As I am sure you are aware, there was another school shooting last week, this time in Santa Fe Texas. Until this point you didn't see me mention it on this blog. That wasn't because I wasn't paying attention. Indeed, I did tweet about it on my twitter account, so it's not like I didn't know what was happening.
So why didn't I write up a post? Because it is my sincere belief that doing so would help to cause more of these attacks in the future. It seems very clear to me that these attackers are doing these school shootings for attention and everyone in the world seems to be giving them that attention. I don't want to contribute to that unless there is some larger point I can make.
Indeed, I predicted that the intense media coverage of the Parkland shooting would almost certainly inspire copycat attacks. Though I haven't heard for sure that this attack and a few others that have occurred since then have been inspired by that media coverage, I would be surprised if it didn't have a major effect. They made the young man in that attack, Nikolas Cruz, into a massive celebrity and a potential hero to anyone who has a grudge against society. Plus they pushed the very people he was rebelling against, his fellow students, into a huge political role and gave the entire situation months of coverage.
For someone that had no hope of ever mattering it sure looks like the media made Nikolas Cruz into someone that mattered to the entire world, no matter how undeserving and evil he is. This is what is called creating negative incentives. Anyone who wants to feel like they are important enough for the entire news media, all of social media and even heads of state to comment on who they are, the message is clear. Shoot up a school. This is obviously not something we want to happen.
I also think that the memetics around mass shootings has changed once again. We are back to the "troubled young person shoots up a school" as the main public idea of what a mass shooting was. That wasn't the case for a long time and it is very disturbing that the media is pushing so hard to make that the case again.
What was it before? Mass shootings were political for almost the entire 8 years that Obama was President and for most of Trump's presidency as well. Whether it was radical Muslims, like the Pulse nightclub shooting and the San Bernardino attacks, far left activists like the congressional baseball shooting and the various Black Lives Matter inspired shootings, or even racism, like the the Charleston church shooting, these attacks all had very obvious and clear political motives. It was to the point where people didn't accept that the Las Vegas attack, the worst mass shooting in American history, wasn't politically motivated.
But now? We are back to the bad old days of Columbine. And if America believes that the typical mass shooter is a young person who is an outcast and has problems with women again, what are people that fit that description going to think? They fit the profile and they might as well get their revenge on society.
That is a very sick and damaging idea to get out there. It's not like the political violence meme is any better but at the very least those attackers by and large attacked other adults. These new school shooters are not targeting adults but their fellow children and that is not something we as a society should encourage.
I realize that there is next to nothing I can do about mass shootings. Even educating others about the danger of memetically spreading ideas about them being dangerous won't do much to help, but I also feel like I don't need to make things worse. I am going to do my best not to try and make mass shooters that target children famous anymore and I think everyone else should try and do the same thing.
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