Symbolic acts of violence are all around us but when we direct a virtual character to commit a heinous crime, or if we rip (or delete) a photograph of someone we hate, our malicious intentions are morally wrong. Our virtual acts of violence are not innocent, writes Christopher Bartel as part of a series with Aesthetics for Birds.

Is it ever morally wrong to commit violent or immoral acts in a video game? Video games are just images, right? No matter what I do in a video game, I am just interacting with images, and harming an image doesn’t cause any real-world harm. So, all of my actions in games must be morally neutral. This is a perfectly reasonable (and common) line of thought. But I think it’s wrong. Here’s why.

Forget about video games for a moment. Let me ask you a different question: is it ever morally wrong to harm a photograph? Photographs are just glossy pieces of paper that share a visual resemblance to people, places, and things. Like video games, photographs are just images.