OP
OP
I think you seem to be misunderstanding the relationship between media and perspective. Comments like yours are not uncommon in these kinds of discussions and I think they stem from a fundamental miscommunication over why media how influence. I'll take a crack at it.
To say that media is an influential tool doesn't mean that media is going to make you do things or is going to make anyone replicate something they saw in media. This is a scare tactic that has plagued media of every medium. Violent children cartoons, pornography, video games, what have you. There is no causation whatsoever between somebody seeing something shown in media and then deciding it's a good idea to do it and go do it.
Anybody who peddles these sort of concepts is objectively wrong. It's not even a conversation worth having. Your hunting example is great because I actually have the same experience. I hate hunting. I hate animal cruelty. My SO has been vegan for 10+ years. But hunting is my favorite part of Red Dead Redemption 2 and it's something I spent more time doing than anything else. This obviously does not mean I love killing animals, or that I have been desensitized to killing, and that I am going to start killing things because I enjoyed doing it in a video game.
I want to be perfectly clear on this because when people examine and criticize the influence media has on its audience, this is almost never what they are describing. If there was any truth to this, everybody on this board would be a mass murderer and we'd all be posting from prison.
Examining the impact of media is really rooted in two concepts:
1) The first is the idea that media reinforcing certain ideas strong enough basis to credit or condemn it for doing so. I love God of War 2018 because of how it portrays a father trying to open himself up to his son's virtues. These are themes that really speak to me and I find valuable. I like the ideas reinforced in this story and think they are meaningful for players to experience. This is a reason I think God of War 2018 is good: because it reinforces feelings and ideas I think are good ones. The same is true for games I do not like. I don't like BioShock Infinite because of the way it depicts the relationship between oppression and rebellion. I think it reinforces ideas that actions performed from both contexts are morally synonymous. These are not values I think are good ones, so they are not themes I like. This is something I think BioShock Infinite is really bad at, despite liking it for some other things.
This is to say that when media says something, whether that thing is good or bad, it is present and meaningful to evaluate. It doesn't matter if it has consequences, necessarily, because you can feel that a piece of media is good or bad even if the consequences are nonexistent. Media that portrays certain ideas becomes representative of those ideas. So if those ideas are good, that says something about the game, and if the game is bad, that says something too.
So when somebody says "this video game is has racist themes" it should not be confused with "this video game will make you racist." The fact a piece of media embodies a certain idea is enough to warrant praise or criticism as appropriate.
2) Media can and does affect the way people think or feel about certain kinds of stimulus. This much is irrefutable. It is literally the basis for all of marketing and propaganda. If media could not sell you on an idea, neither of these things would exist because they'd have no affect at all.
But like I said above, seeing a commercial for recreational water vehicles is not going to make me go like this:
Nobody is that gullible.
What media does do is immerse you with messages and ideas that affect the conclusions you come to. This is why cigarette advertising focused so much on how cool it supposedly made you to smoke. Kool brand cigarettes, the Marlboro Man, Joe the Camel, etc. By reinforcing the idea that cigarettes were cool and rebellious, people who wanted to feel cool and rebellious wanted to smoke. This is how media works.
This is depicted rather humorously in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is inspired by 1930s serials that Steven Spielberg used to watch as a kid. These characters were larger than life heroes to him. When it came time for him to create his own hero, he modeled them after these sort of characters. In The Last Crusade, Young Indy is saved by an older, cooler, and already established archetype that he would go on to emulate his entire life. The character gives him their hat, which Indiana Jones wears for the rest of his life.
I've always found this depiction really fascinating because of how the scene reflects Steven Spielberg's desire to emulate the heroes he used to watch as a kid in his own work. Steven Spielberg and Indiana Jones were both given ideas and images of what it meant to be cool and independent and adventurous. The maturation of Indiana Jones as a character is a reinforcement of those ideals.
So when we criticize video games and other media for the ideas they reinforce, we don't do this because we think somebody is going to say "Wow! Time to start killing!" But media contributes to abstract ideas and thought processes that can, and will, affect your own way of thinking. You will not be susceptible to everything equally, and you have a ton of control over the media you consume, but this is why it's important to consume media consciously. What are the ideas you're immersing yourself in? Can you at least identify them? These are questions worth asking yourself.
If I had to summarize it as succinctly as possible, it would be as such: media does not affect your actions, but it can affect your way of thinking. The fact that it can be leveraged to do so consistently and effectively by brands, institutions, and interests is why we should be as conscious as possible about the ideas we immerse ourselves in.
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