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Comment by earthboundkid | Hacker News Reader

Filming this seems like a really dumb idea? I mean, maybe the Troubles weren't as bad yet as they would get in the 80s, but still seems like broadcasting this would have been very likely to ignite more conflict in Ireland and even copycat violence in Scotland. It would be like making a movie where R Anon marches on the White House to assassinate imposter President John Bidden and not expecting it to cause some crazy person to use it as a blueprint. It's just irresponsible. As a book? Okay, maybe, sure, you can explore dangerous ideas in a book. But making a BBC movie is really inviting disaster.

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Why is TV worse than a book? This line of thinking used against gangster rappers back in the day as well. Seems to me that the depiction of violence in movies can serve as an example of how bad violence is and how it affects people.

> Why is TV worse than a book?

Because of the reach. The percentage of the population that routinely read is small, really surprisingly small. The percentage that watch broadcast 'television' content (whether that be OTA or streaming or whatever) is high. As we've seen recently there's a bunch of people out there who have the propensity to do literally whatever they see someone else doing on the screen, tide pod challenge, devious licks, you name it, if they see someone else doing it then they'll do it too.

I'm not a censorious person at heart but you do have to be very cognizant about what's being broadcast to your population because it's surprisingly easy to stir up enough people to cause issues, especially if they're already stressed, and Northern Ireland in the 80s was a desperately poor and grim place.

You may have it backwards though. A book is around damn near forever and has potential to reach way more people than a TV show.

You say that I 'may' have it backwards - do you personally think I have it backwards, or are you just raising the possibility that I 'may' have it backwards?

Just interested to know if you're actually contending here that broadcast media has, in general, less of an immediate and direct reach than literature.

>It would be like making a movie where R Anon marches on the White House to assassinate imposter President John Bidden and not expecting it to cause some crazy person to use it as a blueprint.

Actually, it's worse than that; the SNP is specifically named (as opposed to the "Alba Freedom Party" or somesuch), and the terrorists have (based on the plot on Wikipedia) some fringe but real connection to the party. I presume that the writers had in mind Sinn Fein's role as the legal, public face of the IRA.

Nitpick:

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'bad', but the 1970s, were the bloodiest times of the Troubles; 1972 being the worst. The 80s were comparatively 'less violent'. At least in terms of civilian killed.

I guess I was thinking of that time the IRA almost got Thatcher, but yeah, either way it's tossing gasoline onto a fire to be like "what if Scotland too?"

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