I think furtwas joking.
(I hope he was.)
That’s not my assumption. My assumption is that you can’t prevent aberrant behaviour. That’s why it is aberrant. Legislation is what some will cry for, but it’s ineffective as a preventative. No matter how many alternate activities you give them, there will be teens who do dumb things. Some of them will be criminally dumb. You can’t prevent that…at best, you can try to reduce it, and even then, those you might be trying to reach will be the hardest to reach, and those that don’t need a lesson that says “Don’t throw heavy objects into traffic!” will sit through and be incredibly bored. How do we prevent another teen from tossing a heavy object into traffic. Even if we get 10,000 dopers all impressing upon their children the incredible stupidity of such an action, only 9,999 will listen. And then we’ll be back wondering what do we do with those few who didn’t listen?
While I’m referencing just the turkey incident, this applies to all three of the threads referenced in the OP.
Hell, are these boards really necessary?
The OP was longing for some old-fashioned pit threads. I live to serve.
Er, when I say, “What exactly is the point?”, that’s called a rhetorical question. It’s equivalent to my saying, “There is no point.” It’s not a request for an answer.
If your tampon tastes like shit, I don’t think you’re using it correctly.
Well, I started two of the threads in question. I don’t do it very often, and I think we’ve seen enough of the “400 cats found in elderly woman’s house” stories.
I do it mainly because I need some feedback to help make sense of it. There are some horrible things in this world, and by talking about it, it helps me get my head around it.
What’s to get your head around? It’s very simple. Sometimes human beings do really, really shitty things to each other, and sometimes we do wonderful, sublime things to each other. That’s life.
The King of Soup summed up (very nicely) why I don’t read those types of Pit threads.
Countless horrible things happen every day. If I got worked up about every bit of suffering that goes on in the world, I’d be dead in a month.
I don’t like feeling outraged or vengeful, and I don’t think these emotions serve a constructive purpose, especially if the event triggering them does not directly influence my own life.
I’d rather calmly think of ways to prevent such horrors, even if solutions are not always practical or possible.
I’m not saying we should forget the human capacity for cruelty – that can be dangerous. I just don’t think it’s healthy to obsess over it. Yes, we can do evil, but we can also do tremendous good, and this should be a source of hope for all of us.
Surely motherfucking platypus-pleasuring online cunting class registration cheered someone up 
But did they find the elderly woman?
Parts of her, anyway?
Oh, I know that. It’s just sometimes I need help comprehending the more awful examples of man’s inhumanity to man.
Besides, sweetness and light stories don’t belong in the Pit. 
Well, if you want to know more about man’s inhumanity to man, there’s no better place. This is where we all gather to offer compassion to the dead, who can’t use it, and judgment to the guilty (who already have all they need). It works out fine for those of us with a surfeit of judgment and a dearth of compassion – in other words, all of us.
What you can find out from these threads is the shared inhumanity of all the good people who have established ideas about what to do to those folks deemed outside the pale, and their vitriol for those who aren’t yet ready to judge and therefore aren’t fit to participate. The lack of a ready solution is evidence that thoughtfulness is out of bounds and impulse is the only legitimate alternative. You can be comforted that our worst nightmarish thoughts are sometimes directed at people who might sometimes deserve it. Then you might worry about what we good, moral folks would do with those impulses if we couldn’t type them out from a safe place behind a keyboard. Or, if you want to sleep, you won’t.
The security offered by these threads is that of being part of a lynch mob. It only works as long as you are willing to share the psychosis.
I’ve said this before, but it’s seems very appropriate here:
Outrage has become a new form of entertainment.
I spent a thousand words to say what you said in eight. You did it better. Thanks.
Thanks.
I am waiting to be pecked to death though!
I’m so glad you said that. I’m glad for what the King of Soup said too. I’m not a fan of those types of threads.
While I agree that outrage as entertainment is not a good thing, I also believe that a purpose is served by bringing such stories to light; namely, that the concept that “people are basically good” is suspect. Many of us live in denial of the mundane horror that we (as a species) afflict upon each other daily. It is all too easy to hold the belief that such atrocities are perpetrated by “others”, that such things could not happen “around here.” We cannot kill the demon if we cannot bear to face it.