves, lol.

I think the main thing tv teaches about violence, is that it is a solution, and tv does not show people are better off being passive. Of course people are sort of hypnotized by the tv and games they play, to what extent also depends on what sort of person they are obviously.