Nerd Culture being slowly poisoned by acceptance of lolicon

[Koumei]

\Being a prude about this sort f thing may make you feel good about yourself,

Though I honestly can't see how.

"Ah, yet again I added to the galaxy-sized frustrations building up in teenagers and foiled their plans for release. The amount of suffering in the world has risen (by an admittedly small amount compared to other things going on in the world), all thanks to me. Yep, I'm a great guy."

[koz]

Frank, have I mentioned you're awesome?

I would also like to add that Lago is arguing apples-and-oranges with his 'cigarettes' statement, because these are marketed using psychology-derived techniques which honestly do not exist in any kind of lolicon anime or manga. Seriously, just no.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Apples and oranges. People will have sex.

???

Aggression is just as 'natural' an impulse towards human beings as sex. Bobo doll experiment.

Violence in the media has been fairly conclusively shown to have no effect whatsoever.

Sorry, Frank, I'm going to have to ask you to bring up a link or two. AFAICT, the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Psychology Association pretty much believe that there's a correlation between media violence despite criticism.

Now like I said, I believe that studies also fail to control for factors like income inequality and majority/minority tension. The 1930's was the United States' most violent period in history but after the New Deal violence continued to steadily decrease until the 1980's, the most violent decade we've had since and also coincidentally the highest level of income inequality we've had.

, but sex is completely different.

How?

People will get sex of one kind or another. Abstinence Only bullshit fails much more often than it succeeds. And when it fails, the sex it generates is desperate and ill-advised. Porn produces sexual activity as well - sexual activity which doesn't transmit any diseases or get anyone pregnant.

I never said I was for abstinence-only. I am all for steering people towards the 'right' kind of sex which means scandalizing the depiction of unprotected sex, sex in conjunction with alcohol, sexual violence, and of course lolicon. Fortunately there's a (woefully underfunded) campaign towards unprotected sex.

I mean, I really have no idea how you can just make a blanket claim that all porn is good because people have sexual impulses. If you normalize a depiction of a certain kind of sex then why shouldn't we believe that more people are going to have that kind of sex? I mean, we know for a fact that rape porn rather than producing some kind of catharsis effect you haven't proven only desensitizes its viewers towards real sexual violence.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I would also like to add that Lago is arguing apples-and-oranges with his 'cigarettes' statement, because these are marketed using psychology-derived techniques which honestly do not exist in any kind of lolicon anime or manga.

Oh, would you care to explain the differences?

[Username17]

AFAICT, the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Psychology Association pretty much believe that there's a correlation between media violence despite criticism.

The fact is that the highest violence rates on Earth are in places that don't even have "media" in the way we think of. Indeed, American violence rates were much higher when we didn't have TV:



So unless you believe that the Clinton Administration came simultaneously with a massive reduction in the violence of media, then the basic premise is laughable. While 1993 came with the implementation of a TV rating system, I'm sure you'll recall that the very next year TV was filled with such exciting wonderments as "Hammer House of Horror" and "Vault of Horror" and so on and so forth. And yet, that marked a period of substantial violence reduction. The people who came of age at a time when Friday the 13th: The Series was on TV grew up to stab and shoot people literally half as much as the generation before.

I mean, we know for a fact that rape porn rather than producing some kind of catharsis effect you haven't proven only desensitizes its viewers towards real sexual violence.

Do we? I mean, it makes a great catch-phrase, and seems thoroughly intuitive, but we don't actually see higher levels of rape in Nippon than we did in the 1940s when they didn't have that rape porn. Nor do we see higher levels of rape in Nippon than we do in other East Asian countries.

Heck, rape levels are frankly astounding in countries like Saudi Arabia, and extremely low in countries like Holland. Nicer places are nicer. And porn is directly correlated with nicer places.

There's lots of stuff that I don't want to see. But that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the people who do want to see it, nor does it mean that the world would be in any way a better place if they couldn't.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So unless you believe that the Clinton Administration came simultaneously with a massive reduction in the violence of media, then the basic premise is laughable.

It makes more sense if you control for rising income/income inequality. 1994-2003 came with Clinton's hike of the tax rate on the top 1% and also a period of high relative growth in the US. Note that it started to level off in 2002-2003 when Bush starting slashing taxes and after the brief recession. And now it's starting to go back up.

But anyway. I still believe that desensitization to violence from whatever the source still creates violence. After all, I'm pretty sure that the Nazis didn't watch all that much television. But they did play off a thousand-year old tradition of antisemitism. Similarly, the massacre of Armenians came after hundreds of years of that culture telling you it's okay to hate and kill those people.

My explanation for that sharp decrease on the DoJ's line graph? Along with the climb in real income during this time period (which I personally believe is modest since the Gini index still went up) a larger increase in racial and cultural tolerance in the 'coming of age' generation. That is, the late-term Generation Xers and Millenial Generation view treating racial and sexual minorities really poorly and that racism is one of the worst flaws someone can have.

But that's a negative view towards violence across the board and all that proves is that media violence (if such a thing is proven, which honestly I can't right now) has less of an effect than society's attitude towards it.

Heck, rape levels are frankly astounding in countries like Saudi Arabia, and extremely low in countries like Holland. Nicer places are nicer. And porn is directly correlated with nicer places.

What's your explanation for this? I believe it's because poorer countries tend to treat women and minorities more like second class citizens (which produces violence against them like nothing else) and the astounding rate of income inequality.

I don't think it has anything to do with porn; in fact, my opinion is that if such behavior was completely scandalized we'd see an even lower level of violence.

[Calibron]

Seriously, it's more likely to prevent child molestation than cause it (and if we want to work on "stop sexualising small rectangles with limbs" then I'd suggest we start by thumping the childrenswear companies until they stop trying to dress real children up like tarts).

Yes. Yes Indeed. You'd be doing a lot more good putting abercrombie and fitch out of business than you would eliminating imported lolicon.

[Username17]

What's your explanation for this?

I think it's pretty clear. Familiarity breeds tolerance.

The whole Imam thing of claiming that naked limbs and boobies "inflame the passions" and promotes rape is total horseshit. People who are extremely familiar with the naked bodies of men and women spend a disproportionately small amount of time raping anybody.

The best way to increase violence in society is to segregate society. Nothing provokes rage and fear like the unknown. Keeping people from seeing other people in society opens the window for distrust and dehumanization. On the other hand, seeing other people speaking, eating, and fucking makes them accessible. It makes them "us" and it makes violence against them unacceptable.

The best thing that ever happened to the rate of crimes against women in the United States was Hugh Heffner. The worst thing that ever happened to the rate of crimes against women in Afghanistan was the veil. The easier it is to see people of the opposite sex in their altogether the less sex crimes there are.

And that applies at every age. Giving people a window between the ages of 8 and 18 when they can't see the naked chests of their peers in any form is simply a way to create a ten year window for superstition, bigotry, and malice to creep in. It serves no purpose save to create a lost decade where harmful ideas are not debated and as such left to fester.

-Username17

[Orion]

Lago, I gotta say I found your insistence that Frank is relying on an 'unproven catharsis effect' really terribly amusing.

See, the problem with catharsis theory was that the theory rested on the idea that everyone has a certain appetite for violence that builds up over time and must eventually be released, and that consequently participation in certain types of violence (including watching violence) would lower peoples interest in committing violence.

This turns out not to be true. Violence doesn't work that way.

But I think the evidence is pretty clear that people DO build up desires for sex over time, and that indulging them reduces their interest in sex in the immediate future. that you regard this as controversial is frankly hilarious

[Bigode]

I would also like to add that Lago is arguing apples-and-oranges with his 'cigarettes' statement, because these are marketed using psychology-derived techniques which honestly do not exist in any kind of lolicon anime or manga. Seriously, just no.

The absence of such techniques surprises me - care to explain?

[Calibron]

*everything in his last post*
-Username17

Word. Theoretically an America more open to nudity would also severely cut back on the number of 10 year old girls wearing clothes like this.

[Koumei]

Caliborn: shop, pixels, etc.

[Heath Robinson]

Caliborn's intent was clear and the image symbolised the aim of what some of the West's children are wearing. It matters not whether it was a shop.

[Calibron]

I really didn't want to try googling for an actual 10 year old piece of jail bait wearing a "Wink Wink" thong and a "Pornstar" belly shirt, so I just searched for that pic specifically since I'd seen it on 4chan once and it got my point across well enough.

[Koumei]

That's an incredibly good point. It's a good parody of a real problem.