Quote:
Originally Posted by Ari
While often ignored more people are starting to talk about the main component in most mass murders, Men. Beyond mental illness it seems to be the one similarity that is so skewed to one side there's no way it can be ignored, unless some of these same men are in power. There seems to be a heavy genetic component to many mental illnesses that impacts XY worse or in a different way than XX. I do wonder if certain violent behavior should be classified separately from other mental illnesses, as there are plenty of non-violent women and men with mental illnesses and some people that get violent at the drop of a hat.
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It's not just men. It's overwhelmingly middle class white men who commit mass murders, which seems to indicate that there's a big cultural factor to it. So much so, it's apparently so expected that the whole stupid public discourse tends to focus not on the obvious common factors, but on specific individual traits that set them apart. This one isn't quite exactly white, or this one was maybe diagnosed with a learning disorder, so pay lots and lots of attention to that instead.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's a sense of entitlement involved. Like, maybe, some whiny little shit feels like he's not getting the attention he deserves for whatever reason, so he takes out his violent tendencies in a way that's likely to get him the most possible attention. You don't murder a bunch of Kindergarteners because you hate Kindergarteners. You murder a bunch of Kindergarteners because you know it's going to get you a whole lot of attention, and because it makes the world, which you are very angry with, freak out. And it works.
So the dead murderer is not seeing the candlelight vigils and the massive outpourings of grief from all around the world, and the exciting 24 hour news coverage, and they don't see the big de facto holidays established in memory of their violence, or if they do, they're locked up and can't do it again; but other shitty, spoiled white boys who are also extremely angry with the world do.
So the thing is, it's not just about not focusing on the murderer in cases like that, but also on not saturating the media and national attention on the murders.
It is totally understandable, like I said, for people to get all wrapped up in it and take it personally, even when it isn't, in large part because mass murders like this one tend to happen to people who generally consider themselves pretty safe. (That's why people say things like this don't happen in communities like this--meaning white middle class suburbs--despite the fact that that's overwhelmingly exactly where they happen.)
Don't you imagine that maybe some whiny little asshole who does something like this relishes the idea of making so many people they hate feel such fear and horror?