Studies show playing video games raises short term aggression. But we have no hard data on the long term causative relationship between video games and violence, because it’s very difficult to cause patients to play video games for many years. I sure hope people are learning some of their moral values around violence from video games. I hope Wolfenstein makes people more violent towards neo-Nazis. I hope Horizon makes people more violent towards tech CEOs. I hope Subnautica makes people want to protect nature.

Now I’m going to cite Humm et al., (2020)'s insights into the psychology of first-time CSAM offenders. Most first-time CSAM offenders are unaware that what they’re doing is a crime, and they have doubts about the harmfulness of what they’re doing. In other words, they’re exactly the kind of people who tend to use the fauxbait community, and in fact they have a lot in common with people in this thread such as yourself.

Nonetheless, as a factor motivating onset, such exposure, or ‘opportunity’, is thought to have a ‘greater impact’ on an individual’s likelihood of viewing CEM than pathological motivations or drivers such as overpowering sexual urges

In other words, if you see this kind of porn by accident and you don’t think it’s that bad, you’re more likely to go on to become an online-only child sex offender.