I think ABC was wrong to air a show about the sociopath who murdered people at UC Santa Barbara.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I usually confine my recreational outrage to bad commercials, but I was extremely upset with ABC’s 20/20 episode last night focusing on the misogynistic sociopath who murdered his roommates and a number of people around UC Santa Barbara. This is going to sound really anti-First Amendment of me, but I wish we would no longer name killers. Kind of like how when someone is accused of a crime, or is the victim of violent crime like rape, there’s often anonymity afforded to them. I used to think that people in national media press rooms operated on a level of common sense and decency… ABC is clearly not in that number.

I didn’t dignify or lend them the ratings by watching the show. Really… what is to be gained by airing a cool (yes, the title card for the show was cool - reminiscent of Pacino on the Scarface poster) title card with this person’s face? Snippets of his rantings and so on? Essentially, I believe ABC has inspired some number of mentally unstable people to go for fame and immortality - maybe they’ll get a show too.

Ugh, I sound like a Pollyanna. But I’m the first to assign blame to individuals, and of course ABC isn’t responsible for profound mental illness. But it seems to be incredibly irresponsible to focus on giving this individual a post-mortem platform of any kind. I’d like to forget that he ever existed. It’s not like we haven’t had mass shooters before, and we haven’t learned a damn thing about preventing these tragedies by airing their personal stories. What I think we should do is focus on the lives lost… that’s far more compelling to me. And it might make us actually do something, to know that we’ve lost a future cheerleader, doctor, teacher, or whatever. (I’m being serious. The ordinariness of the victims is what pulls at my heartstrings.)

I know this is tantamount to shouting at windmills, and I can stop watching the shows, etc. that put forth this crap. Hey, I feel bad for the shooter’s dad, but really, I would much prefer to hear from Christopher Martinez’s dad. Sure, shooter’s dad can say some words - that’s really not the issue, it’s more the glamorization of this deeply disturbed individual. Someone that off kilter and narcissistic is not going to care that it’s “bad attention,” they’re just going to care that they might get a national TV show about their rants.

There’s an old maxim from classroom management I relied upon when I was a teacher. If you want to eradicate behavioral issues, ignore the bad stuff, and focus on the positive. We should report on events like the UC Santa Barbara shooting. But we don’t have to mention the names (as much) of the perpetrators. Or we can at least mention the victims more.

I hate the fact that I know the names Adam Lanza, Elliott Rodger, and ‎Seung-Hui Cho - but not the names of those they killed. Sure I bear some responsibility, but responsible media should, in my opinion, make that a lot less possible.

2

Have they finally moved on from Nielson boxes, and actually check average watchers for ratings?

I also don’t think people do things like this for the notoriety. At least, not someone like this guy. He might do it for a cause, but not because he cares about his own name being known.

3

I watched it. Or rather, it was playing in the background as I did other things.

They presented it as something that could educate parents. But the take-away that I got was that there wasn’t anything that could have been done in this case. They put the kid in intensive therapy. They tried to find the right learning environment. The father did say he regretted letting Elliot live on his own, but I can’t blame him for that. First off, living with one’s parents doesn’t keep someone from flipping out (Adam Lanza). And secondly, in an alternative universe with a different set of variables in play, Elliot Rodgers could have blossomed on his own. Just like so many other troubled youth do when they are put into a different setting (like the military).

So, nothing useful came out of the interview, IMHO. It was interesting to hear the father’s side of the story and learn how about Elliot presented to the people closest to him. But I don’t think it’s going to prevent this type of thing from happening again.

4

He used YouTube to broadcast his screed, it wasn’t anonymous.

And it’s not so much what UCSB shooter gets out of it (nothing, he’s dead). It’s the other low-achieving losers who hate their life and want to be remembered for being a badass. The title card for the show… if you want to see it, go to Video Father Relives Day Elliot Rodger Went on Rampage - ABC News and go about 20 seconds in. It looks… awesome. Like an album cover.

I can see a profoundly ill person thinking that this is something they could aspire to. The one constant that appears to be true with these mass murderers - they want attention. They beget a new generation of shooters - how many times have we heard that these shooters idolized Klebold and Harris?

IMO it’s the same tactic that terrorists use. Publicity for a cause and I lack the interest, ability, or gumption to make a difference? Let me commit a heinous act and get attention for it.

5

Bullshit. He posted his manifesto on YouTube. He is the poster child for killing for notoriety. If you had picked a different killer I might have agreed. This guy was a classic narcissist who wanted to be recognized.

6

And we can’t pretend that there isn’t a whole class of mentally ill individuals that find this appealing. Hundred-page screeds, videos… we have essentially created a class of mass murdering celebrities. Get a prime time show, have TV talking head dissect your epistles, become a hero to other losers… just get a gun and fire away! (Once you’ve prepped your press kit.)

If you were mentally ill and felt insignificant, this actually might sound appealing. I mean, you hate life and everyone else, so you could kill yourself and be out of your pain. Nobody but your family would know, or care… OR you could kill a whole bunch of people, and then you’ve achieved Katy Perry-level notoriety with very little effort.

These guys had it figured out back in the 1980s.

7

I agree … the interview was with the father who acted like an actor and then to top it off NBC carried the ABC Barbra Walters interview (I thought she retired lol) on the Today show this morning.

Tacky tacky I changed the channel :frowning:

8

The father didn’t come across as dreading the lime light, that’s for certain. I didn’t like how he kept punctuating his sentences with “Barbara”. As in, “Barbara, you just don’t know how awful I feel right now, Barbara. But can I tell you how important I feel right now to be calling you “Barbara”, Barbara?”

Really, if you think about it, the only thing really remarkable about this mass shooting is the fact that Rodger did all that youtubing leading up to it. His body count didn’t merit Newton, CT or Virginia Tech coverage. If not for all the manifesto and the videos, we probably wouldn’t even know this guy’s name. So I agree with Hippy that the publicity seems to be “upping” the game. It’s not just about body counts now. It’s about body counts AND attention.

9

The legal precedent you’re seeking is Damnatio memoriae.

It doesn’t work because everyone says “yes, I agree we shouldn’t dangle notoriety in front of disturbed minds, but I still want the low-down on this nut case.”

10

The problem with suppressing the name and other information about these killers is that it starts to look an awful lot like suppressing facts and history, and suppressing facts strikes me as wrong.

I agree, though, we could do a much better job of enshrining the victims (although I have issues with the way the media treats them, too).

11

I remember him as being bat-shit crazy so I’m not getting your point.

12

I’m not saying we should obfuscate the identity of the shooter, but once we say it was a 20 year old sociopath named X, we can move on. I just don’t see the value in analyzing a clearly disturbed individual’s rantings. I don’t think we’ve learned a thing that helps us prevent these events from any of these videos, letters, screeds, etc. Maybe the family cares… of course they have a right to mourn their son, but the less I know about him the better.

Rodgers’ dad seemed to be a little too ready for prime time. I understand he’s a Hollywood type, so I’ll not blame him entirely for that… but I think he’s probably mourning and mistaken in thinking that his interview is going to help anyone.

[QUOTE=Magiver]
I remember him as being bat-shit crazy so I’m not getting your point.
[/QUOTE]

I think the point is, mentally deranged losers probably revel in being portrayed as unique, crazy, and monstrous. A special on ABC News accomplishes all of that. I wish I could share a screengrab of the title card from the show. I’m saying this in complete seriousness - it looked cool and mysterious. I can easily see a similarly situated loser being really attracted to this post mortem.

Slithy Tove, thanks for the terminology… that’s exactly what I’m getting at.

13

He was portrayed as crazy. Mentally deranged losers live in their own little world of crazy. I think it’s a public service to show what crazy looks like so people can at least be aware of the danger around them.

That’s how I see it. If CBS made the shooter out like a hero then I’d see where you’re coming from but it was a negative portrayal.

14

I agree that the media focus on the mass shooters is one of the main motivations for these individuals in the first place. I read something a while back - I forget what it was - that made the argument that the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. If you hate someone, at least you care.

There’s a reason so many of the school shootings we’ve seen end with the final casualty being the perpetrator. Many of the shooters are people who otherwise would have just committed suicide, but then realized that if they take other people out with them when they go, people around the world will know about them. They’ll be famous. Sure, they can’t hope to ever achieve positive fame - write a bestselling novel, record a great album, discover a cure to a disease - but this is a way to make sure that, in some small, horrible way, their name won’t be forgotten.

And think - why is this only turning into a problem now? Sure, there were shootings before, but it was never a national issue like it is today. What’s changed? It’s the 24/7 news cycle, with news organizations constantly on the lookout for emotional stories to fill their programs with. Any piece of news will be milked to a ridiculous level - the classic example is now CNN and the MH370 - but with school shooters, this type of inflammatory journalism feeds the problem.

15

There was nothing about Rodger that distinguished him from the millions of other troubled people who never turn into mass shooters, though. There were no warning signs that his parents missed or hand-waved away. They did all the “right” things (if we are to believe the father…and I do). And unlike many people, they had the financial means to put him in intensive therapy and move him around to different schools. These were not neglectful parents.

If I had a troubled son and I had watched that show, I would feel more hopeless. What could I do that Elliot Rodger’s parents didn’t do? Institutionalize him? OK, but on what grounds? That he’s a fuckin’ weirdo? And what am I going to do when the hospital releases him? Forbid him from living on his on own? And then be the first victim when he eventually snaps, or have his craziness influence the other kids in the house? Monitor his credit card purchases? Constantly snoop around for weapons? Forbid him from posting videos on youtube? This might work on a minor who is living under your roof. But Elliot Rodger was 23 and on his own. We applaud parents who let their 23-year-olds be independent. We generally disapprove of those who infantalize their adult children, however eccentric they are.

Plus, it’s not like Frontline didn’t already do an excellent documentary about Adam Lanza. Barbara Walters may have been correct about the father being the first parent of a mass shooter to ever do an interview on TV, but it’s not like these parents have never been interviewed before. Andrew Solomon’s book “Far From the Tree” has a section devoted to mass shooters and their parents. These sources of information are much more informative than the 20/20 show.

16

I imagine that most adults do not try to shove people off of balconies. The police may not have realised just how much of a sick fuck he was, but they did know he was a violent asshole.

17

But you’re assuming rational logic for an irrational person. Future Spree Shooter isn’t saying, “I like the coverage, but not the negativity.” He’s saying… FAME FAME FAME I’m important!!!

Octarine makes a great point. These are just narcissistic suicides. Hell, what if we gave profiles to “good” suicides over mass shooters? What’s evident is that these are very poorly developed individuals who want attention. Media provides attention. And in this 24/7 news cycle, the horror has to be of a certain level to garner attention. So it’s not enough to kill yourself, or kill your family, you’ve got to kill others. The more random and bizarre (meaning “how would anyone ever harm anyone in X place?”), the better.

I don’t wish harm on anyone. But how come they never go to gun shows or NRA conventions?

EDIT: We’ve got another one to discuss, now: http://gawker.com/nine-injured-after-shooting-on-bourbon-street-in-new-or-1597614254

No deaths reported…

18

So the parents get him involuntarily committed for two weeks. Elliot says all the right things and he’s released. Then what?

19

No one is saying the government should keep the names secret. But plastering their names and faces on the news for a couple days straight does nothing but feed the 24 hour news cycle. It’s irresponsible but who cares as long as the ratings are good.

Congratulations. That means you are not a psycho.

20

This precisely. In my entirely too may trips inside a psych ward after attempting suicide, that’s all it took. And I always came across as one of the saner people there (no sneak brag here, it really was a low bar they set :p), yet even the most disturbed of patients could suck it up long enough to appear okay and appease any liability issues and get out before their insurance bucked. Sad but true. So, under our current system of mental health care, there really isn’t much that can be done.