Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

I've heard the concept of "kill count" echoed in places like 4chan, so Scott's not wrong here. I'm sure part of it comes from the desire to be immortalized - I mean how long did we spend poring over every detail of that Vegas shooter's life, as I'm sure we will this guy. The Boston Bomber got a Rolling Stone cover and a cool nickname.

Allegedly this was the motivation (in part) for the Port Arthur massacre:

Bryant's motivation for the massacre remains a closely guarded secret,[26][27] known only to his lawyer, who is bound not to reveal confidences without his client's consent. The lawyer later released a book outlining that Bryant was motivated largely by the media reports of the then-recent Dunblane school massacre. From the moment he was captured, he continually wanted to know how many people he had killed and seemed impressed by the number. Bryant is only allowed to listen to music on a radio outside his cell, and is denied access to any news reports of his massacre. Photographers allowed in to take pictures of him in his prison cell were forced to destroy the film in his presence when the Governor found out.[28]

part of that "kill count" thing comes from the way these shootings are reported. i get the instinct to show what happened, or try to illustrate the scale of events with a wicked d3 dataviz or an interactive map of a fucking school, in the hope that it will shock people into changing their attitude to, e.g. gun control. but that kind of coverage also seems to inspire and motivate the kinds of people who do this.

e.g. see this thread

Time for that sad reminder. After Robin Williams' suicide, sensational media coverage that violated the CDC guidelines resulted in a 10 PERCENT increase in suicides. Same effect applies to mass shootings. Newsrooms, please be considerate in your coverage. https://t.co/O5Gy81rSP0

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) February 14, 2018

on games: as i tried to make clear upthread, i am in no way blaming everything on videogames. not only does that veer into tipper gore territory, but i've also played a bajillion dark as fuck videogames and i have absolutely no desire to harm people. however, i think it's just as wrong to totally dismiss any claim to any connection between the two. there's a loooooot of space between the two viewpoints, and i think it's weird to just stake a claim on the very edge of that space and plug the ears, as if games and our relationship to them isn't constantly evolving.

that's my more rational thought that i hope at least some people might agree with. here's my bonus personal wacko thought:

i think that the roles of simulation and reality are shifting and almost switching places. simulation used to be about representing a state of reality, pointing backward to the past, or at least to the present. as the power to simulate becomes more powerful and widely used, we're simulating what could be, simulating before the reality happens. simulation becomes a preparation for a future reality, rather than a representation of reality. games and the way that we play them are changing rapidly. even if you agree (as i do) that games like doom (either the old one or the new) or GTA or whatever haven't led to more violence, or even that they can reduce violence (as mordy mentioned upthread), that doesn't mean that this will be the state going forward. there's much more to be said about it (everything from the improving realism to the kinds of simulation that are possible to the shift from controllers/tv to VR) but i'll stop shitting up this thread with it because it's off-topic. my point is just that even if you strongly believe that videogames have nothing to do with real life violence, that doesn't mean that the reasons for that belief will continue to stay true because the way that we experience games evolves much faster than the way that we experience, for example, books, tv, and film.

Heard someone nonchalantly ask someone else if they’d “seen the videos from the Florida shooting,” like it was an episode of some television show

I realize that in this age it is impossible to keep the info from getting out one way or another, but I don't understand why mainstream news outlets are so eager to release the names of mass killers and pore over the details of their sad lives.

Bc the media is antisocial and directly profits from this shit.

so third-rate tv psychology experts can ‘explain’ the killer’s motivations and ghoulish journos can start doorstepping their friends and families

points taken. Guess my real question is why we as society haven't demanded they stop it.

because people enjoy watching it i guess

https://i.imgur.com/F74mFrg.png

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/15/opinion/congress-gun-progress.html

On that topic of the videos, the news here this morning showed one student commenting how "all the kids had their phones out, snapchatting what was happening" and I felt this sick lurch of "wtf is wrong with society that this is how kids react to a murderer in their school".

It’s how kids react to everything that happens and I don’t blame them

also, context of camera phone recordings having played a huge role with e.g. police shootings and so on... it may be ppl's first instinct in response to a crisis. maybe it even provides some helpful measure of comfort or remove, i don't know. the body and the mind, or really the limbic system, do things in high-stress situations that aren't really subject to analysis of "what were you thinking?"

it's not like they were walking around like that Black Mirror episode just impassively holding out their phones recording the carnage cmon now

when you're unwilling to even consider that guns might be net negative for society, to entertain any proposals of gun control, these are the sort of positions you're forced to take.

I had assumed the "arm the teachers" tweet was ironic at first, until I realized otherwise.

one of the students said that the 911 operators told them to stop calling because the lines were overloaded with reports from the school. idk a snapchat / insta story broadcast seems like a substitute for a distress signal in that case

also “arm the teachers” makes me want to vomit. what is wrong with this fucking country

https://digitrigger.com/digitrigger-12

jesus fucking christ - it's the bump stock times a million

"Arm the teachers," fuck you. They're buying their own pencils and glue sticks, who's going to pay for their Glocks?

I'm sure the government will have no problem funding that to boost profits for thier gun lobbiest. It would be sweet contract

lots of military surplus weapons available I expect, and maybe some defective body armor from Iraq lying around to go with them.

Welcome to The Ratio, Eric Lipton!

Impressive how articulate and well educated these kids are from this school. Obviously a good school. Another sad reason for yesterday's events. https://t.co/BbAZP5hTh9

— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) February 15, 2018

Fucking idiot

it's not like they were walking around like that Black Mirror episode just impassively holding out their phones recording the carnage cmon now

And that is not what I was suggesting either, geez.

I think Doctor Casino is right. The phones are this weird emotional crutch of connectedness we carry around with us. It makes sense that’s where they’d turn.

it's not like they can fucking turn to us

lol that lipton tweet seems to have been deleted now. What a tone deaf pile of shit to post.

It’s probably reflective of how he sees the world

They were a credit to their respective races.

Hi, Florida!

@EricLiptonNYT
I deleted an earlier tweet that was intensively written.

I don't know about video games re: violence - we're a less violent society overall than at any point in modern history (and certainly since the spike in the '70s and '80s), the decline has come in concert with the rise of video games.

― louise ck (milo z), Wednesday, February 14, 2018 9:46 PM (yesterday)

just want to address the logic in this post, because people on both sides of these debates often misuse it

for one thing, while it is true that violent crime is, in general, on the decline, the same certainly cannot be said of mass shootings, which would seem to me to be more likely to be influenced by these video games.

also, even if violent video games were assumed (for the sake of argument) to contribute to gun violence, it would be fallacious to point to an overall decline in gun voilence, coinciding with the advent of violent video games, as evidence that the video games have no effect. it could be that gun violence would be even lower without the video games. logically, this argument is similar (though obviously usually made by different groups of people) to saying that chicago's gun violence rate is evidence that stricter gun control laws have no effect: I don't think any serious person would suggest that it would be lower with laxer laws

that said, from a public health perspective, it's important to keep in mind that the vast majority of gun deaths are not mass-shooting related, and that more than half are actually suicides. I too doubt that banning these video games would have much of an effect on the number of people who die from guns. fucking banning guns might, though

talking about dissolving assemblies and censoring forms of expression is definitely helpful

tom it seems like you feel really strongly about violent video games. I agree that debating whether they should be banned is not the best use of our time, when clearly the most impactful thing we could do is gun control

according to the Guardian these are the stats on mass shootings in the US (defined as more than 4 people shot in one incident, not including the shooter):

1,624 mass shootings in the past 5 years

that's almost one per day

christ i feel sick

i have an unfortunate tendency towards apocalyptic thinking but it's hard not to see this as a side-effect of large parts of america just wholesale embracing nihilism in the face of the climate-related disaster coming down the pipe

i think you're giving people too much credit

I was gonna say.

tom it seems like you feel really strongly about violent video games. I agree that debating whether they should be banned is not the best use of our time, when clearly the most impactful thing we could do is gun control

i did say it was an unfortunate tendency tbf

They’re embracing nihilism for some reason. Or at lease an insane level of self pity that clouds their ability to see other people as fully human. Which is a kind of nihilism — thinking that you are all that matters.

Just want to clarify re: my own statements abt video games upthread that I am by no means suggesting they be banned! And I don't have an impression from those expressing the same concerns itt that they do, either.

The public policy answer to this is gun control + access to mental health care (along with other types of health care.) but something fucked up is happening on a cultural level when this is how 1,624 people choose to handle their despair

keep in mind that figure includes gang violence etc as long as it meets the 4+ people shot in one incident criterion

Gang violence is its own kind of nihilism, but that’s a good point.

I don’t think video games have much to do with this, honestly.

the thought i keep returning to, when people suggest that the answer to mass shootings is arming more people, is that i don't want to ever have to murder anyone, even in self-defence, and i'm sure i'm not alone in feeling that way

how have things gone so far wrong that mainstream thought can routinely include the idea that ordinary citizens should be ready at all times to murder other citizens in preference to making it more difficult for gun violence to occur at all

That's just the way things are in 1872.