There are a lot of genuine people in the world who get along with most in places like the US but conversely there are a lot of aggrieved people who are borderline mentally ill (personality disorders, psychotic disorders).
What has struck me as very strange is how we don’t hear more about attempts on any type of celebrities life.
Politicians aside due to the high security around them, I doubt businessmen, bankers, and stock brokers have the same level of security. I imagine some people who are angry about losing money during the 2008 crash would attempt to injure them on the street but I don’t think bar the exceptional cases in the last two decades have I heard of any type of attack.
Why is this? I’m not advocating for violence but I wonder why we here so much more about random shootings in the US than targeted shootings on controversial high profile people who are hated by a fair amount of people.
Hm…we probably should be seeing more as time continues. The population of the world is growing, but the number of A-list stars is not. Conversely, the Hollywood stars are reaching more of the world today than they ever were before; global businesses are more common, so CEOs have a further reach; etc. And yet, as you say, there doesn’t seem to be many, let alone any growth. All of the famous cases that I can think of from Hollywood - the Manson murders and John Hinckley - are from decades ago. I don’t know of any crazy people who targeted a CEO, and I feel like political attacks are fairly flat through the decades.
It’s curious.
I guess my suggestions would be:
Reduction in lead fumes and other psychosis causing agents in our every-day environment.
Better psych medicine.
Reduction in normalizing violent behaviors over time (e.g., accepting that kids fight each other, spanking children, etc.) has made newer generations more peaceable and less prone to violence than previous generations.
It’s just so rare to begin with that we haven’t hit the population count necessary to make it a regular occurrence.
More concentration of wealth has allowed and/or forced the wealthy to move further out of everyday social circles, so they’re harder to track down or encounter, and have better security than they used to.
Technology and policing may have advanced in some way that when crazy people write death threats to people, these days, the police are better able to track that person down? (I don’t know what this would be…)
Here’s a WAG: you don’t always recognize a celebrity close up. The few times I have met people I have seen many times in the news or on TV for whatever reason, it’s surprising how much media warps the way a person looks.
As far as approaching someone at their home-- that’s pretty unlikely. A-listers have really good security. Performers you have heard of who were killed my a crazy stalker were usually not A-listers, like Dominique Dunne, and were killed by an acquaintance, like Rebecca Schaffer, who may not have thought her ex was a physical threat, and let him bypass whatever security she had.
I have no idea how Mark Chapman got close to John Lennon, but perhaps that was partly a product of the times (less security in general), and partly that, IIRC, Lennon was not staying as his primary residence, so security may not have been as beefed up as it was at his other places.
In conjunction with this, I just thought of another one.
There’s a lot less stigma attached to seeking psychiatric help, so a lot more people are in therapy or under a psychiatrist’s care than ever before. Many people have been since childhood. Other people enter voluntarily when they have a stressor in their lives, and many, many other people are ordered there by the courts after a single violent incident. Because of this, many people may make it known that they are nursing some kind of threat, and that is one time that a psychiatrist can break confidentiality. If someone says “I want to kill A-list actor XYZ,” in a therapy session, the therapist can go straight to the phone and notify the police. If the person is on probation, it might be possible to detain them just for making a threat, and if they cannot be legally detained, A-lister XYZ can at least have security.
Also, there is way better communication between different police departments than there used to be. I know that once a discontented former student in a college town in Indiana committed a drive-by shooting on a Saturday morning in Chicago, and his license plate was traced. When it was determined that he was headed toward Hwy 65, the police thought he might be headed back to the town, so they called the FBI, the Indiana State police, and the local police in the city. They immediately sent cars and officers to the homes of every rabbi in the city, and to every shul. They didn’t fully anticipate how his racism might zig-zag, and he ended up shooting someone at the Korean Methodist church, but they caught him when he did.
Wiki gives no indication Schaeffer had had any contact with her killer before the day of her death. Also, she doesn’t seem to have had any kind of personal security, since she answered her own apartment door.
Most stalkers aren’t homicidal. Most people upset with the stock market crash aren’t stalkers, and rarely have any specific person to blame. The question would be highly speculative even if the OP hadn’t thrown together a bunch of elements that don’t have much overlap.
I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of people out there right now saying “say wha…?” But actually, yes, the crime statistics show violence as a general matter had been decreasing for a generation. OTOH the outlier cases tend to be spectacular and highly publicized e.g. the Vegas mass shooting.
It’s called Facebook/Twitter and having some online follower decide to not just stand by when they see you start to go off the rails. As you may recall there have been a number of criminal incidents where after the fact it came out the person was virtually proclaiming what was coming and then people wonder how come nobody noticed. I’m pretty sure people noticed, but felt it was not their job to drop the dime.
Indeed. It’s an extremely rare thing (which in turn makes it big news when it happens); plus yes these days the 0.1% self-isolates. So what you get is…
Well, but an actual stalker would know what you look like “off camera”. But yes, what helps not just top celebrities and influencers but also you and me, is that very, very few people are out to kill.
More often you’ll have someone simply harassed both physically and on line; shouted at, called out, pranked, bombarded with letters and messages, hacked, ID-thieved, libeled. In more recent times, some obsessives have the tool of doxxing – but by and large dare not themselves raise a hand to do anything, instead insinuating some easily swayed online sheeple would.
Good point from **naita *also in that if you got ruined in the financial meltdown and just went off the deep end and now someone’s gotta PAY!!!*… well… *Who? * Your easiest target, and probably the only person that you know for a fact had anything to do with what happened to your money, is your broker, who is no celebrity and he probably just got shitcanned himself by the firm while they got bailed out. The heads of Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch and the Chairs of the Fed and the IMF are well protected and they do not hang out in the kind of places your sorry broke self will.
In Manhattan, global celebrities and CEOs walk the streets among humanity; it’s a different place. And in the Lennon case it was a different time, too. The shooting happened on the sidewalk in front of the Dakota, which *was *John and Yoko’s primary residence since '74, and they got off their car on the street at the front door rather than driving around to the private entrance… because all it meant was a minor convenience. Like any building of that category the Dakota had doormen and controlled entry, but before 9/11 virtually no residential building in NYC had “hardened” security.
Patty Heart’s home address, phone number and other personal information was stored in a browseable card catalog ion the Library at Berkley. Everyone’s was – it was how people got in touch with one another at Berkley. After the incident, the catalog was removed. No wait, after most of the cards disappeared, stolen by their owners, to avoid the same fate, the catalog was removed.
I can’t believe someone actually created Facebook.
A-listers and the very wealthy are far more likely to have armed security to protect them from stalkers.
Even homicidal maniacs are aware that they are more likely to succeed when their targets can’t fight back.
Another reason could be is the media is deliberately underreporting these incidents so other disturbed people don’t get any ideas. It’s the same reason why they don’t show the various idiots who bum rush the field, court, or rink during a televised sports event.