Even had the artist not explicitly denied the explanation you advance, it wouldn’t work for me because (1) being affected in the way he describes doesn’t make him a victim, it just makes him a schmuck with bad impulse control and a nasty imagination; (2) to assert victimhood on the basis of merely hearing about a crime is grotesque, given that there is an actual victim to consider, who had not the leisure to contemplate the potential metaphysical effects the crime visited upon him; (3) whatever monsters the crime put in the artist’s head, the text makes it clear that they were latecomers to a macabre party that’s been going on for a while; (4) even if you accept this, all the thematic and stylistic problems don’t go away; and (5) it’s still fundamentally an egocentric appeal to our sympathy, so that we’ll excuse the artist’s scratching a violently sadistic itch.
Actually, it was a husband,wife and their son. Local rumor has it that the father molested the son as well and a daughter who was taken away by authorities years ago.
It’s really been quite heartbreaking for the entire community and as the details emerge, scary and sad. That family was only recently “forced” to move into that particular neighborhood because of the sex offender laws and the number of children in the area they had previously resided in for 25 years.
An ex-neighbor (of the accused) commented to me yesterday that he felt extraordinarily lucky his three daughters never captured the eye of the Edenfields.
In any case I had read the OP before the argument started over the details. When I read it reminded me of the Clockwork Orange sequence where the main character was forced to watch violent images and this is how it affected him. The headlines flashed at him making him angrier and more crazy each time. This is what makes him a victim, too. He is forced to read the story over and over again. Even if he is only doing it to himself and not being forced it is affecting him. Is it out of proportion? That isn’t for me to say. I guess he could have just continued eating his breakfast cereal and closed the paper with no more thought than, “That’s horrible” and promptly forgot the whole matter.
But if he didn’t mean it that way so be it. It’s just how I read it.
A crime in his local community, not some crime half way round the country. Or should it only happen to immediate family to have an impact? Just wondering what the proper rating system is for feeling outrage about things is, so I don’t make the mistake and get upset over things needlessly.
So, victims are only victims in how they rate compared to others? Get a high enough rating then you’re a victim. Too low a rating makes you a smuck. Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
Actually, I don’t think you meant it this way, but that’s kind of the way it came across to me.
(And why the heck am I not getting email updates to this thread?)
I don’t know where the fuck “RO” came from but some of you need to shut the fuck up and take a step back for two seconds. Maybe if you don’t like these types of posts you shouldn’t read them. Are some of you seriously that fucking stupid? It’s almost unbelievable, but not quite judging from some of the dumb shit that’s been posted here.
Euth, what you said to Cisco is seriously fucked up but I do see your point in only giving him “what he was asking for” in a way. If it were me I would still apologize…that’s just wrong.
Also to a couple of you who just plain attack the post because it is a “RO” post…holy fuck. You are everything that is wrong with humanity as I see it. You show your complete lack of common sense by simply coming in here and wasting your time posting. You also show a complete lack of empathy.
Fine with me, as long as Darwin was right we won’t have to deal with your kind forever.
Again, if you don’t like these “RO” posts, don’t fucking read them.
The OP used explicit imagery to get his point across, and in the process (if we follow King of Soup’s line of thinking, and I do) created sympathy for these sub-human pieces of human effluvia, by imagining doing things to the offenders, many orders of magnitude beyond what they did to the actual victim.
Many others have come behind, pointing out, ironically, how stupid and meaningless ‘recreational outrage’ posts are, and how those who post them are only attempting to display their moral superiority by announcing their outrage to the world, all the while maintaining (this is the ironic part) THIER sense of moral superiority because THEY don’t participate in recreational outrage threads.
This in turn pisses off the OP who gets on progressively higher horses until he (or she) becomes even with the people who have shown up in the thread to mock the ‘outrage’ that comes from horrible acts that humans, as we all know, are bound to commit, and we get to the eventual part of the debate where all that’s left is for the OP and his detractors to point their digital fingers at one another and just say “Oh yeah? Well Fuck YOU” (apologies to Ron White).
Here’s what I think.
Those people should die. A lot. Should they suffer at the hands of Euth? Nope. They should be taken out to the swamps, shot in the head, and left for the critters to eat. Nothing fancy, they just do not deserve to be walking around. I don’t care about compassion, I don’t care about rehabilitation, I don’t care about their mental state, I don’t even care about their particular humanity. Sometimes people are broken, sometimes you can’t fix them, and when that is discovered, they need to die. The death penalty IS a deterrent, if to no one else but the person who committed the crime in the first place. See, John Wayne Gacy won’t kill one more little boy. Jeffrey Dahmer won’t kill and eat one more tourist. Ted bundy won’t rape and murder one more woman. Drop in the bucket? Maybe, but I’m still for it.
All outrage is recreational. We ARE powerless in most cases to truly have an effect on whatever it is that sparks the outrage in the first place, that, however does not negate the truth of the existance of the aforementioned outrage. You can’t not be incensed just because a gaggle of 1 dimensional pseudo-intellectuals say you shouldn’t be. In fact, in cases such as this the only appropriate response IS outrage. If you’ve become de-sensitized to raped and murdered children, then perhaps you are the one in need of help. Unless you stand up and defend what’s right, even just with your words (because in this case it’s all you have) you’re giving approval to what’s wrong. Saying and or doing nothing, is the same as issuing approval to those who would commit these crimes against humanity, and indeed society.
Euth, I get it, but it’s a bad example. Unless you’ve got it in you (and I’ don’t know, you might) to stand behind the things you say you’ll do, don’t bother.
A lot of people don’t have the stomach to kill an animal, much less another human being, nevermind the possiblity of using the violent, graphic, and utterly horrible things you’ve described. Hyperbole is sometimes necessary, I’ll admit, but don’t make victims from offenders, or martyrs from criminals. It’s simple, at least for me.
The offenders in this case, should they be found guilty, should die. They should die quickly and humanely, and their corpses left to rot as food for predators who will eventually return these monsters to the shit from which they have clearly emerged.
Would that we had such a clearcut choice. Unfortunately, the average ‘Recreational Outrage’ thread contains descriptions of acts so fucked up and depraved that, thanks to this board’s rule that all threads must have descriptive titles (a good and necessary rule, IMO), I can learn all I need to about the day’s atrocities without clicking a single link.
Call me over sensitive, but I work with young children and thread titles like, I dunno, “Crackhead mom microwaves baby”, or whatever, really piss on my day.
If all R.O. posts were entitled “Wherein I mentallly masturbate over the agonies of the defenceless using my own righteous anger as lubricant” I’d have less of a problem with them.
Well I don’t agree necessarily but I understand. Thanks for making some sense.
I really don’t agree with your proposed title… All these posts may piss on your day, which seriously does suck, but it’s reality. I bet it really pissed on that boys parents day as well. And then some. To me it just feels like you’re saying me me me when it should be about this murdered boy.
But that’s like you saying your feelings about the thread title is more important to you than the actual content of a murdered boy. I’m not at all trying to attack you or make myself out to be “morally superior” I really have an honest question. Does the title of the thread ‘pissing on your day’ mean more to you than the news of the boy? To me it seems you are caring more about what is affecting YOU personally and more directly. Which in a way only makes logical sense.
Just because this crap happens all the time and people are outraged about it all the time doesn’t make it not real though…all the time. When it happens to your family, friends or neighbors, or as in Euth’s case, in your town, will you not be outraged by it? I for one would be and I believe that most “normal” human beings would be. I would probably have many thoughts of revenge and justice and god knows what else.
And no none of this outrage is going to get anyone anywhere really but can’t they just vent without being attacked for it?
Also, if you find out Euth goes and does any of these things that he wrote about then give a big told ya so…until then just let him vent. You have all had sick and disgusting thoughts racing through your mind. Some more than others i’m sure, but you all have. You’re all only human. I guess the question is did he go too far by posting those thoughts and I don’t think so but apparently some do. Can’t really argue either way.
No I meant more humanity in general. A lack of overall empathy and caring. People who kidnap small children and rape them to death as I see it would be at the absolute extreme end of that and (very fortunately) a minority. They barely qualify as humanity IMO.
You joined here for this one thread? You’ve only posted to this one thread since you’ve been here. If what really outrages you that people here don’t care for RO threads, there are a ton of message boards where people really like them. But you came here just to be outraged that some people on this message board don’t care for them? And in your outrage, you seem to be familiar enough with the OP author to call him a nickname? :dubious:
I’d like to take your strawman and wear its mother fucking entrails. Of course we care that bad things happen. We just don’t revel in it and write pornographic masturbatory fantasies about it on public forums.
Uzi, I’m betting that you don’t prepare to enjoy a book by striking out the hero’s name wherever it appears and penciling in your own, and that you can attend a production of Hamlet without leaping onstage at the beginning of Act III, scene 4, so you can get to that weasel Polonius first. This is because you are capable of healthy emotional reactions to situations and events, even tragic ones, without insisting that you be a major participant in them. This is good news, and not just for the nation’s libraries and minor thespians: it has real-life application as well. It’s the trick that lets you feel compassion for those who suffer without losing your balance and believing yourself to be one of them. It is what lets you, when evil strikes at people you do not know, react appropriately with a silent prayer and a modest tear* and an unpublished thought for the victims, possibly hoping they receive the thoughtful attention of others, instead of demanding that attention yourself with impotent threats and feckless histrionics. If that’s what the choice comes down to for some people, I suggest they opt for callous indifference.
There seems always to be one person at any funeral who is there just to outweep the widow and outwail the orphans. As children, we had that person pointed out to us as an example of what not to do: it was disrespectful of the dead and rude to the grieving family to so distract the mourners.
In medieval Europe, generally supposed to be a less civil and sophisticated society than our own, vengence was, largely, the law. But a thousand years ago (long enough, apparently, to forget), revenge had rules: rules about who was allowed to seek it, who was a legitimate target, and what measures could be taken. It is interesting to note that in a system in which vengence was sanctioned and codified, someone like the OP would have been told to sit down and be quiet. And if it came out that his obscene threats weren’t serious after all, that it was just, you know, art, further steps might have been taken.
*Modest tear: noun. One shed without being collected and preserved for future display to an admiring crowd.
As an aside: Working in Yemen I have a rule in my inbox that automatically deletes condolence messages (marking them ‘read’ first. Very important in case someone has enabled a read receipt!). Can you imagine sending global emails consoling someone on the death of a 2nd cousin?
I have guys who won’t even go home for days after the death of their child until things calm down because they have to act a certain way and deal with family, friends, friends of friends, etc, each one trying to outdo the last in demonstrating how bad they feel for the grieving family.
Maybe it’s why I don’t feel so shocked at some guy grandstanding on a bulletin board.
Perhaps another of our fucking forums would be more suitable to you.