They've All Got It Influence

Who likes retreading old ground? Okay! Okay! Wow, I didn't expect such a blushingly enormous response! Haggard old ground it is.

Technically, I haven't walked these familiar peaks before, but it's an age-old debate that I am weighing into with metaphorical armour glimmering like a gold tooth in a TV presenter's lubed-up mouth.

It is the question of influence, my friends, that we must gather around to warm our brains upon like a gang of moths menacingly clustered around a gaudy raver.

How much we are influenced by our surroundings and by our own culture is a difficult question. For instance, violent films and computer games are often associated with creating knock-on real world violence.

There is little doubt that short-term changes come from engaging in violent media. Aggression levels can rise like a salty, scampish Kraken from the depths. This is entirely understandable - after all, that's why we watch films and play games: to become emotionally involved.

However, the evidence suggests that effects are inconclusive at best for short term effects beyond the youngest ages, and for long term effects at any age. I'm not definitively saying there's no link at all, because there are so many conflicting studies. This recent study found strongly for an association between violent media and aggression... though it's also worth noting there are strong objections to its methodology. I do suggest that there certainly isn't enough weight of evidence to establish a causative link.

Enough studies Nash, you wazz-monger! you screech at me, like a demented harpy with a bee in its undercrackers, gimme something I can digest now!

Very well, terrifying reader! Now what I reckon, like a modern-day Socrates or Jeremy Kyle, is that the reason some short-term influence can be seen in younger people, beyond which the evidence peters out like Andy Murray's tennis success, is that they have more difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. It doesn't affect them long term, because they continue to experience real life and discover how different it is (i.e. as different as a carrot is from the planet Uranus. Insert awful food-ruining joke here).

If it is distinguishing fantasy from reality that is the issue, then one good way to see if there's anything in that theory is to see whether mistruths that are packaged as truths do have short- and long-term effects. Put on your 3D glasses... now.

Ho and belold, they do. This is why propaganda works: mistruths packaged as reality are consumed, and leave a lasting effect, even the evidence after the event points to the contrary. For instance, my grandmother stills hates the Japanese based on propaganda stories, and people still blow themselves up in crowded areas or picket AIDS funerals because they've been told it's what their deity wants, never once considering that if that's what their deity wants, then he's kind of a hairy nadsack.

How many people still believe that the MMR jab causes autism, despite the utter dismemberment of the false "evidence"? A myriad harmful beliefs in the same vein (pun definitely intended) abound, simply because they've been sold as truth, like a bottle of warm hedgehog's urine sold as mulled cider.

The real danger comes from the fact that if you are sold something as truth, society's understanding and morals somehow no longer apply. People who believe everything they read in the Daily Mail end up in the EDL, fighting a non-existent battle that ends up with them causing criminal damage and spreading fear, ironically fuelling inter-racial tensions and creating the problem they were complaining about. Like a sit-in to protest laziness, or bathing in a bath of beans to complain about food-wastage.

In comparison a posited small, short-term effect from violent entertainment media seems insignificant and relatively harmless. After all, even if there are short-term aggression levels, the overwhelmingly morals of society should still engage, forcing the would-be violence-hurlers to re-evaluate their actions based on what they know to exist. I.e., they say I could go and kick a cricketer in the hips, but mam wouldn't like that one bit - and it's only a bit of fun off of the Weetabox, so it ain't worth it no sirree bob sir no sir bobbles.

What the world really needs, rather than censure in this regard, is a crash-course in critical thinking. And also great big hugs. Perhaps with a billboard campaign: "Are you man enough to girrus a hug?"

These are the tenets that I'll be running for prime minister on. Vote Nash 2014!


Fun Fake Facts

It is illegal for people in a relationship to eat Bachelor's Supernoodles without at least considering adultery first.

The mission to lubricate Mexico and North America has, according to BP, had 'unexpected side-effects'.

The Two-Storey Snail is the only breed with a cellar. Though not, obviously, a cellar of salt.

Human clones all became avant-garde musicians, until scientists realised they were growing them in a Jean-Michel Jar.

The Blue Whale is actually a bright yellow. It is, however, very depressed.

Tunbridge Wells has the country's 1st hip-hop school. Pupils failing "raptitude tests" are sent to "rhymedial classes".

When Chris Moyles dies, to save money on funeral costs they intend to use his arteries to nail his coffin shut.

Cricketing low: running out of balls in the 2004 Ashes final and having to bowl fruit from the umpire's shopping bag.