Between the frozen turkeys and poisoned cakes and drunk moms with dead children , I really miss the good old days of incessant anti-Bush, bad driver and movie talker threads. Not blaming the BBQ Pit messengers, it just is depressing.
Yeah, about the only good news is there aren’t currently any horrible, horrible tortured pet stories to go along with the dead babies and psychopathic teens…
I was contemplating starting a thread about the assclowns that take too long at the ATM, but thought it was too frivolous.
Look, we told you and told you how bad things would get if Bush was reelected, but did you believe us? Nooooooo!
Daniel
trying to make the octopus feel better
FUUUUUCCCKK!
There.
Primal scream therapy.
I feel better.
Now you try, Octopus.
Yes.
Send in the assclowns.
I am troubled by these local sad stories, to which few if any of us have any personal or civic connection, but around which we gather to affirm our humanity by wailing over the victims and howling for the blood of the criminal. I don’t like these gatherings, because it seems that in most if not all cases we are being warmed not by the reassurance of a shared compassion but by the warm prurient glow of misery trotted out for purposes of public consumption: the virtuous pornography of the sins of others.
There is a strong theme in these threads, and it never seems to be “How could we prevent this from happening elsewhere?” Rather it’s “What shall we do to the evil one?” Not that punishing the guilty isn’t important, but by the time these threads surface, that part is usually in hand, whereas the former isn’t. Nonetheless, our minds leap to the satisfaction of revenge instead of reflection on the harder problems. This demonstrates an unhealthy identification with victims, as if through sheer outrage we could share the purity and virtue we associate with the suffering innocent. It also often plays out into sometimes sickening revenge fantasies which belie the innocence and virtue we’re vicariously claiming.
These threads also bother me because I am not, frankly, a good enough person myself to enjoy the moral clarity of many of the participants. I think that for every tragedy you see, there’s another you don’t, which induced the other. So don’t elect me when I run for a judge’s seat on the bench.
Finally, I’ll admit that at this point I just have a visceral, irrational reaction to these threads. Whenever I see one open up, I imagine a mob gathering, which makes me react negatively to it regardless of its merits.
Frankly, I find it refreshing that we have finally, once again, turned our attention to the depraved. All the political talk was making me feel diiiirty.
Look you idiotic ratpustule, you can take your fucking high and mighty attitude and shove it up your ass, you shitlicking tampon-sucker.
Shove it hard. Sideways with handles sticking out.
I’m actually happy this week doesn’t really have many political threads. Not that I’m happy about the Bleach Cake though… But it’s much tastier then the anti-Bush threads. Dead kids, frozen turkey beatings, and drunken moms beat politics every time!
Because you can’t prevent everything. How do you legislate against teens throwing a turkey (or dropping a cinder block) into oncoming traffic? How do you legislate against a drunken binge so long that a mother allows her children to die. More importantly, how do you do so without impeding on the vast majority of others who never get into these situations.
These are cases of humanity gone wrong. You can’t legislate against it without severely restricting all the cases where humanity goes right. You can’t solve it with another class or course. What you can do is put roadblocks up that will (a) prevent those on the cusp from crossing over via the spectre of penalties and (b) protect society from those over the line via incarceration.
I’ve always disliked the “Gee, look at this macabre story I found today while I was thoroughly scouring the newspaper looking for gruesome stuff”, type threads. I mean, what exactly is the point? That people do shitty things? Thanks for the news flash. The only time I get anything out of those threads is when they lend themselves to some good sick jokes.
Remember, during the Lewinsky bruhaha, how all the conservatives were condemning Clinton because he was being a poor role model for the nation, and all that? Seems to me that what we’re seeing now is the result of having an illegitimate, croney-driven war-monger liar of a President for a role model… 
Wow. Was that really necessary?
I don’t think so.
Why do people insist on slowing down to look at an accident? Does a crowd gather to watch scouts walk grannies across the street, or does it gather when Crazy Joe hacks his brother to death over the last french fry? As Walter Cronkite closed night after night, That’s the way it is.
So share. I’m not so outraged that I cease to appreciate a good tasteless joke.
Best post I’ve read in a long time dude.
Me too, **The King of Soup **
Makes me feel like a voyeur of evil which is why I stopped reading true crime nonfiction as well.
Problem is,as D_Odds said, there is no real way to prevent people from doing truly horrible things- we can just attempt to put up roadblocks.
And furt go off the deep end much?
Your assumption that legislation is the only way to prevent aberrant behavior is unsound. When I suggest that we consider the question of how we could prevent such things, I hope that the answers will be much smaller than that, involving such things as looking after our own mental health and that of our family,neighbors and friends, paying attention to others who are troubled and caring enough to try to help. That’s all. It seems not to happen in these threads.
For the reasons you articulate, however, I doubt that the sort of discussion that involves the spectre of penalties is very useful. I think a thread realistically discussing punishment might be academically instructive, but that’s not a feature of these threads either. The venting of revenge fantasies can be either theraputic or pathological, and not even the poster can know which.