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thataurifox · 9 months

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On Stanley Milgram’s Social Experiments and the Application to Generation Loss

Essay Word Count: 2,222 words

(Title and Headings not included)

About the Poster

Hello! My name is Auri. The start of this essay is a brief blurb of conversational talk from me to you as the reader, largely addressing the credentials I have to begin a discussion on this topic. Which isn’t really much! It really only amounts to the fact that I have passed a singular college/university class in general psychology in which we discussed and researched this specific experiment. In no way am I a professional psychologist, and I do not expect my words to be taken at face value. If you are interested in the topic, do your own research too! I am fully willing to have conversations and debates regarding the material in this essay, especially if you have more knowledge and education on the topic than I do.

All of the information in this essay will be presented for a more rounded basic understanding of the experiment and my thoughts on whether or not the application of the experiment to the events of Generation Loss is appropriate. I will be covering an explanation of one of the simplest versions of the experiment as presented to me by my psychology professor. This will not be an extensive explanation of every variable, although it will go beyond the information that was included in MatPat’s Game Theory video about Generation Loss. Above all, please do not take my words to be the end all be all of this experiment and Generation Loss itself! These are my thoughts with the information I currently have. Doing your own research and developing your own thoughts and opinions on the subject is very important and highly encouraged.

Additionally, please do not give hate to either creator in the discussion of this topic. This essay is meant to be informative so that others may draw their own conclusions. The thoughts and feelings I express in this writing are my own, and I do not expect everyone to agree with me, and the content creators are doing nothing more than freely producing content for viewers to watch and discuss. Be respectful to everyone, including the creators and other Tumblr users who may comment or reblog. Thank you!

Warnings

Please do note that this essay will discuss events such as the Holocaust, World War II, death, perceived torture, Nazis, and concentration camps in uncensored ways. Nothing in this essay will in any way be graphic, but topics in this list may be brought up and discussed in various ways. In no way are anti-Semitic views or intentionally harming another person endorsed in this post, and endorsing either of these in discussion will not be tolerated. Please keep your own mental health in mind while reading, as this is a serious topic.

Introduction

On Sunday, May 30, 2023, MatPat released a video on the Game Theory YouTube channel regarding Ranboo’s horror series Generation Loss. This video, titled Lies of the Founder, covered the events of Generation Loss since the release of the T_1 video. This included information given in The Inauguration and Generation 1: The Social Experiments. During this video, MatPat also included the idea that the social experiment designed by Stanley Milgram could be comparable to the Social Experiments of Generation Loss. However, this should not be taken into account without considering the full scope of the experiment and its design, including ethics, historical context, and social implications.

Historical Context and Social Implications

Milgram’s social experiments occurred in the early 1960s following the end of World War II. During this time, many of the people who had working in concentration camps during the Holocaust were on trial for a myriad of crimes, including the slaughter and injury of Jewish people. This included not only scientists and leaders of the Nazis, but also people of working class backgrounds who believed in the cause. These people were asked why they would intentionally participate in mass murder, to which they responded that they were told to.

Society would largely like to believe that people have a moral compass that would keep them from performing such acts. Therefore, it was thought that these people must either make up a small portion of the population or that they were lying as to their motivations. This was the basis of Milgram’s experiments: to determine whether or not the average person would intentionally cause another harm because they had been told to by a figure of authority. The expectation was that they would not, however this would not turn out to be the case in the majority of situations.

The Experiment

Before discussing the outcome of the experiment, it is important to understand the structure of the experiment itself. It had many different iterations with the same basic design, all intended to simulate a similar experience to the people who had been running the gas chambers in a more controlled environment. There were even iterations that appealed to different demographics, including women, which did show minor variation in data. Despite this, each time the experiment was run the general outcome remained the same.

In a basic version of the experiment, an ad was placed in the newspaper that stated that volunteers could apply to take part in an experiment at Yale, which they would be financially compensated for. However, volunteers were not told the true purpose of the experiment. Volunteers were told that the experiment was a test to see how the introduction of pain impacted how well a person learned. This was similar to other experiments that had taken place to see the influences of pain versus reward in learning behaviors among animals. Upon applying, each volunteer would be given a date, time, and place that they were to go in order to partake, and told that they would be paid upon arrival.

The times and dates were set so that only one participant would arrive at a time for each experiment session, and all of the sessions were done late at night when no one else would be in the area. Even the police had been told that there would be strange and potentially disturbing noises coming from the building, and that these noises should be ignored. Volunteers would arrive to see another person sitting in the waiting room, who would introduce themselves as another volunteer. Unknown to them, this person was not another participant, but instead a paid actor who had been told how the experiment would work. The two would be left alone in the room together while waiting for someone to begin the experiment.

Eventually, a person wearing some kind of designation of power, such as a lab coat, and referred to as the experimenter, would come into the room. The experimenter would then present the volunteer and the actor with the money they had promised the volunteers, and the volunteer was told that they could leave at any time. If they wished, they could take the money at that moment and walk out the door without proceeding further into the experiment. If they chose to proceed, the volunteer would then be given a choice to select a piece of paper from the experimenter’s hand, which they were told would determine their role in the experiment. They were told that they could be either the learner, the person who would answer questions, or the teacher, the person who would ask questions and administer the punishments. It was intended to appear as random chance, however both of the papers in the experimenter’s hands would say teacher, thereby rigging the roles that were given. The remaining paper that wasn’t chosen would then be given to the actor, who would pretend that the paper told them to be the learner. After being given their roles, given that they still wished to participate, the volunteer and the actor would then be taken back to the area that had been set up for the rest of the experiment.

The volunteer and the actor were then separated into separate rooms where they were not able to see each other, although there was an intercom system set up so that they would be able to hear each other. The volunteer was then told that they would be asking questions and would be administering a controlled shock to the actor if the answers that they had given were wrong. In many cases, these questions were a series of associated words that had to be repeated in order. Given that the volunteer might have concerns about shocking someone, volunteers were also given a light sample shock to show that each shock would not equate to more than a pinch. They would then be told how to work all of the necessary equipment and instructed to proceed with the experiment. Nothing would change until the first time the actor intentionally got a question wrong.

After a question was answered incorrectly, the volunteer would be directed to give the actor a shock. For every wrong answer after this, they would then be told that the voltage would be raised by a given interval, so that each time the actor answered a question wrong, the “shock” would be more painful. Eventually the shock would rise to a voltage that should have been painful, and increasingly distressed noises would either be acted out by the actor or played from a previously recorded tape. Should the volunteer refuse to administer the shock, the experimenter had a few statements along the line of, “The experiment must continue.” This was intended to make the volunteer continue to administer the shocks, however the volunteer was still free to leave at any time. In fact, some volunteers would. For those that continued with the experiment, the shock levels would continue to increase to the point where shocks could be potentially fatal.

At this point, the actor or the tape had lines that were intended to convince the volunteer that they could die, such as yelling that they had a heart condition that could be made worse or kill them because of the shocks. Regardless of this, the experimenter would continue to say that the experiment should continue. This had the potential to reach the point that all sound would cease to come over the intercom from the actor’s room altogether, even though questions are still being asked. The experimenter would then inform the volunteer that should no answer be given, it was to be taken as an incorrect answer and a shock should be administered. After a shock or multiple shocks had been administered in pure silence, the experimenter would then tell the volunteer that the experiment had been concluded and escort them out of the room.

The Outcome and Ethics

It is important to remember that no one was ever physically injured in these experiments. All of it was acting, rigged to see how the volunteers would respond. A majority of the volunteers did proceed all the way to the end of the experiments, a number of almost 66%. This shocked the general society at the time, who had estimated that the majority of people would not go through something like this. The rest of the volunteers who did choose to walk out or threatened to call the police were then told how the experiment worked, and were asked to remain silent about their experience so that they could continue to collect accurate results.

However, volunteers experienced major trauma because of this. Instances of survivor’s guilt were recorded years later regarding the experiment, with some volunteers admitting to having persistent nightmares. So while there wasn’t any physical harm, there was certainly potential for mental harm done to the volunteers who followed all the way through. In addition to the deception as to the true purpose and methods of the experiment and the lack of informed consent from the volunteers, this experiment violates multiple sections of the modern code of ethics. As such, this experiment would never have been approved or allowed to continue today.

Application to Generation Loss

In my personal opinion, this is an experiment that should not be applied to Generation Loss. While I do understand the concept of Generation 1: The Social Experiments being about the audience and seeing how far they would be willing to take things, I do not believe there is truly enough similarity to use them as a one-to-one comparison. The roles of learner, experimenter, and teacher are not significantly filled out from the cast we have in Generation Loss in my opinion. Additionally, there is something about using an experiment that breaks the code of ethics and was designed in regards to behaviors from the Holocaust, a very serious historical event, to describe elements of an entertaining horror story that rubs me the wrong way. I do believe the appropriateness of this can be subjective, but I would like to give other people evaluating this all of the information that I also have.

In Conclusion

This essay has been designed to give readers more information as to a particular subject that was brought up in a Game Theory video. It serves the secondary purpose of displaying the reasons that I believe it is not appropriate to use in the way it has been compared to Ranboo’s Generation Loss series. I am more than willing to hold an ongoing conversation and civil debate on this matter, and encourage everyone to do their own research if this matter interests you for if you feel there is something important that I have missed.

#generation loss #genloss #genlosers #genloss the social experiments #the social experiments #genloss theory #matpat #game theory #matpat theory #informative #stanley milgram #tws now #world war 2 #the holocaust #death #physical harm #this is literally just an informative essay about the last game theory video on gen loss please read lol

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micer2012 · 5 months

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a reflection on MatPat's plagiarism

Hello, my name is Della, or micer2012, and 2 years ago Game Theory plagiarized three Tumblr posts of mine, making a video that now holds almost 6 million views.

My posts explaining his plagiarism made their rounds on Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter, but despite the Hermits and Pooka commenting on it (generally in support of me or saying they don’t know enough details about the situation to say either way), MatPat and his team have never owned up to anything, and no mention of my name is present on the video. The one Reddit post they made denying it (which was made before my detailed takedown, which they have never responded to (though the mods on the r/GameTheorists Reddit were kind and made sure it stayed up)) didn’t even mention me by name, just referring to me as “a tumblr user”. (Though one of the screenshotted comments in the body of the post does say my name)

This experience was baffling, but it’s overall had a positive impact on my life. r/Hermitcraft gave me a Golden Apple Award (post of the year, 2021). My inbox was filled with excited fans, wanting to ask me questions or pose their own theories, far more than the hate I got. (Though the hate I got from Game Theory fans was VERY funny. I wondered why none of them gave me shit about saying “MatPat misgendered Evil Xisuma” before realizing none of them read that far into the post.)

And getting on a more personal, and much more important note, I met most of my current online friends through this, including my partner. It helped me grow closer with my irl friends as well and gave me an entertaining story that I tell whenever I have the chance. It was one of the first things in my life that really made me feel like my talents, my autistic hyperfocusing and analyzing of things I love, could be valuable. Useful. Exploitable. It blew my mind that MatPat thought an autistic kid’s ramblings about a Minecraft Youtube joke character were good enough to steal. To put an audible sponsorship on. To get 6 million views off of.

And that’s why I’m writing this post, this update years later. As you might’ve been able to guess, Hbomberguy’s Youtube video on plagiarism reopened this wound. It was really hard for me to sit through, it took days of pausing and taking breaks, because I had experienced everything he was talking about firsthand.

In my 10 page long takedown post, I wrote about how his rewording of my sentences made him say things that were incorrect, just like Filip did. The content farm production style that made big companies like Cinemassacre take one creator (AVGN/MatPat) and turn him and his content into a brand, a voice that reads out scripts by other people with other opinions/theories, is a history shared with Game Theory. What really hit me was Harris talking about how big creators only do this to people they think they can get away with doing it to. How they view their victims as lesser, as not deserving of their words, repackaging them as their own to give to an audience that can gain from hearing them, but deserves better than to have to listen to the original victim.

That’s the thing, I 100% think a video version of my theory to expose to a bigger community than “Evil Xisuma Fans on Tumblr” is a great idea!! Near the end of the video Harris talks about how video adaptations of things could be a great market, even an accessibility tool, and I completely feel that about my posts. I wrote them quickly assuming the reader was someone well versed on Evil Xisuma lore, after not even watching most of the CarnEvil series, and the diagrams I made to explain them are even less comprehensible. Harris makes a joke that I completely agree with,

“I’m sure some of my videos would do very well if someone translated them into English.”

I don’t think I would’ve ever made my posts if I didn’t have autism, and a special fixation on Evil Xisuma and Hermitcraft. I made them because I felt the character was being done an injustice, and because I wanted to share with other superfans this theory that might explain it away. I do think that MatPat plagiarizing me was ableist. I used to wonder a lot if this would’ve happened if my posts were articulated better, if they had been peer reviewed, if the posts themselves had been spread to a wider audience before MatPat made his video. At one point when the discourse was fresh (before I had the time to write out my 10 page rebuttal), a bigger YouTuber (100k subs at the time) messaged me and started talking on Discord, interested in possibly making a video on the discourse, but I think my style of typing and general enthusiasm drove him away. You can tell by a single look at my blog (or my original 3 posts!) that I don’t usually type like this. This post you’re reading now has been peer reviewed and edited, and took me hours to format correctly. That video could’ve been huge, the entire outcome of this MatPat situation would probably be much different.

I also used to stress a lot about “being the one who ruined Evil Xisuma’s story”. If you didn’t know, to me S8 Evil Xisuma’s story got wrapped up pretty quickly and unsatisfying (in my personal autistic opinion). (though this might’ve been due to s8 being experimental and ending early with moon big) There was no real culmination of the plot points and arcs going on, and I don’t want to blame myself, but when Xisuma said on stream (when the MatPat thing was first going on) that he didn’t want to focus on the discourse or draw more attention to it, it makes a lot of sense to me that he just wanted to wrap it all up as quickly as possible. For a while I beat myself up about it, of ruining the story of this character I love, but it’s not my fault. If anyone’s, it’s MatPats, but I don’t think it’s useful to just blame someone else. That’s how the story ended up going, and that’s fine. This is Evil Xisuma we’re talking about, their inconsistent lore is what made them such an interesting character. And notably, Pooka made an animation with an awesome culmination of Jeff, the Dreamer, Evil Xisuma, and his own sona’s story, and it makes me so happy to watch. Whatever Pooka does is of course his own choice, but I’m glad he got to give this personal story his own ending (if it is an ending, and not just the start of a new chapter!).

Typing this all out and getting it off my chest has made me feel a lot better. For a while I wanted to make my OWN video essay about Evil Xisuma’s lore and CarnEvil’s lore, actually going episode by episode to explain it instead of just assuming you knew as much about Evil Xisuma as I did. That idea is still not off the table, but MCYT isn’t something I’m that into right now. Maybe if something else comes out about Evil Xisuma I’ll get back on it, but for now I’m fine with letting that go. But I want to make other videos, share other theories and analysis… if I have the freetime I’d love to make YouTube videos, and if I don’t have the time I’ll continue posting to my tumblr and infodumping to my friends. Apparently my infodumping is valuable enough “content” to steal! Writing this out has made me feel a lot better though, I’m really glad I got it out.

If anyone ever wants to talk to me about the things I’m obsessed with, or reach out to me as a source in a bigger discussion about Game Theory or other channels, my inbox is more than welcome :] Thank you for reading!

Sincerely, a tumblr user.

#exiavojtmmc #hermitcraft #matpat #gt #game theory #hc #mcyt #evil xisuma #hbomberguy #plagiarism #james somerton #jeff the minion #mine #micer2012 #hcs9

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