Because it is.

No. I decided to talk about minors after being spurred by the original comment of this thread mentioning that in that commenter’s opinion that the image looks like a teenager to mention the grossness inherent to many anime and videogames and the way they sexualize children. Nobody was required to respond to any of my comments and yet they still did… to protect their lolicon pedo bs…

Yes. I am uneducated about this exact game. That’s not really the point I am trying to make… at all. I am not really upset about this specific game, but this game is seemingly a great example of what I’m mad about the more I learn about it specifically for the purpose of having this argument.

Lastly, go fuck yourself, you unempathetic bag of human shit.

You’re correct that nobody has quite said the quiet part out loud yet except for myself and the initial comment I was replying to.

And again, nobody is interested in arguing about the points to do with sexualization of minors in video games and anime, despite that being the comment thread they replied to.

Yes I’ve made mistakes and committed fallacies in this argument. No, I am not arguing in bad faith. Nor do I intend to.

Nobody has replied to the salient points, nor the research I’ve raised, and that saddens me, as it means people are more interested in keeping their lolicon games than reducing issues affecting real people, and as a survivor of childhood sexual assault myself, I find that pretty fucked up. I would hope that even somebody who hasn’t gone through what I have would have the same proclivity to protect living, breathing children over having unfettered access to lolicon games that sexualize minors but this thread has shown me that this is not the case.

Goodbye

Oh that’s totally my b. I got confused. I think the article may have mentioned genshin impact somewhere.

Anyway, I took a look and you’re right only half the cast is child-coded! Great! Now let’s get the other half too!

Oh… I guess you don’t know the game.

https://dguljqwnrjejm.cloudfront.net/images/Genshin_Impact_thumbn.width-1000.bgcolor-000.format-jpeg.jpg

https://assets.xboxservices.com/assets/cd/d0/cdd0d11b-dd3f-40f3-8720-41463983fd45.jpg?n=222910044_GLP-Page-Hero-1084_1920x1080.jpg

Those are the characters.

Another commenter pointed out that a selling feature of this game is the jiggle physics.

This is getting old though.

Ahh yes I forgot to disregard all context of the argument. That’s my favorite tool in discourse, personally! Have anything to say to the rest of my comment? The actual important part?

Of course not…

Bye bye closet pedo!

Just so you know what the scientists studying this have to say:

Should we be worried about escalation? The consumption of VCSAM does not prevent pedophilic individuals from future offending and can instead act as a progressive addiction (Maras & Shapiro 2017). Some CSAM offenders who engage in contact offending have suggested the contact offending was an extension of their online offending (Quayle & Taylor 2003). For example, in a recent study that applied Ward and Siegert’s (2002) pathways model to sexual offending of penetrative child sexual offenders, several offenders engaged in CSAM before resorting to contact offending. 12 One female offender, “commenced to use the internet…(time) to chat with other people… who gained sexual gratification from child pornography which led to the commission of the subject offences” (Osbourne & Christensen 2020, p. 13). The material has been argued to potentially serve as a gateway to contact offending (Maras & Shapiro 2017), as the offender may become desensitized to passive viewing, finding it to be insufficient over time (Schell et al. 2007). In line with the material being considered as a gateway, an offender might commence with masturbating to VCSAM material, then escalate to CSAM material (after becoming desensitized to VCSAM), before progressing on to act out impulses on children – in an attempt to experience the original level of gratification when first viewing VCSAM. Sullivan and Sheehan (2002) refer to the desensitization of images as the ‘fantasy escalation effect’ with the trajectory to engage in increasingly explicit videos and images (Sheehan & Sullivan 2010).

Given that much of VCSAM material is computer generated, it allows for unlimited creativity in how child characters are abused compared with CSAM (e.g., movements and depictions that are not humanly possible in real life). In turn, offenders who escalate through the types of VCSAM, viewing unimaginable forms of bestiality and penetrative activity, might find themselves skipping the nudist, erotic, or posing forms of CSAM during their escalation, instead being drawn to the gross assault and sadistic CSAM. It is not, therefore, illogical to suggest that those who commence CSAM offending from VCSAM offending may be more desensitized and follow different offending trajectories compared with those who commence with CSAM offending, which could be explored in future research.

While engaging with abusive material does not inevitably result in contact offending (Henshaw, Ogloff & Clough 2015), there are effects to the exposure of such. In their laboratory study, Paul and Linz (2008) found that participants exposed to ‘barely legal’ pornography (females depicted as under the age of consent), were quicker to recognize words with sexual connotations (after being primed with neutral images of female children) compared with participants who had been exposed to adult pornography (after being primed with neutral images of older-looking models). The authors concluded that the relationship between cognitions and the likelihood of acting on such, is complex (Paul & Linz 2008). While they argued the mere endorsement of sex-youth cognitive schema does not guarantee deviant action, the potential effects of deviant behavior from being exposed to such material cannot be outright rejected (Paul & Linz 2008). Paul and Linz (2008) suggest that extensive exposure can desensitize individuals to related behaviors and content. Given VCSAM is related in content to CSAM, the ongoing effects of exposure to VCSAM is an important avenue for future research

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://research.usc.edu.au/view/pdfCoverPage%3FinstCode%3D61USC_INST%26filePid%3D13161500130002621%26download%3Dtrue&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z9BkZ676Lb6_y9YP1YLqoQw&scisig=AFWwaeZERt0h_qC0HOcMzLh1ghdF&oi=scholarr

He did actually make this argument when he said pornographic material depicting minors being available would lower cases of sexual assault…

Just because the argument was implicit and not explicit does not mean it wasn’t made. That was not a straw man.

The other commenter was actually strawmanning my position incredibly heavily in another comment, but I noticed you didn’t call that one out.

Lemmy is rife with this pedophile apologia, especially concerning threads about child pornography material made with AI and about comic style child pornography material, and I have no problem with saying that that is absolutely disgusting.

Are pedophiles mentally ill humans that need help? Yes. Should they be pushed towards active pedophilia in any way, shape, or form? No. They should not. As psychologists studying sexual abuse prevention agree, even in the case of VCSAM.

A direct excerpt from the paper:

Should we be worried about escalation? The consumption of VCSAM does not prevent pedophilic individuals from future offending and can instead act as a progressive addiction (Maras & Shapiro 2017). Some CSAM offenders who engage in contact offending have suggested the contact offending was an extension of their online offending (Quayle & Taylor 2003). For example, in a recent study that applied Ward and Siegert’s (2002) pathways model to sexual offending of penetrative child sexual offenders, several offenders engaged in CSAM before resorting to contact offending. 12 One female offender, “commenced to use the internet…(time) to chat with other people… who gained sexual gratification from child pornography which led to the commission of the subject offences” (Osbourne & Christensen 2020, p. 13). The material has been argued to potentially serve as a gateway to contact offending (Maras & Shapiro 2017), as the offender may become desensitized to passive viewing, finding it to be insufficient over time (Schell et al. 2007). In line with the material being considered as a gateway, an offender might commence with masturbating to VCSAM material, then escalate to CSAM material (after becoming desensitized to VCSAM), before progressing on to act out impulses on children – in an attempt to experience the original level of gratification when first viewing VCSAM. Sullivan and Sheehan (2002) refer to the desensitization of images as the ‘fantasy escalation effect’ with the trajectory to engage in increasingly explicit videos and images (Sheehan & Sullivan 2010). Given that much of VCSAM material is computer generated, it allows for unlimited creativity in how child characters are abused compared with CSAM (e.g., movements and depictions that are not humanly possible in real life). In turn, offenders who escalate through the types of VCSAM, viewing unimaginable forms of bestiality and penetrative activity, might find themselves skipping the nudist, erotic, or posing forms of CSAM during their escalation, instead being drawn to the gross assault and sadistic CSAM. It is not, therefore, illogical to suggest that those who commence CSAM offending from VCSAM offending may be more desensitized and follow different offending trajectories compared with those who commence with CSAM offending, which could be explored in future research. While engaging with abusive material does not inevitably result in contact offending (Henshaw, Ogloff & Clough 2015), there are effects to the exposure of such. In their laboratory study, Paul and Linz (2008) found that participants exposed to ‘barely legal’ pornography (females depicted as under the age of consent), were quicker to recognize words with sexual connotations (after being primed with neutral images of female children) compared with participants who had been exposed to adult pornography (after being primed with neutral images of older-looking models). The authors concluded that the relationship between cognitions and the likelihood of acting on such, is complex (Paul & Linz 2008). While they argued the mere endorsement of sex-youth cognitive schema does not guarantee deviant action, the potential effects of deviant behavior from being exposed to such material cannot be outright rejected (Paul & Linz 2008). Paul and Linz (2008) suggest that extensive exposure can desensitize individuals to related behaviors and content. Given VCSAM is related in content to CSAM, the ongoing effects of exposure to VCSAM is an important avenue for future research

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://research.usc.edu.au/view/pdfCoverPage%3FinstCode%3D61USC_INST%26filePid%3D13161500130002621%26download%3Dtrue&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z9BkZ676Lb6_y9YP1YLqoQw&scisig=AFWwaeZERt0h_qC0HOcMzLh1ghdF&oi=scholarr

I am not religious…

You, on the other hand, are very good at making up arguments to put in my mouth.

Bye bye now

Oh great, somebody that doesn’t understand stats.

You know what else having access to violent video games correlates with that might be a bit more important than the video games themselves? Material wealth and higher standard of living. What happens to correlate with material wealth and higher standard of living? Less crimes of every single type.

Also I don’t agree with the way the body is being sexualized in the comment above mine, but there is a serious problem, still, with sexualization of characters that explicitly look like children but are “totally a 200 year old vampire bro”. This is especially true of anime and video games with anime-inspired artwork. I’m not saying that all video games or animes are like this. Nor am I saying that all gamers and anime fans are closet pedos. What I am saying is that there’s serious problems in these communities that must be addressed. The pushback in spite of my non-condemnation of the whole is kinda hilarious. I do understand how my first comment could be misinterpreted.

Never thought I’d get into an argument where somebody thought sexualization of minors was a good thing though, so I guess that’s a new experience at least.

Sorry didn’t realize that sexualizing children is fine as long as they’re virtual and could never possibly lead to increased numbers of child sexual assaults.

Not gamers. Closet pedos.

It’s like how not all anime is for closet pedos. But there’s certainly a whole fucking lot that needs to be named and shamed.

Hey pal, I’m also in my 20s and skibidi toilet is at least mildly entertaining.

Yay pseudoscience!!

There’s even a song!!

https://youtu.be/o7jlFZhprU4?si=T3KjJ526uBVTx6rb

Fun fact:

William Howard Taft, the 27th US president, had a custom-built bathtub installed in the White House to accommodate his size. The massive, porcelain tub was over seven feet long, 41 inches wide, and weighed a ton

I imagine the at least some portion of the criticism comes from irritated leftists as well. Harriet Tubman is basically a civ leader chosen to pander to and resonate with a certain US-centric audience, but it should be noted the lack of representation of actual African civilizations as compared to a continent like Europe. Here’s a couple maps to show what I mean:

https://i.redd.it/6hjvikrkwuu71.png

https://preview.redd.it/bc6rvax3m4851.png?auto=webp&s=6fb79dd4a68ce627fbd530d7105ef0385ca23d8c

It’s inherent imperialism and pandering that the same western countries are given so much love when there are so many really cool civs out there that haven’t been explored at all. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the African civilizations and city states that have made it into the game are centered (unsurprisingly) around the Mediterranean sea.

The problem is that these people have no way to pay their back taxes except rusted out old trucks and dilapidated huts. Then our billionaire overlords get away with murder even more despite actually having the resources to pay for their shit since it’s another is agent not working the big, difficult case.

This is a joke, right?

Like they put millions of dollars into a random video game on the hope, wish, qnd dream that not only does it get super popular, but it does so to the point that people with access to classified documents are willing to leak them in exchange for winning an argument?