columbiners and other cults Sick, sick, ... sick

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Is this a North American phenomenon?

 

Is this fraction of our society that psychotic?  We are surely a decadent crowd to allow such boils on the body public.

[Sabretooth78 808]

If they crave infamy so much, maybe they ought to be rounded up, sent over to Syria for beheading (I'm sure ISIS would oblige), broadcast that fact, and then 15 minutes later completely forget about them.

 

Of course even that gives them more than they deserve.

 

On the other hand our society does suck so it's bound to result in things such as this.  Of course, I don't do a lot of the things I'm supposed to do as a good obedient American but that doesn't mean I'm going to go out and shoot up a mall.  Ultimately I think people are quite confused as to what "individualism" really is.  Kind of like the people who've turned atheism into a religion in its own right.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Now how can atheism be a religion?  Religion requires "facts" you have to accept on faith that have no support.  An atheist questions every item of dogma in any religion.

[LexusInfernus 908]

If they crave infamy so much, maybe they ought to be rounded up, sent over to Syria for beheading (I'm sure ISIS would oblige), broadcast that fact, and then 15 minutes later completely forget about them.

Seriously? Some disturbed teens do something stupid so lets send them over to get beheaded by IS? 

 

Now how can atheism be a religion?  Religion requires "facts" you have to accept on faith that have no support.  An atheist questions every item of dogma in any religion.

No, some atheists believe certain 'facts' without having proof for it. Thats mostly in the Richard Dawkins corner though. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Your 'some atheists' are funning you.  You can't be a 'faithful' atheist.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Your 'some atheists' are funning you.  You can't be a 'faithful' atheist.

Sure you can. If you believe God does not exist, you do so based entirely on faith, not facts. 

 

But isn't this a bit off topic? 

[airman15 4,111]

I'm looking at the ages here. 14, 18, 19 (My age? Really??) What i'm getting from this article is that these are bored high schoolers who just want someone to pay attention to them.

 

One question I have at the back of my mind is- where are the parents? At least in my case, my Facebook was monitored. I admit I did stupid stuff and posted some dumb replies but my mom would have never let anything like this fly with me.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

I'm looking at the ages here. 14, 18, 19 (My age? Really??) What i'm getting from this article is that these are bored high schoolers who just want someone to pay attention to them.

 

One question I have at the back of my mind is- where are the parents? At least in my case, my Facebook was monitored. I admit I did stupid stuff and posted some dumb replies but my mom would have never let anything like this fly with me.

 

Unfortunately I think monitoring social media isn't the norm right now for parents.  Whether they are too lenient or want to give their kids privacy, or don't even understand everything about technology (might not even know if their kids are on Facebook/Twitter/anything else).  That said, I think the majority of teens can be trusted not to do things this incredibly stupid.

 

Fortunately the police are all over cyberspace and will charge anyone who makes terrorist threats.  People like these three have been on a watch list for a while.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

What........

First off, why the hell would you idolize two people with horrible lives who decided to end not only theirs, but 13 others as well? Aside from the actual event (which happened 16 years ago, longer than some of them have been around), anyone who writes one of the sexual fan fictions described in the article provided should seek psychological help. Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand the obsession people have with things like death. serial killers (school shooters included, for that matter), and all that. Perhaps you remember the Slenderman Stabbing that happened a while ago? Things like that. People who have no idea how to handle themselves before deciding to do something like what they did. It seems as though something is not right with this generation. Now, I know school violence is not new. I love history, and I read the first school shooting in the US occurred in 1779. But when people begin to become sadistic enough to worship the people who perpetrate such events, you have a problem. Thank God these two in Halifax were arrested though.

I remember right after Sandy Hook happened, my school practiced lockdown drills regularly. One student remarked how horrible it was that we had to worry about psychopathic killers in our school. I agree completely, but my good old math teacher said, "But then again, back in my day, we were worried about Castro bombing us"

[Duke87 1,070]

The teen years in modern US and Canada are a time of much angst because our culture makes enormous demands on teenagers that many of them cannot or do not want to meet. It is normal as a teenager to be developing ones own identity, but this is difficult to do when there is a strict line of what is "normal" and your vicious peers will exclude and bully you for any failure to meet it. Conform or be cast out, to borrow some wisdom from Geddy Lee. It should be no wonder, then, that there are all sorts of teenage counterculture. When I was in high school it was "goth". Shortly afterward it was "emo". Now it's "scene". But even these groups are to some degree mainstream, and while they provide refuge for the kids who are not "cool kids", many still do not fit in there either and get forced into further isolation.

 

In the 21st century, it is typical for isolated teenagers to seek solace on the internet. Indeed, that is kind of why I ended up getting so involved with Simtropolis. It was an escape, a place where there was some common ground to be found with other members without fear of being shunned. But Simtropolis is fortunately a pretty harmless place, we do our best to be welcoming whilst keeping nasty things out. Other teenagers find themselves venturing into darker corners of the internet and becoming influenced by less pleasant things. If someone is depressed because they feel alone, weak, and powerless, they will tend to blame society for failing to accept them (and to some degree they are not wrong - there is a lot of meanness and lack of understanding out there). In such circumstances the one thing they desire most is to be powerful, and be recognized. So the attractive idol therefore is someone who was like them but successfully managed to rise above their oppressed state and stick it to the man. Unfortunately, since there is a lack of actual meaningful sticking it to the man in this country, this idolization defaults to people who grabbed a gun and went postal, and became famous for doing so.

 

Now, most people who idolize such things do so as a fantasy and have no intent of actually acting on it. I mean, everyone sometimes fantasizes about doing nasty things to people who cause them grief. It's normal! But normally it's a passing thing. Unfortunately the internet is very good at allowing people to find things that support them, and thereby normalize crazy things, and turn what would otherwise be a minor thought into an obsession. This routine enforcement of the fantasy raises the risk that at some point someone who has mental issues will fail to separate fantasy from reality and decide to act on it.

 

And that is why it is important for parents to keep some degree of tabs on what their teenage children are up to. Teenagers are impressionable and while they of course will not admit it, they lack the life experience to look at everything in a mature manner and it is therefore potentially harmful for them to be exposed to communities that might tempt them into a skewed view of reality without an adult involved to provide the proper context for what they are seeing.

 

This is also why all of the "talk to your kids about..." PSAs are on the right track. Teenagers are old enough to be exposed to most things, if their parents talk to them about it to make sure they understand it properly.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

As usual, my line here is "failed parents". 

 

The kind of ideas that attract these lonely, naive young persons are more readily available on the Internet, and people wonder how such children become radicalized in some way or another.  Unfortunately, these days it is ever more difficult for parents to monitor or even understand the need to do so because of the ubiquitous nature of world wide communications.  A lot of the stuff on the Internet is utter garbage and dangerous to boot.  Who will explain to these forming adults that things on the net are completely unmoderated and not necessarily to be trusted if not the parents?