Today, esteemed youtube personality TotalBiscuit opined about societal effects of video games and other media.

I am consistently bothered by this throw-away phrase “media affects people” as if its some kind of argument winner, an inarguable statement of fact. In reality it’s lazy, it’s too vague, it’s pseudo-intellectual at its worst.

Speaking of lazy, I should note that research on the effects that media has on individuals and society as a whole in various forms has been going on for — oh, DECADES now. It’s seriously a dedicated branch of study, and even the tiniest google search would have found it for him. If he wasn’t too lazy to throw bombs without actually wondering if maybe this criticism isn’t coming from somewhere.

I was thinking of responding in length, but it turns out that I am ALSO lazy. Fortunately, this reddit poster gave a long, factual analysis of the known research, much of which would have mirrored several of the most important studies that I would have pointed out. Some of these I haven’t read yet (surprisingly – I do try to keep up), but the one regarding the increase in aggressiveness in vulnerable personality types seems of particular interest to me

That being said, renown scholar and gentleman TotalBiscuit left a lot more room in the discussion by wondering where research was regarding other media. As mentioned previously, there are some truly infamous ones, some of which you are likely to learn about in any psych 101 or communications 101 class :

Of course, all of this is common sense – we reflect the opinions and attitudes we see very, very quickly. Advertising is big business largely because the media is incredibly effective at changing people’s minds – and for that matter, so is YouTube gaming content. Few doubt that the recent portrayals of gay people on television, led by high profile events such as Ellen Degeneres’ coming out, is a huge factor in the astonishing collapse of all opposition to gay rights in America.

And even some renown YouTube personalities believe, for example, believe that, say, an episode of SVU can change people’s opinions on gamers and is worth getting angry about. This isn’t unfounded – I can’t find the link right now, frustrating, but research has shown that, for example, rural whites who get most of their information about black people from watching fictional television tend to have a much darker outlook on African Americans than those who encounter them regularly in their daily lives.

Yes, media affects people. The exact details of how are still being researched – and likely will be endlessly in the future. The level of responsibility we expect media creators to own is still up for debate, but so far, little has been found that is so alarming that legislation removing first amendment protections merits consideration. But it is well in the world of enough that activists should feel comfortable asking a company like Blizzard to change some avatars in hopes of of incurring positive change.