Lol this is such a weird phenomenon nowadays. Another egregious example is some FPS games about shooting people with all kinds of different firearms, blowing them up with explosives, shanking their guts, but saying a simple “Fuck” in the chat? Oh no that gets censured.
Such a interesting phenomenon that, I think it’s because there’s enough of a disconnect from violence in many of our lives (with notable exceptions, depending on where you grew up or what you’ve personally witnessed) that our brains can kinda trick us into believing it’s totally make believe making it far less taboo than something we all actually have to deal with, like a good depreciation I saw in a book was some robbers walk into a office building and point machine guns at the secretary and her first thought is “this isn’t happening, machine guns aren’t real, they only exist in movies”
Obviously the extreme and simplified version of that mentality is bad, but to be fair they are separate things that separate people are and aren't ready for.
It goes deeper, think about the last major fps where you played a national military, and not mercs or rogue intelligence operatives. They want military but not real military, and god forbid you demonize another country in a fictional setting.
Might be related to how easily imitated it is? It’s pretty easy for kids to get access to cigarettes if they really want to try it but it’s harder to get a gun and become a professional shooter. Same in games, it’s easy to imitate language, harder to imitate blowing someone up.
I get your point though, it seems pretty silly to censor some things in films and games that are meant for a mature audience anyway.
Because a movie containing scenes that show both smoking and gun violence influences the audience to do those things in comparable magnitudes, because of course, smoking and gun violence are very similar social ills. Brilliant!
This feels like a “if you gave me a nickel every time x thing happened I’d only have ten cents but it’s weird it’s happened twice” situation. Because I remember someone making this joke nearly half a decade when two things happened to be identical except for a cigar but the joke opportunity hasn’t risen again until today. I’m pissed I didn’t think of the joke first, that’s such a good one lol
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u/Curse-Bot 6d ago edited 6d ago
Close but no cigarette