NeoNeTiC
LOCKDOWN.
Cult of War
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Posted - 2009.06.18 06:05:00 -
[1]
It's kind of sad to see all the "you're a troll" posts when someone's trying to be the devil's advocate for the sake of the discussion. 
I originally prepared a massive wall of text post about social structure of todays society and a portion of evolution theory and philosophy but I decided to make an EVE-example of what I'm trying to say. Let's take a fancy de-tour into the concept of media and its influence.
Let's look at your average 0.0 alliance. 90% of the alliance's member base is made of peons who follow the FCs' or leaderships' orders. I'm not saying they don't influence stuff or don't decide where to roam, what to produce, when to mine but it's all following guidlines and a greater goal set by someone "up high". Most of them enjoy what they're doing and only few aspire to take a leading position themselves.
Now, the peon might enjoy the industry side of EVE but gets slapped for NPCing/mining during a major capital fleet op. He'll then either give in and from then on show up in a crappy ship to appear on killmails as requested or disregard the alliance leadership's orders and continue with what he does. In a "perfect" world the alliance leadership would then kick him/force him out.
Since EVE is supposed to be fun, the peon, who got slapped for doing what he enjoys, will venture forth and find a group of people which suck less, according to his standards. He'll mostlikely base his choice on input regarding the gameplay possibilities within EVE gathered through forums, videos, chat with other players, corp advertisements or discovering it by himself. All created content by someone else to influence perception/opinion/experience/knowledge - also known as "media" of some sort.
If you convert this to real life where the risk/consequences are of far greater extent, one might not always be able to say "**** this, I'll do something else now" and thus start getting unhappy and live an unfulfilled life.
Since I spoke of a focus of interests within EVE: Most people starting can not decide what's fun and what not and will create a random char and start exploring a few profession. Some initially pick mining and regret it (like myself) or go combat and then change to trade/industry/whatever.
There is no penalty (besides lost time) for switching "professions" in EVE - that's why it's fun. There lies the biggest difference to the real world on the other hand. You start with the same lack of a clue and just have other people's reaction to your behaviour and your hopefully well-rounded basic education while evolving into something resembling a decent being - by others judgement.
When you grow up in a personal world made of violence (not just spaceships on the internets going poof but domestic violence, a war zone, opressed country, whatever) you might become more receptable to media's nudge when it hits you in the right moment.
This also goes in a positive way - living a life in total security and devoid any kind of fear means input from things outside of your head do not bring you out of balance completely.
To finally come back to the issue:
When you now censor media, be it games, books, movies, songs, etc. you do this to cut down on the risks which may evolve from exposing someone unstable to them and thus prevent "further issues" for other people.
I don't support the current "let's ban games where stuff dies"-agendas but I can understand which concern drives those in charge. The full consequence would be total censorship of everything, including news, though since they may be the right nudge to do something you'd normally not do. This is quite far from reality for me since humans are nothing but animals with the ability for abstract thinking imho and denying it won't solve the issue itself. Hate, murder, genocide are all basic functions of life and evolution - and nothing can stop that.
tl;dr: Gaming is fine, human nature is just ****ed up.
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