But all the mass killers we have been discussing were known to be emotional disturbed long before their acts of violence. There have been none (as far as I know) who were normal, happy-go-lucky, well-adjusted young men with friends. Almost all of them have the triad of social isolation, mental illness, and marginal lives (no job, no areas of accomplishment, etc.)
If it was just about the crazy ideas and not the crazy brain, wouldn’t you expect to find some All-American Frat Boy types represented in this number?
Except that most mentally ill people don’t kill anybody. So “the craziness” is not an adequate explanation. It appears to be the combination of instability and toxic ideology that creates mass murderers. Given that, I don’t think it’s at all unimportant or irrelevant to understand what the particular toxic ideologies are and how they are being promoted in our society.
Don’t church bombings, car bombings, assassinations of black voting-rights advocates, etc., count? ISTM that the 50s and 60s were an absolute dumpster fire of ideologically motivated racist violence, though I admit that the indiscriminate shooting spree was not as fashionable a form of such violence back then as it has become since.
I agree that the actual acts of mass murder tend to be fairly indiscriminate in their victim selection (although note exceptions below). But I don’t think it means that the specifics of who and what these guys are hating is irrelevant.
Well, the Charleston killer was pretty discriminating with his violence, as was anti-feminist mass murderer Marc Lepine.
No worries. It’s not something I have to put into words very often, which gives me a chance to put my own thoughts in order, too. It’s trickier still that this subject has so much potential for misunderstanding and hurt feelings, but I think we’re doing okay so far.
At any rate, I’m not claiming there is only one factor. It’s almost certainly multifactorial. And I’m not disputing that the specific kind of hateful belief can’t be predictive of violence. But just talking about the misogyny doesn’t advance the “How do we stop random mass violence?” discussion. We could tamp down the ambient level of societal misogyny by 90% and these guys would likely still hate women. Because violent crazy people will always have perceived enemies (lizard people, chemtrails, the CIA, aliens, etc.) For the sexually frustrated crazy white male, women and non-whites are obvious targets.
And not social isolation? Are you intentionally excluding this big one? Because it is much more of a unifying factor than “toxic ideology”. What was the VaTech shooter’s toxic ideology? What was Adam Lanza’s or the Austin Bomber’s? What was the Las Vegas shooter’s ideology?
I mean, sure. We have terrorists. Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph were terrorists with toxic ideologies, and it isn’t clear to me they were all that unstable or socially isolated. And I agree the Charleston shooter looks more terrorist than “troubled young man”…though there is no reason he couldn’t be both. But none of the Incel-ish guys who go on indiscriminate murdering sprees fit the “terrorist” profile. Their ideas don’t reflect the real life communities they sprung from. They weren’t radicalized by specific individuals or groups. The people who knew them didn’t really know them to be as hateful as their online personas. Their victims are diverse. I think these things are real important.
I agree. I just don’t think Incels are a good bellweather of that promotion. When All-American Frat Boys start shooting down women and minorities, I’ll be persuaded to move away from the “crazy angry hateful guys being crazy angry hateful” hypothesis. I’m much more concerned about toxic ideologies spreading among the sane and sober. I won’t be looking at Incel forums to see whether things are getting worse for women and minorities. I will be looking at mainstream boards like this one.
No, they don’t count for me. Because the people committing those very specific, targeted acts of violence were terrorists–ones fully supported by their friends and family and communities. They weren’t socially marginalized lone wolves getting revenge. There was no “instability” in the people who were committing these crimes. If they had been born in 1986 instead of, say, 1920, they would likely be no more racist or violent than the typical hipster.
It seems to me that we should have been seeing indiscriminate mass violence by lone-but-otherwise-normal wolves back then as we see today, if it was solely about misogyny and racism. And maybe there was–I haven’t closed my mind to that idea. However if I was trying to rehabilitate an Elliot Rodger type of guy, re-programming him out of the misogyny and racism would not be my top priority. It would be figuring out what the fuck is wrong with his brain, chemically and/or structurally. If he’s still talking that “let’s kill the bitches” ying-yang AFTER we fix his brain and teach him social skills and address his poor self-concept, then yeah, he’s been brainwashed and we need to re-program him. But if the mental illness mixed with social despair are the main drivers, I wouldn’t expect that we’d have to do much of that.
And Broomstick, the Charles Whitman story is fascinating. However, it actually supports my point, though not perfectly. Whitman was a perfect example of a “crazy guy being crazy”. He wasn’t driven by ideas. It’s not clear he had any real crazy ideas. But he did have that big-ass tumor.
That’s an interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s intrinsically fun, but I’ve met people who I hit it off with and had a fun time with. If I know I’m meeting someone new[sup]*[/sup], I do get a bit nervous about it, but I can’t think of any really bad experiences. I’m extremely curious, so any new person I meet can tell me about something interesting that I don’t already know. I hope my curiosity doesn’t make the person I’m with feel like they’re in a job interview.
I’m worried we may have strayed a bit from the topic of the thread here.
Like if I’m meeting someone from a dating site in-person for the first time. Or a dopefest.
So this is when I chime up again with the question: “Is social isolation mostly a contributing factor to their issues, or it is mostly a * symptom* of their issues?” If someone has a toxic ideology plus mental health illness, it should not be surprising that they also not Mr. Popularity. This is why knowing why someone is socially isolated matters. (Las Vega shooter was not socially isolated, since he had a girlfriend I believe.)
If the lack of social connections is mostly the result of other factors, then what good does it do for us to focus on the social angle? I don’t want to come across as dismissive to this particular concern-- in general I think social isolation is a problem–but since it’s unrealistic to expect people to stop freely associating and disassociating with people who behave in antisocial ways, then I don’t know what the solution is except to tackle causes of antisocial behavior. That means addressing problematic beliefs and mental health conditions.
If we think of dating/attraction as being akin to math, there are some students who have a natural aptitude for math, some others who can learn but find it hard, and finally some students who just cannot math no matter how hard they try. Their minds simply don’t have the programming for it.
At a certain point, frustration turns to anger or resignation. And the desire for instant solutions, or some magic panacea, increases, rather than decreases, as frustration builds.
People in successful relationships, or also players, are often the first type. The second category can be the Forever-Aloners or it-just-hasn’t-happened-yet nice guys or nice women. And finally, incels are the I’m-fed-up-and-I’m-hurling-this-calculus-textbook-out-the-classroom-window type.
A math teacher who goes up to a frustrated, angry math student and tries to give a long, winding lecture about the importance of “starting from the basics and let’s see you do your 9x9 tables again and remember, you need to spend years on this in order to catch up with your peers” might get assaulted by the incel.
What if the math teacher (a therapist, in other words) sits down with the student and asks them to explain what goes through their head when they tackle a math problem, in the attempt to identify the root cause of their problem? Would that help?
Maybe, maybe not. I’m drawing from my experiences from when I worked with engineers. Mechanical, Civil, Professional. I was essentially the acquired peripheral social skillset of the group, a.k.a. Secretary. So I know a lot of people whose social skills are not the best. They’re far from being losers. They aren’t single either, most were married with children. But their social skills are not the best, and it ranges.
I acquired some insight there, not just by getting to know the men, but their wives too. Well enough to think that if not for women, certain women who are very accepting and willing to perform most of the emotional labor in a partnership, a lot of those guys would be going home alone to TV and canned soup every night, and they would not be happy about it.
So they recognize their own deficiencies, even if they – and I, and others – are a little unclear on what constitutes those deficiencies and how to overcome them. I’m not saying you belong in the same category, I’m saying there is such a category, and it seems to be well-populated and doing well in other respects. Just not socially.
you with the face, that’s a good question–one that only researchers can answer. But it’s no doubt a positive feedback loop for lots of people. People stay away from you because you act creepy, so you become social isolated. Because you’re socially isolated, you keep getting creepier because social adeptness and internal censoring tend to break down with disuse. And now people really stay away from you, which then thwarts your hope of ever getting want you want from them (validation, attention, respect, love). So you get angry.
I think we can all agree that it would ideal for people to never be creepy in the first place. But that’s just not possible. Besides, not all “creepy” is really CREEPY!! Was Elliot Rodger spouting “toxic ideology” when he was a little kid and his parents decided he needed to be educated in a special school for kids with emotional difficulties? I doubt it. He was probably just a big ole exasperating weirdo. The same for Adam Lanza. I guess what I’m positing is that we MIGHT be able to stop these guys from blowing everyone up if we were to find a way to keep big ole weirdos from retreating into basements (literally and metaphorically) once they realize the world ain’t got time for all their big ole weirdness. I think this could prevent some of them from becoming CREEPY!!, which could thus prevent them from becoming killers.
Then there’s the common interactions with rude or stupid people that most people in a better place blow off and don’t remember, but people in a state of depression absolutely do and are injured by.
I’m just an average middle aged white guy, but I’d say that at least once or thrice a year someone, usually a woman, will make some stupid comment about how I look creepy or I make them nervous just by going about my business. Usually I blow it off, but if I’m suffering a bout of anxiety or depression (yesterday was a very bad day), then that sort of stuff hits harder, gets really offensive and I react.
Hell, 30 years ago I rode up the elevator in our company parking ramp, my employee badge clearly visible on my shirt and yet some fucking idiot woman cowered in the back of the elevator staring at me with her mace in her hand. I was young and very angry about this and if she had maced me for no reason but her fear, I’d have likely beaten her within an inch of her life, but I stood there, on the other side of the elevator, kept my face looking neutral and at the door.
I could go on with these kinds of issues, but they don’t reflect on me, they reflect poorly on the people who do this sort of thing. I’m just an innocent bystander being harmed by paranoid assholes.
But if you’re some guy with the kinds of issues we’re talking about and these things happen to you, you’re likely to remember them and let them fester.
I consider that to be a very good analogy. I’ve used it, myself. Whether it’s really as hopeless as your last sentence suggests (in math, or anything else) I haven’t figured out, yet.
I don’t know if I’m in that category, either, but I can do better than canned soup most nights.
But even among that category, as you say, some find a partner and some don’t. Does it just come down to luck? (Rhetorical question, mostly.)
There must be a pretty good reason for anybody to be an ‘incel’ in the 20-whatever-we-call-this decade. And it ain’t because everyone else is ignoring horny people. I don’t think it’s any different than all the other angry screwed up people who turn to violence. They’re doing it because their pathetic story that no one cared about will make headlines and instead of being nothing but a loser they’ll be a loser who went out with a bang. They’re like a little kid who thinks “I’ll run away and then my parents will be sorry they made me eat my peas!”, they think we’ll regret not taking their lunatic ravings seriously. We should take them seriously now, just not in the way they were thinking we would.
Why do you doubt it without knowing anything about him? For me to doubt something like this, I would need to believe there are no little boys out there doing and saying cruel things to others that consistent with “toxic ideological” thinking. I can’t do that.
Don’t you remember in kindergarden, some boy threw sand in your face and it got in your eyes and everything? WTF was that? I will never forget that scene on the playground. You were bawling and he just stood there looking at you. That boy could’ve been an incel in the making. We don’t know, do we? That wasn’t weirdness. That was a compulsion do harm.
Elliot Rodger could’ve always had some weird superiority/inferiority complex going on, where he looked down on anyone that was below his “level” (like black people) while simultaneously feeling his opportunities were limited due to his race and height. And for all we know, Adam Lanza was the kid who kicked down other kid’s sand castles and knocked ice cream cones out of their hands just to see them cry. Of course, I have zero idea if either one of them was like this. But if they were? Well, then hell yeah they ain’t going to have friends. It would be more than just weirdness. It’s antisociality that needs treatment.
We need to be sympathetic without imagining sympathetic things, yo!
Funny that someone used the math analogy. I never got Algebra either. The difference is that I cared a lot less about not getting Algebra, because my verbal skills made up for it in college. My mechanical aptitude is even lower, but I can pay someone to fix whatever needs fixing. Not having the ability to make romantic connections was a huge problem. I couldn’t pay someone to do that. I never knew that there was such a thing as a dating coach, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have been much of a help. When it comes to both higher math and mechanics, something can make perfect sense to me when someone demonstrates it. Try as I may, though, I can’t do it myself. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Often the frustration makes it more difficult the more I try. I never hated women, but I sure hate Algebra. It’s a good thing that the teachers who told me I needed it to succeed in college didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s an even better thing that Ms. P found me so damn irresistible that she approached me and left no doubt about her intentions.
I don’t know exactly what being in the 20-whatever-we-call-this decade is supposed to indicate. But I’m guessing you believe that sex is so indiscriminate nowadays compared to other time periods, so anyone who ain’t gettin’ none must deserve it.
If I were a socially awkward guy looking for love, I would prefer a time period where I could make my first impression in “real life” versus a dating app. If my face isn’t that cute, I can always wear some nice jeans to accentuate my nice butt. I can try to compensate for my awkward conversational skills by using my body language to show I am great listener (and I’d make sure to smile my most charming smile). If there’s a lull in the conversation, I can make things less awkward by selecting a good song on the jukebox (and in doing so show I have good taste). When there’s another lull in the conversation, I can point out something funny in the environment and show off my great sense of humor.
You lose all of this when first contact is made through texting. You lose the ability to assess the “whole body”, including movement. You lose the body language. Spontaneity is harder. Miscommunication is rampant. Spelling and grammar issues stand out more, as does the under- or overreliance on textspeak. And it’s harder to have a bond over shared experiences–like a magical song playing on the juke box or laughing at something the waitress said. The girl is not staring into Shy Awkward Guy’s eyes as he stammers out a sweet story about his childhood dog Sammy. She’s judging a bunch of words scrolling underneath a thumbnail image of his face, all while she’s getting texts from other guys who have better-looking faces, who have much better text flirt games. If she does go out with Shy Awkward Guy and it’s just an OK date, is she really going to feel like saying “yes” to a second date knowing she’s got a whole bunch of unanswered messages from other guys in her inbox? I don’t think I would if I were a girl in that situation.
The internet has made it so that people don’t have to take on a lot of risk. Like, it has been a long time since I’ve walked into a restaurant without first studying the online menu and the Yelp reviews. If the food in the reviewer photos doesn’t look good and there aren’t any positive reviews and the menu doesn’t have any dishes I’m familiar with, I swiping left cuz ain’t nobody got time for unsatisfying food. The internet has intensified competition in all sectors. I don’t know why dating would be exempt from this.
Sorry, I just have a hard time assuming that Elliot Rodger was talking about killing girls for not giving him sex when he was a ten-year-old kid.
Oh, you meant being an asshole! Why didn’t you just say that? When you said “toxic ideology”, I thought you actually meant “toxic ideology”. :smack:
I’m sure lots of big ole weirdos do bad things. But so do lots of non-weirdos. Don’t you remember all the cool kids who put your bookbag in the middle of busy street traffic and threw your lunch pal around the classroom when the teacher wasn’t around? Don’t you remember the Chads who called you names and smacked you in the face around while everyone laughed? Because I remember. But those kids weren’t relegated to the margins of the social hierarchy for those crimes. They were permitted to fluorish and become even bigger assholes (or alternatively, grow out of their immaturity and become upstanding members of society).
I have read a bit about both of these guys, and none of them were described by the people who knew them to be bullies or objectively hateful people. Elliot was described as painfully shy and quiet. Adam would have meltdowns over the slightest things and barely talked. (He also was obsessed with Dance Revolution, which is fascinating). These guys as kids weren’t socializing enough to display asshole behavior. They were just kind of existing.
My uneducated guess? Guys who start off from an early age having toxic personalities eventually wind up on law enforcement’s radar. They don’t wind up in a basement. They wind up in prison. But the hell I know.
At any rate, I don’t know if I understand the larger point you are making. Even if Elliot Rodger was a bully from day one, it does not follow that an intervention wouldn’t have kept him from turning into a killer. Just to make it clear: I don’t expect regular, everyday people to embrace either creeps or CREEPS!! But trained professionals working with a network of caring volunteers could be mobilized to do this.
I don’t assume the very worse from people, yo. And even if big ole weirdos are always assholes, what is the solution? Lock them up before they’ve broken any laws? Lock them up even if it was not their intention to hurt anyone?
(By the way, the little boy who threw sand in my eyes actually didn’t mean to. Cuz we were both throwing sand. The sand just wound up going into my face instead of his. It’s funny how we have a totally different interpretation of that day, and we were both there. At any rate, he was five fucking years old. Even if he meant to throw sand at me, it is totally plausible that he didn’t mean any harm. If I can feel compassion for that little boy and I was the one who got hurt, why can’t you eek out a little? Sheesh.)
Don’t church bombings, car bombings, assassinations of black voting-rights advocates, etc., count? ISTM that the 50s and 60s were an absolute dumpster fire of ideologically motivated racist violence, though I admit that the indiscriminate shooting spree was not as fashionable a form of such violence back then as it has become since.