system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I feel that the kneejerk reaction gamers have toward the possibility of violent video games fostering violent behavior is wrong, CMV.

With GTA V coming out soon this subject is bubbling up again. In a nutshell, if you think violence in video games (as well as our other forms of media that have become saturated with violence) has zero effect on the violence we see in our culture I think you are deluding yourself. 

I'd like to emphasize that I think this is a "knee-jerk" reaction- it seems like hardly anyone is willing to honestly and critically look at this situation anymore, and mostly people feel comfortable jumping on their bandwagon of choice instead of really thinking about it. Yes, plenty of people play Call of Duty and don't start killing Germans because of it, just as playing Grand Theft Auto probably isn't causing people to run over hookers for money. I'm a gamer too and I've done both these things in video games without feeling tempted to recreate them in real life. But how can you say the incredible amount of violence we are exposed to in all forms of our entertainment has zero effect on the rise of senseless acts of violence in our culture? How is that even possible?

It's all about desensitization. Violence certainly isn't anything new in human society, we all know that. But wasn't violence historically something that was mostly witnessed by the warriors and soldiers? Sure it's all props and illusion now, but never before in (at least recent) history has such a broad swath of the general population been exposed to images of people being decapitated, shot to death, and blown up. Remember the turn in public opinion on the Vietnam War when, for the first time, real images of war were being broadcast to everyone with a television set? When people found out what war really was, they were shocked, horrified, disgusted. Now every male from 18 to 25 has experienced the Normandy invasion. Isn't it worth having a conversation about what effects this desensitization to violence may be having on us?

I don't believe that we should ban violence in our media, it has its place, and should be for adults only. But I think gamers and the soccer moms alike are preventing everybody from having a real dialogue about this because of our tendency to jump on bandwagons.
gpt
"But wasn't violence historically something that was mostly witnessed by the warriors and soldiers?"

This is patently false. Across great swaths of human history, violence, REAL violence, has been openly accepted entertainment for the masses, young and old alike. From gladiator fights to sacrifices to lynchings to guillotines to tar and feathering, human beings have enjoyed abusing other human beings as entertainment for nearly our existence. The fact that we've now switched to being entertained by the deaths of virtual human beings, rather than real ones, is a massive step up, not down.