Khell_Sennet:
Hard to say. Yes I can look at endless TV/Game gore and not be phased, and yet the sight of someone getting a needle in their arm (real, film, or otherwise) still makes me cover my eyes. Real life gore I don't take well to either, but it's not a thing about being desensitized. I simply know what's real and what's fake, and fake rarely phases me.

This.
Am I desensitised to video game violence? Mostly, yes.
Is video game violence the same as real life violence. Not by a long shot.

I can cheerfully detonate corpses in Diablo 2, but show me someone getting a needle and I'll look away

my motto towards the human race is some where in the realm of Fuck the Fuck off. so I can't see video games desensitize me anymore. I am a pacifist and really hate to watch or participate in RL violence but don't complain to me cause you'll just get the compulsory fuck off.

This is a question that has always bothered me, no one in this world can say their desensitized to violence unless you've actually seen a major violent thing happen around you. like TaboriHK says, desensitized to the concept, but not the execution most likely.

I'm not traumatized by more or less anything I see. I'm not so sure it's because I'm desensitized though; experience does play a part, but it's more a matter of my psyche. It can just handle stuff like that.

I'm going to have to say somewhere in the middle

There are scenes of horrific graphic gore that still hurt me to watch.

But I get a real thrill watching a movie where a guy shoots a rocket up a guy's butt.

So, in closing, I like action movies, not horror movies, although I did like Halloween 2 and Saw 1 :D

Asymptote Angel:
I'm not traumatized by more or less anything I see. I'm not so sure it's because I'm desensitized though; experience does play a part, but it's more a matter of my psyche. It can just handle stuff like that.

your psyche is built by experiences

I thought I was. Then I watched that video of the Indian commuter falling off a train. I was horrified.

For the most part, i am thoroughly desensetized. This doesn't mean i'll take violent actions against others. I feel great guilt when it comes to harming REAL people. See i can understand whats real and whats not. I'll curb stomp a puppy into hell if its made up of pixels, but i won't so much as throw a melicious glance at a tree.
Watching terrable things also seems to have a dulled feeling on me. I can watch just about anything, even if its real, but i'm always aware when something is wrong.

When I know the violence is fake (ie, video-game, movie, T.V.) it doesn't affect me.

But If I see real life violence it is still rather disturbing.

I can see people get vivisected and decapitated, and see blood and guts and bloody little meats chunks fly everywhere in a video-game or movie and it doesn't bother me in the slightest since I know that it's fake.
But if I see footage of a war-torn zone on the news or some kind of documentary or something and I see people being mangled, it does make me quite uncomfortable.

No, not really. I mean, I can't take it when someone in front of me (in real life) gets punched. Though, in fiction, I'm generally alright with violence and language... atmosphere is a different thing.

I am part of the majority! I don't enjoy real violence! Hurrah!

i dout some things really bother me as much as people say they should but dont actively hunt down stuff like rotten dot come or anything just to see sick and depraved stuff.

If anything i would say the TV new desensitized me cause all it is , is death and other "important" topics that , most people find offensive if it was in any other form of media.

Video Games are not real, that is why it's fun to kill lots of babies, hookers, and prists in them. IRL if a hardcore gamer came across a dead body or something like that it would scar (most of) us for life...

klc0100:
Yes but I cant blame video games for it.

I'm in this boat.

I've been desensitized just through our environment. People just don't care about violence as long as we know it's fake.

Hell the only things that actually affect me are the over-the top things and instead of going "ew" I go "AWESOME!"

Like with the Bloody Mess perk on Fallout.

Again with a middle of the road answer (that actually uses the word middle) this skews the results. and makes the answer of the poll questionable.

"Are you desensitized?" "Kind of, I play GTA but I would never look at a surgical proceeding"

What does that mean? Either it is "kind of, I am noticeably less concerned about violence and physical injury than most people" or "kind of, I play FPS games but I cry when I step on a caterpillar"

If you split the middle vote down the middle, this poll demonstrates nothing but a split opinion. If you eliminate the middle" response I think people would read it as a case of absolutes and most of them would likely answer No because they realize that there are socially governed boundaries which they respect to.

And for all those people who said yes, how many of you if say you were a lawyer or police officer, could sit through a video of a serial killer chopping the limbs off a liver baby without feeling some sense of disgust or empathetic pain? This is why I call bullshit on anyone who answered yes to this question.

I can gun down legions without thought. I can chainsaw a locust in half and laugh. I can break an innocents neck over a pool cue with no mercy. I can shoot a man in the head and feel nothing but a slight satisfaction. I can send loyal men to a grave. I can commit genocide without a second thought.

But I had serious trouble dissecting a fish in Biology.

Weird, ent it.

Though I did laugh at the part in Saving Private Ryan where the soldier is looking for his own arm, finds then jogs off in slow motion. Am I alone here or what?

I find it difficult to watch graphic depictions of violence against children or animals. I think I'd be a bit worred by anybody who didn't have ANY problem with this kind of thing, unless they were so emotionally detached that they couldn't relate to the realism of whatever they were watching. If they actually enjoyed this kind of scene, in a way that doesn't relate to technical admiration but was something more instinctive, I'd think there was something seriously wrong with them.

Weirdly, I can stomach the most brutal violence or rape scenes without turning a hair, maybe because most often nowadays they seem to be played to be as outrageous and over-the-top as possible. Witness the blood-spurting limbs in "Kill Bill" for example. Even films like "Hostel" (which I thought was hugely underrated by the way) I can take without blanching, and that's pretty gory at times. It's the "innocent victim" thing that gets me.

I find the term "absence makes the heart grow fonder" captures the essence of the emotional reactions your talking about. It's like the fact I've had a life many would consider "brutal" (nothing to brag about). As an example I was severly burnt when I was 9, airlifted to the hospital and spent 3 weeks in the ICU Burn Ward.... it kinga goes on like this till the most recent true hardship being Katrina destroying my house. Ofcourse these things made me cry, but honestly it was for just a few tears. Then after a few years of a "good" life I was watching Horton Hears a Who and found myself crying like a little girl at the end..... and no... I'm not a pussy (referse back to the begining of the paragraph).

TaboriHK:
I've never seen real life violence on the scale that I do in fiction. I would guess 99% of people here haven't either. So this isn't really a question we can answer. Am I desensitized to the concept of violence? Absolutely. Am I desensitized to the execution of violence? Most likely not.

This is exactly what I was going to say. i see things everyday that disturb me in the real world. Playing violent games and watching violent movies is passe' but seeing someone roll through the ER with a bullet would in his throat that's making him vomit blood all over the floor would be more than enough to disturb anyone here if they were close enogh to get some on their shoe.