The ultimate insult when someone can't effectively argue their point of view. It comes across as "You're just not smart enough to understand. Too bad you're not as smart as me. I feel so superior."
Haha, good example of blame. It could be that, it could be ignorance, it could be a social paradigm tightly wrapped into an engram in your brain, I don't presume to know, but it's not your fault.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
I mean, I was a kid in the 70s and there were the bullys and the kids that were picked on. Never, ever, did the kids that were picked on go home and get a gun and use that as a way to deal. The kids instead either continued to get picked on through life or one day had enough and confronted their bullies with their fists. It gave them courage, confidence, acceptance, the whole 9 yards. School yard fights were the norm and a harmless way (compared to guns at least) of proving a point. There's a lot to say about that simplistic era.
There's something wrong with our society now (and the media which glorifies the "everyone's a victim" stance) if killing people is the only way to deal with being picked on. Accountability has been forgotten. And we can all blame the media for forgetting about this important trait!!
playground fights nowadays result in law suits and criminal records. the person picked on has the choice between taking it, or going to jail for assault and having his acts in high school mar his record for life.
I agree. But they could cause a seriously ill person to do those things. And he is not to blame for having an illness.
If you think there was something fundamentally wrong within him, do you think that was his fault?
I guess that's the million dollar question, and the whole point of the original article.
Obviously, you would like to say that he chose to do these killings out of his own free will. He planed if for 6 days, made a video, drove to the post office, came back, and killed 30 more people. Clear premeditation and intent.
But if he was sick to begin with, what choice did he really have?
but most of us were picked on at various points, on and off. most of these kids who snap were consistently picked on with no abatement. it's not like they got teased the one day they wore X. they were tormented daily for years.
not that it excuses what happened. nor do i feel sorry for the kid. but the "picking on" he endured was not the typical teasing everyone gets.
Many of us were mercilessly picked on. It takes an extremely selfish person to do what he did. I would have never done what these dumbasses seem to think it's alright to do and I went through years of this at times (even in college from an administrative level). I am not an exception to this either. This is not bragging. The vast majority of us would have never done this.
I guess that's the million dollar question, and the whole point of the original article.
Obviously, you would like to say that he chose to do these killings out of his own free will. He planed if for 6 days, made a video, drove to the post office, came back, and killed 30 more people. Clear premeditation and intent.
But if he was sick to begin with, what choice did he really have?
I just feel sad for the person who started out just like the rest of us but became a monster. Monsters are created, not born. Maybe some people would call that pity. But I do truly feel sorry for him, because of the person he could have been.
playground fights nowadays result in law suits and criminal records. the person picked on has the choice between taking it, or going to jail for assault and having his acts in high school mar his record for life.
...or shooting everyone around him and getting pitied by a media who wants us to all feel guilty for his crimes.
Many of us were mercilessly picked on. It takes an extremely selfish person to do what he did. I would have never done what these dumbasses seem to think it's alright to do and I went through years of this at times (even in college from an administrative level). I am not an exception to this either. This is not bragging. The vast majority of us would have never done this.
i dont think t has to do with selfishness. it has to do with mental illness. this kid was clearly mentally disturbed. oyu pick on someone who already has a distorted perception of reality and you've got an accident waiting to happen. the kid was a time bomb. if he hadn't been psychotic (and i mean that in the schizophrenic, mental illness sense), then the teasing probably would not have caused it. if he hadn't been teased and tormented so much, his psychosis might have been treatable. but both together... were just too much.
...or shooting everyone around him and getting pitied by a media who wants us to all feel guilty for his crimes.
i dont think that's the first choice. i think that's what you get when they try to just take it until they break and explode. maybe if he had fought back earlier he would not have gunned down a ton of people. but he would have been jailed for it and been labeled a dangerous criminal for life. this is the one way i think we need to make changes as a result of this. currently, nobody accepts provocation as a defense, and it should be. you pick on a guy and he hits back, tough shit. but right now, they jail the kid who simply couldn't take it anymore becos the popular kid says "dude, he's always been a weirdo, and we were just having some fun teasing him a bit, it was just a joke dude and we didnt mean anything by it dude, but he's a PSYCHO dude." and the kid is labeled for life as a threat, when really, he needs therapy and the harassing jackass needs to feel some consequences, be it a punch on the nose from the kid or a suspension for abuse. it doesn't excuse what this kid did, but he should have been protected BEFORE he snapped. and we don't protect those kids. now, AFTER the shooting... sorry kid, no amount of abuse gives you the right to take someone's life. im just saying this probably COULD have been stopped way before it started... we just don't listen to these kids.
i dont think the media wants anything but ad money. and i certainly don't pity the kid. i just see a lot going on here. we cannot stop crazy people from shooting people up and those who do it are accountable. but there are things we probably CAN do to reduce the probability of such things happening, and we should do them.
... the popular kid says "dude, he's always been a weirdo, and we were just having some fun teasing him a bit, it was just a joke dude and we didnt mean anything by it dude, but he's a PSYCHO dude."
This is a PERFECT little skit. This is how it goes. And the kid saying this after tormenting some poor kid that does not fit in is a prick who very much deserves an ass-kicking. But as you say, even though the ass-kicking is far less hurtful, it is far more illegal than the verbal abuse and the "retaliator" would be even more villified.
And the tormenting essentially goes unpunished. Teachers tend to be OK with it, as they identify with the bullies more than their victims (and yes, those kids, and we all knew of them, were victims). If I treated people like that at work, I'd be canned. You certainly should be able to put a stop to this at school.
I cannot come up with a new sig till I get this egg off my face.
I wonder.................what would he have been labeled if he had just shot himself in the head and not shot up a bunch of other people. Would a song be written about him?
ARE YOU SERIOUS??? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MEDIA???
POOR BABY WAS PICKED ON, GET OVER IT...WHAT ABOUT THE 33 DEAD AND THE ONES STILL INJURED???
Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago
Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness and the strange way he talked when he was a schoolboy in the Washington suburbs, former classmates say.
Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.
"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.
Cho shot 32 people to death and committed suicide Monday in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. The high school classmates' accounts add to the psychological portrait that is beginning to take shape, and could shed light on Cho's state of mind in the video rant he mailed to NBC in the middle of his rampage at Virginia Tech.
In the often-incoherent video, the 23-year-old Cho portrays himself as persecuted and rants about rich kids.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, who came to the U.S. in 1992 and whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."
Among the victims of the massacre were two other Westfield High graduates: Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Both young women graduated from the high school last year. Police said it is not clear whether Cho singled them out.
Stephanie Roberts, 22, a fellow member of Cho's graduating class at Westfield High, said she never witnessed anyone picking on Cho in high school.
"I just remember he was a shy kid who didn't really want to talk to anybody," she said. "I guess a lot of people felt like maybe there was a language barrier."
But she said friends of hers who went to middle school with Cho told her they recalled him getting picked on there.
"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said Wednesday. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."
Virginia Tech student Alison Heck said a suitemate of hers on campus — Christina Lilick — found a mysterious question mark scrawled on the dry erase board on her door. Lilick went to the same high school as Cho, according to Lilick's Facebook page. Cho once scrawled a question mark on the sign-in sheet on the first day of a literature class, and other students came to know him as "the question mark kid."
"I don't know if she knew that it was him for sure," Heck said. "I do remember that that fall that she was being stalked and she had mentioned the question mark. And there was a question mark on her door."
Heck added: "She just let us know about it just in case there was a strange person walking around our suite."
Lilick could not immediately be located for comment, via e-mail or telephone.
Regan Wilder, 21, who attended Virginia Tech, high school and middle school with Cho, said she was in several classes with Cho in high school, including advanced-placement calculus and Spanish. She said he walked around with his head down, and almost never spoke. And when he did, it was "a real low mutter, like a whisper."
As part of an exam in Spanish class, students had to answer questions in Spanish on tape, and other students were so curious to know what Cho sounded like that they waited eagerly for the teacher to play his recording, she said. She said that on the tape, he did not speak confidently but did seem to know Spanish.
Wilder recalled high school teachers trying to get him to participate, but "he would only shrug his shoulders or he'd give like two-word responses, and I think it just got to the point where teachers just gave up because they realized he wasn't going to come out of the shell he was in, so they just kind of passed him over for the most part as time went on."
She said she was sure Cho probably was picked on in middle school, but so was everyone else. And it didn't seem as if English was the problem for him, she said. If he didn't speak English well, there were several other Korean students he could have reached out to for friendship, but he didn't, she said.
Wilder said Cho wasn't any friendlier in college, where "he always had that same damn blank stare, like glare, on his face. And I'd always try to make eye contact with him because I recognized the kid because I'd seen him for six years, but he'd always just look right past you like you weren't there."
On Wednesday, NBC received a package containing a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement from Cho, 28 video clips and 43 photos — many of them showing Cho, in a military-style vest and backward baseball cap, brandishing handguns. A Postal Service time stamp reads 9:01 a.m. — between the two attacks on campus.
The package helped explain one mystery: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second attack, at a classroom building.
"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," a snarling Cho says on video. "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said Thursday that the material contained little they did not already know. Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.
"I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," he said.
On NBC's "Today" show Thursday, host Meredith Vieira said the decision to air the information "was not taken lightly." Some victims' relatives canceled their plans to speak with NBC because they were upset over the airing of the images, she said.
"I saw his picture on TV, and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words. It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."
There has been some speculation, especially among online forums, that Cho may have been inspired by the South Korean movie "Oldboy." One of the killer's mailed photos shows him brandishing a hammer — the signature weapon of the protagonist — and in a pose similar to one from the film.
The film won the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004. It is about a man unjustly imprisoned for 15 years. After escaping, he goes on a rampage against his captor.
Authorities on Thursday disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho had been accused of sending unwanted messages to two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.
Also, Cho's twisted, violence-filled writings and menacing, uncommunicative demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
... but he should have been protected BEFORE he snapped...
Right. Because it's not just this gunman, but the tousands of non-violent "outcasts" that are mistreated every day. They need to be protected.
And to say "hey, everyone gets picked on" is practically condoning it. The good natured, occassional over the top ribbing my friends gave me is not in the same ballpark as what the few unfortunate people get.
I cannot come up with a new sig till I get this egg off my face.
where are the parts in this story that show his efforts to fit into his surroundings? where does it say that he made attempts to find friends? everything I've read said he would stare at the floor, not make eye contact, not speak even when spoken to, stalk females, etc etc. you act like an outcast, you get treated like an outcast. that's no one's fault but his own. I didn't know a soul my first day in college so I walked up to some guy wearing a stone temple pilots tshirt and started talking to him about stone temple pilots and boom, I had a new friend. I went to a new class and sat amongst a group of hot chicks and started talking to them and boom, I had more new friends. yes, children (and people in general) can be very cruel. but not ALL people are cruel. you get out of life what you put into it. it sounds to me like he had no friends/girlfriends, etc because he made no attempts. he pointed the gun at other people that he perceived to be the problems, but he should've pointed the gun at himself first because that's where the problem started.
and I also didn't see the part in the story where it told at what point the 73 year old holocaust survivor, or the engineering teacher, or the 18 year old freshmen ever picked on him. if he really had a problem with somebody tormenting him, why didn't he take it up with them specifically? his actions were those of a sadistic coward, like any serial killer, child molester, or rapist. mental problems or not, he had no right to kill innocent people and he gets no sympathy from me. if there's Satan, I hope he fucks this prick up the ass.
I think the first step to preventing this from happening in the future is to understand what this person's take on their life was. Right or wrong, pitty or not, trying to see life through this persons eyes is the best way to start an actual dialogue about how to prevent this.
His actions are inexcusable, without a doubt. But, if you simply write this guy off as a whacko, just so you can feel safer in your own life, chances are you are missing the larger point.
We are all products of society to a certain degree. Would a "normal" person respond the way that this guy did? No. Unfortunately instances like this are on the rise, so something must be going on here.
Think back to Columbine, for many, the only lesson learned was an innate fear of people who wore black trenchcoats to school . Those killers were pigeonholed as video game playing, gun wheelding lunatics... oh and they were also picked on. There is a trend here... yes, everyone gets picked on to some degree, but in both cases it would seem that the killers felt completely isolated from society. But, obviously they just werent "strong enough" to deal like all of us do. Obviously we missed the point there, too.
Unfortunately, we can't all just sit back and tell the world to handle things in the same way as we do. Take that off of the table, and you have to take a serious look at ourselves, our society, and the alienation that some people feel. Telling someone simply not to feel the way that they do dosn't work. What you are left with is a lesson in basic human kindness, if you are willing to actually consder it.
Afterall, a little less negativity and more support never hurt anyone did it? Or is that too irrational a thought to even entertain?
Think back to Columbine, for many, the only lesson learned was an innate fear of people who wore black trenchcoats to school . Those killers were pigeonholed as video game playing, gun wheelding lunatics... oh and they were also picked on. There is a trend here... yes, everyone gets picked on to some degree, but in both cases it would seem that the killers felt completely isolated from society. But, obviously they just werent "strong enough" to deal like all of us do. Obviously we missed the point there, too.
actually, there was a recent in-depth show on Columbine on the National Geographic channel that said the 2 at Columbine were not what they have been portrayed to be. they were not members of the so-called "trenchcoat mafia" and in fact did not even wear trenchcoats to school. the only reason they were wearing trenchcoats on that day were to conceal their weapons on the way into the school. and Eric Harris was actually quite popular and had several girlfriends in the final years of his life. so they weren't quite the social outcasts that the media has painted them as. so what's their excuse now? just crazy?
actually, there was a recent in-depth show on Columbine on the National Geographic channel that said the 2 at Columbine were not what they have been portrayed to be. they were not members of the so-called "trenchcoat mafia" and in fact did not even wear trenchcoats to school. the only reason they were wearing trenchcoats on that day were to conceal their weapons on the way into the school. and Eric Harris was actually quite popular and had several girlfriends in the final years of his life. so they weren't quite the social outcasts that the media has painted them as. so what's their excuse now? just crazy?
Exactly... although I would beg to differ that the documentry dismissed the teasing and outcast qualities of Dylan in particular, and even with Eric. Yes, he had friends, and girlfriends, that dosn't remove the fact that somehow they got to a point mentally where they wanted to lash out against society.
I would imagine that this recent shooter also had friends, love interests at some point. NO ONE would admit to being this guys friends right now, no one will say anything good about the guy when all of this is so fresh. Enough time has passed since columbine that we are now able to get some clearer notion of what these guys were like. Still, if you ask most people, they will only remember Dylan and Eric as "crazies who played video games". Is the descripton accurate? Maybe so, but what good does that do all of us?
No one is excusing the actions of these people. The actions are by deffinition unexcusable. Crazy dosn't do it away either. Only an honest attempt at understanding these people will yeild anything that we can do to prevent such actions in the future.
i dont think that's the first choice. i think that's what you get when they try to just take it until they break and explode. maybe if he had fought back earlier he would not have gunned down a ton of people. but he would have been jailed for it and been labeled a dangerous criminal for life. this is the one way i think we need to make changes as a result of this. currently, nobody accepts provocation as a defense, and it should be. you pick on a guy and he hits back, tough shit. but right now, they jail the kid who simply couldn't take it anymore becos the popular kid says "dude, he's always been a weirdo, and we were just having some fun teasing him a bit, it was just a joke dude and we didnt mean anything by it dude, but he's a PSYCHO dude." and the kid is labeled for life as a threat, when really, he needs therapy and the harassing jackass needs to feel some consequences, be it a punch on the nose from the kid or a suspension for abuse. it doesn't excuse what this kid did, but he should have been protected BEFORE he snapped. and we don't protect those kids. now, AFTER the shooting... sorry kid, no amount of abuse gives you the right to take someone's life. im just saying this probably COULD have been stopped way before it started... we just don't listen to these kids.
i dont think the media wants anything but ad money. and i certainly don't pity the kid. i just see a lot going on here. we cannot stop crazy people from shooting people up and those who do it are accountable. but there are things we probably CAN do to reduce the probability of such things happening, and we should do them.
I agree with your point up top. We are creating a bunch of people who do not know how to really take life. People have been coddled so much that many think they have a right to not feel offended...ever...by anyone. If they do, then they sue. Go read the ridiculous rants on votefortheworst.com about suing the owner of the website because of Sanjaya making it so far on American Idol. Look at Don Imus being fired for a bad joke. These are the more sensational examples of a coddled society.
As far as stopping some of these things before they happen, I do see that we can work to do that. Along with what I mentioned in the above paragraph is an aspect of human nature that I can see getting very dangerous if left unchecked in situations such as this. That is the ability to overreact to anything and everything. People say his writings should have been a sign. His writings were no more telling than anything by people we consider to be artists. Also, some people will always be loners and some people will always be strange. If we use these as the warning signs, I can see now all of the helping hands killing off individualism and prescribing Prozac to the masses.
I agree with your point up top. We are creating a bunch of people who do not know how to really take life. People have been coddled so much that many think they have a right to not feel offended...ever...by anyone. If they do, then they sue. Go read the ridiculous rants on votefortheworst.com about suing the owner of the website because of Sanjaya making it so far on American Idol. Look at Don Imus being fired for a bad joke. These are the more sensational examples of a coddled society.
As far as stopping some of these things before they happen, I do see that we can work to do that. Along with what I mentioned in the above paragraph is an aspect of human nature that I can see getting very dangerous if left unchecked in situations such as this. That is the ability to overreact to anything and everything. People say his writings should have been a sign. His writings were no more telling than anything by people we consider to be artists. Also, some people will always be loners and some people will always be strange. If we use these as the warning signs, I can see now all of the helping hands killing off individualism and prescribing Prozac to the masses.
true, it's a very fine line. but this kid went beyond that... stalking, setting fires, he downright TERRIFIED people, not just was weird. and im not advocating forcing all the oddballs into therapy. but when someone harasses an oddball... real consequences for it. protect these kids so they feel comfortable that they can ask for or get help without fear of reprisal from classmates ("oh my god, he's seeing a SHRINK now!"), so that it is not stigmatized. it may not have worked in this case because he apparently refused help, but it could help in others. furthermore, i think we need to curb liability. i know a friend who attempted suicide and was told not to return to school for 2 quarters. why was this kid still in school after stalking, suicidal expressions, and setting fires? he was clearly dangerous and school is not a place for him. but if they had kicked him out, he sues for discrimination and if he kills himself after, his family sues for pushing him to it. that nonsense needs to stop.
true, it's a very fine line. but this kid went beyond that... stalking, setting fires, he downright TERRIFIED people, not just was weird. and im not advocating forcing all the oddballs into therapy. but when someone harasses an oddball... real consequences for it. protect these kids so they feel comfortable that they can ask for or get help without fear of reprisal from classmates ("oh my god, he's seeing a SHRINK now!"), so that it is not stigmatized. it may not have worked in this case because he apparently refused help, but it could help in others. furthermore, i think we need to curb liability. i know a friend who attempted suicide and was told not to return to school for 2 quarters. why was this kid still in school after stalking, suicidal expressions, and setting fires? he was clearly dangerous and school is not a place for him. but if they had kicked him out, he sues for discrimination and if he kills himself after, his family sues for pushing him to it. that nonsense needs to stop.
I refused help as a kid too, mainly because I feared the social stigma.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
true, it's a very fine line. but this kid went beyond that... stalking, setting fires, he downright TERRIFIED people, not just was weird. and im not advocating forcing all the oddballs into therapy. but when someone harasses an oddball... real consequences for it. protect these kids so they feel comfortable that they can ask for or get help without fear of reprisal from classmates ("oh my god, he's seeing a SHRINK now!"), so that it is not stigmatized. it may not have worked in this case because he apparently refused help, but it could help in others. furthermore, i think we need to curb liability. i know a friend who attempted suicide and was told not to return to school for 2 quarters. why was this kid still in school after stalking, suicidal expressions, and setting fires? he was clearly dangerous and school is not a place for him. but if they had kicked him out, he sues for discrimination and if he kills himself after, his family sues for pushing him to it. that nonsense needs to stop.
I mean, I was a kid in the 70s and there were the bullys and the kids that were picked on. Never, ever, did the kids that were picked on go home and get a gun and use that as a way to deal. The kids instead either continued to get picked on through life or one day had enough and confronted their bullies with their fists. It gave them courage, confidence, acceptance, the whole 9 yards. School yard fights were the norm and a harmless way (compared to guns at least) of proving a point. There's a lot to say about that simplistic era.
There's something wrong with our society now (and the media which glorifies the "everyone's a victim" stance) if killing people is the only way to deal with being picked on. Accountability has been forgotten. And we can all blame the media for forgetting about this important trait!!
The University of Texas at Austin shootings, in which 15 people were killed (the worst school shooting until the VT shootings. many people thought columbine was but this is a common mistake) occurred in 1966. Whitman (the shooter) was abused by his father until he snapped. It doesnt matter when a person grew up. Mental illness doesnt give a damn what decade you grew up in.
Unfortunately, we're probably going to be having another argument (not you and my personally, I was thinking about the board) about this. There's going to be those who say they have no sympathy, those who say they have sympathy, and those you just want to understand what can cause a person to finally slip off the edge of sanity and reason.
i got picked on as a kid when i was younger for being chubby...instead of picking up a pistol and wasting people i went on graduated from high school, won a state championship with my team, and then kept on in the gym and maintain a decent weight...while graduating from college late this year
this guy was a nut bag who wanted attention and thanks to NBC and the media, he got it
i got picked on as a kid when i was younger for being chubby...instead of picking up a pistol and wasting people i went on graduated from high school, won a state championship with my team, and then kept on in the gym and maintain a decent weight...while graduating from college late this year
this guy was a nut bag who wanted attention and thanks to NBC and the media, he got it
so because you were stable enough to actually turn the abuse into something positive, everyone else should be able to do it too? Two different people can go through the same experience and react differently because of their personalities and mental health.
i got picked on as a kid when i was younger for being chubby...instead of picking up a pistol and wasting people i went on graduated from high school, won a state championship with my team, and then kept on in the gym and maintain a decent weight...while graduating from college late this year
this guy was a nut bag who wanted attention and thanks to NBC and the media, he got it
What causes a person to be a nutbag, and by nutbag to you mean a sociopath. Do you feel that this warrants social stigmatization of socially disabled peoples?
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
I think the first step to preventing this from happening in the future is to understand what this person's take on their life was. Right or wrong, pitty or not, trying to see life through this persons eyes is the best way to start an actual dialogue about how to prevent this.
His actions are inexcusable, without a doubt. But, if you simply write this guy off as a whacko, just so you can feel safer in your own life, chances are you are missing the larger point.
We are all products of society to a certain degree. Would a "normal" person respond the way that this guy did? No. Unfortunately instances like this are on the rise, so something must be going on here.
Think back to Columbine, for many, the only lesson learned was an innate fear of people who wore black trenchcoats to school . Those killers were pigeonholed as video game playing, gun wheelding lunatics... oh and they were also picked on. There is a trend here... yes, everyone gets picked on to some degree, but in both cases it would seem that the killers felt completely isolated from society. But, obviously they just werent "strong enough" to deal like all of us do. Obviously we missed the point there, too.
Unfortunately, we can't all just sit back and tell the world to handle things in the same way as we do. Take that off of the table, and you have to take a serious look at ourselves, our society, and the alienation that some people feel. Telling someone simply not to feel the way that they do dosn't work. What you are left with is a lesson in basic human kindness, if you are willing to actually consder it.
Afterall, a little less negativity and more support never hurt anyone did it? Or is that too irrational a thought to even entertain?
I totally agree.
There is a little boy in my son's first grade class. He's 6 and by every definition, he's a social outcast. He has no friends, no one wants to sit with him at lunch and he never gets invited to any birthday parties.
Every day he gets in trouble at school because the teachers always have an eye on him. There can be 4 other kids doing the same thing he is but he's the one that gets caught. His parents are divorced and he lives with his alcoholic, pill-popping mom. She doesn't make him do his daily homework so every friday, he has to sit in a small room at school and do it all... people think that he likes being in there because he doesn't get yelled at.
when his name comes up, adults will say that he is evil and kids say he's bad and mean. Other parents shake their heads and say how sad and unfortuneate the situation is but again, not a single person invites him over for a playdate because he's such a handful.
He doesn't get picked on but he absolutely doesn't fit in. If he was bullied daily on top of all this....
If this kid's life continues this way (or god forbid gets worse), would it be surprising to see him go postal in 10 years?
There is a little boy in my son's first grade class. He's 6 and by every definition, he's a social outcast. He has no friends, no one wants to sit with him at lunch and he never gets invited to any birthday parties.
Every day he gets in trouble at school because the teachers always have an eye on him. There can be 4 other kids doing the same thing he is but he's the one that gets caught. His parents are divorced and he lives with his alcoholic, pill-popping mom. She doesn't make him do his daily homework so every friday, he has to sit in a small room at school and do it all... people think that he likes being in there because he doesn't get yelled at.
when his name comes up, adults will say that he is evil and kids say he's bad and mean. Other parents shake their heads and say how sad and unfortuneate the situation is but again, not a single person invites him over for a playdate because he's such a handful.
He doesn't get picked on but he absolutely doesn't fit in. If he was bullied daily on top of all this....
If this kid's life continues this way (or god forbid gets worse), would it be surprising to see him go postal in 10 years?
I expect that he probably will absent some positive influence in his life.
A common mistake I see is that teachers/parents will notice a child facing social difficulties and think "Oh he might go insane, better keep a watchful eye on him" then they start noticing regular kid stuff and feel they need to be stricter or some shit. I don't know, they just watch out for him, but not by being his friend, because that would put them out of their social group.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
There is a little boy in my son's first grade class. He's 6 and by every definition, he's a social outcast. He has no friends, no one wants to sit with him at lunch and he never gets invited to any birthday parties.
Every day he gets in trouble at school because the teachers always have an eye on him. There can be 4 other kids doing the same thing he is but he's the one that gets caught. His parents are divorced and he lives with his alcoholic, pill-popping mom. She doesn't make him do his daily homework so every friday, he has to sit in a small room at school and do it all... people think that he likes being in there because he doesn't get yelled at.
when his name comes up, adults will say that he is evil and kids say he's bad and mean. Other parents shake their heads and say how sad and unfortuneate the situation is but again, not a single person invites him over for a playdate because he's such a handful.
He doesn't get picked on but he absolutely doesn't fit in. If he was bullied daily on top of all this....
If this kid's life continues this way (or god forbid gets worse), would it be surprising to see him go postal in 10 years?
Its funny you should mention that... I work with preschoolers, and you see this type of social outcasting even at this young age. The reaction to this particular 2 year old in my class is much the same, from the other parents and classmates alike. The child is innately aware of this too.
It is sad to think about what could become of this boy should nothing be done about his situation and lack of social ability. Often you will find learning dissabilities or other issues that are also going on with the child which leads them to act out (meaning behavior problems in school, not shooting rampages). Many of these are nearly impossible to diagnose at my class' ages, but the older they get the harder things can be for them.
You just never know all of whats going on in a persons life, or for how long their troubles have gone unnoticed. I just think its simplistic and unrealistic to dismiss someone like the VA tech as "crazy" and move on.
I expect that he probably will absent some positive influence in his life.
A common mistake I see is that teachers/parents will notice a child facing social difficulties and think "Oh he might go insane, better keep a watchful eye on him" then they start noticing regular kid stuff and feel they need to be stricter or some shit. I don't know, they just watch out for him, but not by being his friend, because that would put them out of their social group.
in Luke's case, the teachers punish him for the tiniest infraction. His mom...I don't know what she does or doesn't do. She has made comments like "boys will be boys" or "if he gets in trouble at school for not doing his homework, he will start to do it on his own." (um-isn't working) The father doesn't know what to do...he's made comments and has apologized for his son's behavior to my husband at baseball practice.
the kid can't even read at a first grade level and when I have complemented him for something, he looks at me like I've got 3 eyes.
After this incident at VT...I was talking to my sister today and she said something like "maybe you should go out of your way to be nice to him so if/when he goes off, he'll spare your son". How wacky is that and how far of a stretch is it?
My best friend is a school social worker and she always has stories about her 1st-5th graders. Really shocking stuff, too.
I expect that he probably will absent some positive influence in his life.
A common mistake I see is that teachers/parents will notice a child facing social difficulties and think "Oh he might go insane, better keep a watchful eye on him" then they start noticing regular kid stuff and feel they need to be stricter or some shit. I don't know, they just watch out for him, but not by being his friend, because that would put them out of their social group.
You nailed it. I see it every day at work, and actually caught some serious flack for speaking up when I felt that the child I mentioned in my previous post wasn't being served by being considerd for expulsion from our program. Heaven forbid we actually try to make a difference.
Politics in teaching can play a role, along with social pressures and to be completely honest, having 20 2 year olds to look after can be too much for even the best of teachers.
Its a big problem, not a simple one that we seem so despirate to label and move on.
Comments
Haha, good example of blame. It could be that, it could be ignorance, it could be a social paradigm tightly wrapped into an engram in your brain, I don't presume to know, but it's not your fault.
playground fights nowadays result in law suits and criminal records. the person picked on has the choice between taking it, or going to jail for assault and having his acts in high school mar his record for life.
Obviously, you would like to say that he chose to do these killings out of his own free will. He planed if for 6 days, made a video, drove to the post office, came back, and killed 30 more people. Clear premeditation and intent.
But if he was sick to begin with, what choice did he really have?
Many of us were mercilessly picked on. It takes an extremely selfish person to do what he did. I would have never done what these dumbasses seem to think it's alright to do and I went through years of this at times (even in college from an administrative level). I am not an exception to this either. This is not bragging. The vast majority of us would have never done this.
I just feel sad for the person who started out just like the rest of us but became a monster. Monsters are created, not born. Maybe some people would call that pity. But I do truly feel sorry for him, because of the person he could have been.
...or shooting everyone around him and getting pitied by a media who wants us to all feel guilty for his crimes.
i dont think t has to do with selfishness. it has to do with mental illness. this kid was clearly mentally disturbed. oyu pick on someone who already has a distorted perception of reality and you've got an accident waiting to happen. the kid was a time bomb. if he hadn't been psychotic (and i mean that in the schizophrenic, mental illness sense), then the teasing probably would not have caused it. if he hadn't been teased and tormented so much, his psychosis might have been treatable. but both together... were just too much.
why would the media want us to feel guilty?
and why are you feeling pity? when you claim to feel otherwise? Is it the media doing it to you?
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i dont think that's the first choice. i think that's what you get when they try to just take it until they break and explode. maybe if he had fought back earlier he would not have gunned down a ton of people. but he would have been jailed for it and been labeled a dangerous criminal for life. this is the one way i think we need to make changes as a result of this. currently, nobody accepts provocation as a defense, and it should be. you pick on a guy and he hits back, tough shit. but right now, they jail the kid who simply couldn't take it anymore becos the popular kid says "dude, he's always been a weirdo, and we were just having some fun teasing him a bit, it was just a joke dude and we didnt mean anything by it dude, but he's a PSYCHO dude." and the kid is labeled for life as a threat, when really, he needs therapy and the harassing jackass needs to feel some consequences, be it a punch on the nose from the kid or a suspension for abuse. it doesn't excuse what this kid did, but he should have been protected BEFORE he snapped. and we don't protect those kids. now, AFTER the shooting... sorry kid, no amount of abuse gives you the right to take someone's life. im just saying this probably COULD have been stopped way before it started... we just don't listen to these kids.
i dont think the media wants anything but ad money. and i certainly don't pity the kid. i just see a lot going on here. we cannot stop crazy people from shooting people up and those who do it are accountable. but there are things we probably CAN do to reduce the probability of such things happening, and we should do them.
This is a PERFECT little skit. This is how it goes. And the kid saying this after tormenting some poor kid that does not fit in is a prick who very much deserves an ass-kicking. But as you say, even though the ass-kicking is far less hurtful, it is far more illegal than the verbal abuse and the "retaliator" would be even more villified.
And the tormenting essentially goes unpunished. Teachers tend to be OK with it, as they identify with the bullies more than their victims (and yes, those kids, and we all knew of them, were victims). If I treated people like that at work, I'd be canned. You certainly should be able to put a stop to this at school.
I feel sorry for him
Right. Because it's not just this gunman, but the tousands of non-violent "outcasts" that are mistreated every day. They need to be protected.
And to say "hey, everyone gets picked on" is practically condoning it. The good natured, occassional over the top ribbing my friends gave me is not in the same ballpark as what the few unfortunate people get.
and I also didn't see the part in the story where it told at what point the 73 year old holocaust survivor, or the engineering teacher, or the 18 year old freshmen ever picked on him. if he really had a problem with somebody tormenting him, why didn't he take it up with them specifically? his actions were those of a sadistic coward, like any serial killer, child molester, or rapist. mental problems or not, he had no right to kill innocent people and he gets no sympathy from me. if there's Satan, I hope he fucks this prick up the ass.
His actions are inexcusable, without a doubt. But, if you simply write this guy off as a whacko, just so you can feel safer in your own life, chances are you are missing the larger point.
We are all products of society to a certain degree. Would a "normal" person respond the way that this guy did? No. Unfortunately instances like this are on the rise, so something must be going on here.
Think back to Columbine, for many, the only lesson learned was an innate fear of people who wore black trenchcoats to school . Those killers were pigeonholed as video game playing, gun wheelding lunatics... oh and they were also picked on. There is a trend here... yes, everyone gets picked on to some degree, but in both cases it would seem that the killers felt completely isolated from society. But, obviously they just werent "strong enough" to deal like all of us do. Obviously we missed the point there, too.
Unfortunately, we can't all just sit back and tell the world to handle things in the same way as we do. Take that off of the table, and you have to take a serious look at ourselves, our society, and the alienation that some people feel. Telling someone simply not to feel the way that they do dosn't work. What you are left with is a lesson in basic human kindness, if you are willing to actually consder it.
Afterall, a little less negativity and more support never hurt anyone did it? Or is that too irrational a thought to even entertain?
actually, there was a recent in-depth show on Columbine on the National Geographic channel that said the 2 at Columbine were not what they have been portrayed to be. they were not members of the so-called "trenchcoat mafia" and in fact did not even wear trenchcoats to school. the only reason they were wearing trenchcoats on that day were to conceal their weapons on the way into the school. and Eric Harris was actually quite popular and had several girlfriends in the final years of his life. so they weren't quite the social outcasts that the media has painted them as. so what's their excuse now? just crazy?
Exactly... although I would beg to differ that the documentry dismissed the teasing and outcast qualities of Dylan in particular, and even with Eric. Yes, he had friends, and girlfriends, that dosn't remove the fact that somehow they got to a point mentally where they wanted to lash out against society.
I would imagine that this recent shooter also had friends, love interests at some point. NO ONE would admit to being this guys friends right now, no one will say anything good about the guy when all of this is so fresh. Enough time has passed since columbine that we are now able to get some clearer notion of what these guys were like. Still, if you ask most people, they will only remember Dylan and Eric as "crazies who played video games". Is the descripton accurate? Maybe so, but what good does that do all of us?
No one is excusing the actions of these people. The actions are by deffinition unexcusable. Crazy dosn't do it away either. Only an honest attempt at understanding these people will yeild anything that we can do to prevent such actions in the future.
I agree with your point up top. We are creating a bunch of people who do not know how to really take life. People have been coddled so much that many think they have a right to not feel offended...ever...by anyone. If they do, then they sue. Go read the ridiculous rants on votefortheworst.com about suing the owner of the website because of Sanjaya making it so far on American Idol. Look at Don Imus being fired for a bad joke. These are the more sensational examples of a coddled society.
As far as stopping some of these things before they happen, I do see that we can work to do that. Along with what I mentioned in the above paragraph is an aspect of human nature that I can see getting very dangerous if left unchecked in situations such as this. That is the ability to overreact to anything and everything. People say his writings should have been a sign. His writings were no more telling than anything by people we consider to be artists. Also, some people will always be loners and some people will always be strange. If we use these as the warning signs, I can see now all of the helping hands killing off individualism and prescribing Prozac to the masses.
true, it's a very fine line. but this kid went beyond that... stalking, setting fires, he downright TERRIFIED people, not just was weird. and im not advocating forcing all the oddballs into therapy. but when someone harasses an oddball... real consequences for it. protect these kids so they feel comfortable that they can ask for or get help without fear of reprisal from classmates ("oh my god, he's seeing a SHRINK now!"), so that it is not stigmatized. it may not have worked in this case because he apparently refused help, but it could help in others. furthermore, i think we need to curb liability. i know a friend who attempted suicide and was told not to return to school for 2 quarters. why was this kid still in school after stalking, suicidal expressions, and setting fires? he was clearly dangerous and school is not a place for him. but if they had kicked him out, he sues for discrimination and if he kills himself after, his family sues for pushing him to it. that nonsense needs to stop.
I refused help as a kid too, mainly because I feared the social stigma.
I 100% agree with you here.
The University of Texas at Austin shootings, in which 15 people were killed (the worst school shooting until the VT shootings. many people thought columbine was but this is a common mistake) occurred in 1966. Whitman (the shooter) was abused by his father until he snapped. It doesnt matter when a person grew up. Mental illness doesnt give a damn what decade you grew up in.
Unfortunately, we're probably going to be having another argument (not you and my personally, I was thinking about the board) about this. There's going to be those who say they have no sympathy, those who say they have sympathy, and those you just want to understand what can cause a person to finally slip off the edge of sanity and reason.
this guy was a nut bag who wanted attention and thanks to NBC and the media, he got it
so because you were stable enough to actually turn the abuse into something positive, everyone else should be able to do it too? Two different people can go through the same experience and react differently because of their personalities and mental health.
What causes a person to be a nutbag, and by nutbag to you mean a sociopath. Do you feel that this warrants social stigmatization of socially disabled peoples?
I totally agree.
There is a little boy in my son's first grade class. He's 6 and by every definition, he's a social outcast. He has no friends, no one wants to sit with him at lunch and he never gets invited to any birthday parties.
Every day he gets in trouble at school because the teachers always have an eye on him. There can be 4 other kids doing the same thing he is but he's the one that gets caught. His parents are divorced and he lives with his alcoholic, pill-popping mom. She doesn't make him do his daily homework so every friday, he has to sit in a small room at school and do it all... people think that he likes being in there because he doesn't get yelled at.
when his name comes up, adults will say that he is evil and kids say he's bad and mean. Other parents shake their heads and say how sad and unfortuneate the situation is but again, not a single person invites him over for a playdate because he's such a handful.
He doesn't get picked on but he absolutely doesn't fit in. If he was bullied daily on top of all this....
If this kid's life continues this way (or god forbid gets worse), would it be surprising to see him go postal in 10 years?
I expect that he probably will absent some positive influence in his life.
A common mistake I see is that teachers/parents will notice a child facing social difficulties and think "Oh he might go insane, better keep a watchful eye on him" then they start noticing regular kid stuff and feel they need to be stricter or some shit. I don't know, they just watch out for him, but not by being his friend, because that would put them out of their social group.
Its funny you should mention that... I work with preschoolers, and you see this type of social outcasting even at this young age. The reaction to this particular 2 year old in my class is much the same, from the other parents and classmates alike. The child is innately aware of this too.
It is sad to think about what could become of this boy should nothing be done about his situation and lack of social ability. Often you will find learning dissabilities or other issues that are also going on with the child which leads them to act out (meaning behavior problems in school, not shooting rampages). Many of these are nearly impossible to diagnose at my class' ages, but the older they get the harder things can be for them.
You just never know all of whats going on in a persons life, or for how long their troubles have gone unnoticed. I just think its simplistic and unrealistic to dismiss someone like the VA tech as "crazy" and move on.
in Luke's case, the teachers punish him for the tiniest infraction. His mom...I don't know what she does or doesn't do. She has made comments like "boys will be boys" or "if he gets in trouble at school for not doing his homework, he will start to do it on his own." (um-isn't working) The father doesn't know what to do...he's made comments and has apologized for his son's behavior to my husband at baseball practice.
the kid can't even read at a first grade level and when I have complemented him for something, he looks at me like I've got 3 eyes.
After this incident at VT...I was talking to my sister today and she said something like "maybe you should go out of your way to be nice to him so if/when he goes off, he'll spare your son". How wacky is that and how far of a stretch is it?
My best friend is a school social worker and she always has stories about her 1st-5th graders. Really shocking stuff, too.
You nailed it. I see it every day at work, and actually caught some serious flack for speaking up when I felt that the child I mentioned in my previous post wasn't being served by being considerd for expulsion from our program. Heaven forbid we actually try to make a difference.
Politics in teaching can play a role, along with social pressures and to be completely honest, having 20 2 year olds to look after can be too much for even the best of teachers.
Its a big problem, not a simple one that we seem so despirate to label and move on.