No we can't even escape politics or political correctness by retreating into our virtual worlds:ITEM: Virtual Reality Haunted House Shut Down After SJW’s Brand It ‘Hurtful’ to Mentally IllFear VR, a virtual reality Halloween haunted house at California’s Great America and Knott’s Berry Farm, has been closed down just days after its launch following complaints that the hospital-set haunt was “hurtful to those who suffer from mental illness.”http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/09/29/virtual-reality-haunted-house-shut-down-after-sjws-brand-it-hurtful-to-mentally-ill/

Just found this thread; I see that it's over a month old (still on page 1 of off-topic, though.. wow this subforum doesn't see a lot of use). But I don't think enough was said here on the matter..The media has been demonizing neuro-divergent people for about as long as mental illness has been a concept; When people are too lazy to give their fictional villain a logical motive for their actions they just go "Oh he's evil because he's mentally ill. That's also his only personality trait." And IRL when someone commits any kind of violent crime, do people make any attempt to fix the laws and societal conditions that allowed that crime to happen? No, they just look for a mental illness to diagnose the criminal with, and write the whole incident off as "mental illness making people violent".Ableism is every bit as bad as racism, but people are only just now starting to stand up and speak out against it; If somebody made a VR experience where you get attacked by a bunch of mexicans or muslims or black people for absolutely no reason, don't you think that would get shut down just as quickly? And would you complain about it in that situation, too?P.S. - Opposing prejudice isn't political. Making up a derogatory word to label people who oppose prejudice and blaming THEM for ruining everything? THAT'S political.P.P.S. Every member of the human race has a responsibility to treat the people around them with the consideration and respect they deserve. Not just neurotypical people or any other privileged group, ALL good people. If your primary interest in VR is escaping that responsibility, you should probably seek mental help yourself.P.P.P.S. - I hope you realize that responsibility extends to any SHARED VR Spaces as much as it does the real world, so if you don't want to get banned from those spaces (with no refund), you'd better exercise a little "political correctness" while you're there. (Or just stick to SteamVR, since they don't have any objections to bigotry over there.)

I get sick of this political correctness boloney. There are colleges that have been offering a 24-hour hotline for students that have been offended by Halloween costumes. Og give me a break.

The problem is everything offends somebody. If we removed all forms of entertainment that offended someone then we'd have nothing left.

As a current healthcare management professional who spent several years overseeing business operations of a large mental health department for one of the largest health systems in the United States, I've had some experience working with scores of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, nursing staff and clinical social workers. They will tell you that mental health stigma is a very real thing, even within healthcare care organizations and among their clinical and support staff who should know better from first-hand experience, training and education. For example, mental health patients are commonly assumed to be inherently more dangerous than "regular" patients like those receiving primary or specialty care services, leading to a greatly increased demand for more defensive measures to protect staff from patients. However, we've found that actual data regarding historical disruptive behavior incidents does not support this view, as there were equally as many violent incidents in primary care settings as mental health. Consider, for example, patients presenting to their primary care provider or pharmacy for opioid refills, only to be denied due to dependency risks from overprescription. That's a pretty frequent setting for disruptive behavior. The patients are in pain and pain meds make them feel better. But opioids are also highly addictive and prone to have diminishing benefits to manage pain when over-used. Still, tell a patient in pain that and you have a possibly combustive situation.But I really have a hard time seeing a game, as this original topic describes, as fitting the bill for encouraging unhealthy stigma in the real world. For that, the game would have to have a setting that bears a resemblance to contemporary America and modern medicine. Instead, this appears to be a haunted hospital setting, probably one of which fits the classic imagination of the "institutionalized psych ward" (see American Horror Story: Season Two), which actually doesn't (legally) exist anymore in America, just as we no longer see doctors bloodletting patients in order to release demonic pathogens. So this is fantasy. Seems a bit like oversensitive hysteria, the like of which contributes to alarmists who blame violent video games for all that's wrong with society.

Hmmm I'm not sure about this .... I have seen this trend of outrage of people who are not really suffering themselves. A lot of outcry for veterans, where veterans are cool with something, a lot of outcry for minorities when minorities themselves are laughing at it. This scares me.Like Razr the maker of gaming peripherals posted a tweet alluding to "Suck my Dick" to Apple.I saw people on twitter going "This is homophobic!, It is an outrage" and they were heterosexual . While me a gay man and my gamer friends who are also gay found it hilarious. I dunno, I always fought my own fights didn't need a crowd of people who knew nothing about me or my issue to do it for me. Everyone is becoming the outrage person on the internet. "This is an outcry"....If it is an outcry my friends then go do something about it, volunteer at a local mental health facility, donate to a charity that supports mentally ill people. Make a real change, dont be a keyboard Hero thinking that simply by being outraged you are doing any good in the world by feeding your self serving entitled narcissistic tendencies.A bad analogy, so are Zombies misrepresented in the media? I mean they are human beings with a really bad skin condition, a speech impediment and mental illness with a taste for brains.

Political correctness invades the world of virtual reality

34 Replies

Greenfire32
Heroic Explorer
10 years ago
I wouldn't really call it an issue of political correctness, I'd call it more an issue of people being afraid of things they don't understand.

VR by nature has a more direct effect of this because...well when you're in VR...shit is REAL.

So it stands to reason that those who don't want VR would react more towards it than previous devices like...cell phones, or just any technology in general.
ColinB
Adventurer
10 years ago
Just wait until the little green people from Mars begin complaining about Elite, etc !
"Hurtful to Aliens", will be the cry and then these Forums will light up.
Actually we won't need the aliens to complain. Some politically correct sod will do it on their behalf.
Until then, may the force be with you.
TwoHedWlf
Expert Trustee
10 years ago

Greenfire32 said:

I wouldn't really call it an issue of political correctness, I'd call it more an issue of people being afraid of things they don't understand.

VR by nature has a more direct effect of this because...well when you're in VR...shit is REAL.

So it stands to reason that those who don't want VR would react more towards it than previous devices like...cell phones, or just any technology in general.

Except the VR isn't what they have an issue with. It's that the haunted house makes mentally ill people seem scary and dangerous.
CrashFu
Consultant
10 years ago
Just found this thread; I see that it's over a month old (still on page 1 of off-topic, though.. wow this subforum doesn't see a lot of use). But I don't think enough was said here on the matter..

The media has been demonizing neuro-divergent people for about as long as mental illness has been a concept; When people are too lazy to give their fictional villain a logical motive for their actions they just go "Oh he's evil because he's mentally ill. That's also his only personality trait." And IRL when someone commits any kind of violent crime, do people make any attempt to fix the laws and societal conditions that allowed that crime to happen? No, they just look for a mental illness to diagnose the criminal with, and write the whole incident off as "mental illness making people violent".

Ableism is every bit as bad as racism, but people are only just now starting to stand up and speak out against it; If somebody made a VR experience where you get attacked by a bunch of mexicans or muslims or black people for absolutely no reason, don't you think that would get shut down just as quickly? And would you complain about it in that situation, too?

P.S. - Opposing prejudice isn't political. Making up a derogatory word to label people who oppose prejudice and blaming THEM for ruining everything? THAT'S political.

P.P.S. Every member of the human race has a responsibility to treat the people around them with the consideration and respect they deserve. Not just neurotypical people or any other privileged group, ALL good people. If your primary interest in VR is escaping that responsibility, you should probably seek mental help yourself.

P.P.P.S. - I hope you realize that responsibility extends to any SHARED VR Spaces as much as it does the real world, so if you don't want to get banned from those spaces (with no refund), you'd better exercise a little "political correctness" while you're there. (Or just stick to SteamVR, since they don't have any objections to bigotry over there.)
Hiro_Protag0nist
MVP
10 years ago
Racism
Ableism
Neuro-divergent
Neurotypical

You have just gained the Stephen Hawking rank CrashFu lol
LZoltowski
Champion
10 years ago
Hmmm I'm not sure about this ....

I have seen this trend of outrage of people who are not really suffering themselves. A lot of outcry for veterans, where veterans are cool with something, a lot of outcry for minorities when minorities themselves are laughing at it. This scares me.

Like Razr the maker of gaming peripherals posted a tweet alluding to "Suck my Dick" to Apple.

I saw people on twitter going "This is homophobic!, It is an outrage" and they were heterosexual . While me a gay man and my gamer friends who are also gay found it hilarious.

I dunno, I always fought my own fights didn't need a crowd of people who knew nothing about me or my issue to do it for me. Everyone is becoming the outrage person on the internet. "This is an outcry"....

If it is an outcry my friends then go do something about it, volunteer at a local mental health facility, donate to a charity that supports mentally ill people. Make a real change, dont be a keyboard Hero thinking that simply by being outraged you are doing any good in the world by feeding your self serving entitled narcissistic tendencies.

A bad analogy, so are Zombies misrepresented in the media? I mean they are human beings with a really bad skin condition, a speech impediment and mental illness with a taste for brains.
inovator
Consultant
10 years ago
I get sick of this political correctness boloney. There are colleges that have been offering a 24-hour hotline for students that have been offended by Halloween costumes. Og give me a break.
Synthetic
Rising Star
10 years ago
PC'ness is discrimination
kojack
MVP
10 years ago
The problem is everything offends somebody. If we removed all forms of entertainment that offended someone then we'd have nothing left.
TwoHedWlf
Expert Trustee
10 years ago

kojack said:

The problem is everything offends somebody. If we removed all forms of entertainment that offended someone then we'd have nothing left.

Don't worry, we're getting there. The annual guy fawkes yelling to ban fireworks is at it's peak today for example...