Re: El Paso and Dayton Shootings (SERIOUS TOPIC)
Something that hasn't been mentioned explicitly yet, but that I think about every time, is the way mass media treats perpetrators.
I imagine the heavy exposure probably is an added motive to commit violence to some extent, as an example from these events: do you think we'd all know of and/or read some manifesto posted by the El Paso murderer on 8chan if he wasn't a murderer? I'd imagine not; he'd be mocked or lauded in his corner of the internet, and the general public wouldn't even see it. Big media focuses so heavily on and gives so much attention to the perpetrators of crimes over victims and delves into who they were, I'm sure in some capacity it's perceived as a means to an end, a means to get their word out there to a huge national/international audience and perhaps incite others to their cause.
As a slight tangent to the internet, I remember years ago seeing threads about body counts and high scores in regards to mass murders on 4chan and probably other places (in the era of the VA Tech shooter and Elliot Rodgers), which kind of ties back into curtailing spaces where people feel emboldened to make statements like that, not only racist and extremist takes but from a position otherwise detached from the repercussions (I guess) of social norms and expectations.
A lot of spaces like that wind up lauding mass murderers for their activities and others still will have tumblrs or something dedicated to fetishizing mass murderers and writing creepy fanfiction about them. Even shit like Pumped Up Kicks kinda falls into this category.
I'm not even sure where I'm going with this at this point, but I can say that it's getting a little bit better -- with this alone I've seen a lot less full naming and a lot more "El Paso and Dayton shootings" and "El Paso Shooter" than times in the past. I'm not trying to vilify the media either, I suppose I just come from stuff like this with a bad taste in my mouth a lot of the time. These people don't deserve the reward of attention for being murderers I guess is my point.
Something that hasn't been mentioned explicitly yet, but that I think about every time, is the way mass media treats perpetrators.
I imagine the heavy exposure probably is an added motive to commit violence to some extent, as an example from these events: do you think we'd all know of and/or read some manifesto posted by the El Paso murderer on 8chan if he wasn't a murderer? I'd imagine not; he'd be mocked or lauded in his corner of the internet, and the general public wouldn't even see it. Big media focuses so heavily on and gives so much attention to the perpetrators of crimes over victims and delves into who they were, I'm sure in some capacity it's perceived as a means to an end, a means to get their word out there to a huge national/international audience and perhaps incite others to their cause.
As a slight tangent to the internet, I remember years ago seeing threads about body counts and high scores in regards to mass murders on 4chan and probably other places (in the era of the VA Tech shooter and Elliot Rodgers), which kind of ties back into curtailing spaces where people feel emboldened to make statements like that, not only racist and extremist takes but from a position otherwise detached from the repercussions (I guess) of social norms and expectations.
A lot of spaces like that wind up lauding mass murderers for their activities and others still will have tumblrs or something dedicated to fetishizing mass murderers and writing creepy fanfiction about them. Even shit like Pumped Up Kicks kinda falls into this category.
I'm not even sure where I'm going with this at this point, but I can say that it's getting a little bit better -- with this alone I've seen a lot less full naming and a lot more "El Paso and Dayton shootings" and "El Paso Shooter" than times in the past. I'm not trying to vilify the media either, I suppose I just come from stuff like this with a bad taste in my mouth a lot of the time. These people don't deserve the reward of attention for being murderers I guess is my point.
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