Not that this is normal behaviour, and I mean fuck Roblox, as we all know it’s a scuzzy predatory breeding ground. But this constant narrative that video games, or music, or other types of media mediums are to blame after events like this is exhausting. It’s mental.fucking.illness thats to blame here. End of story.
Fuck; you were so close…
Care to elaborate?
Of course.
Basically, any study of mass shootings within the last decade all always draw the same conclusion: they are not driven, as a rule, by mental illness. In general, mental illness accounts for 25% of cases (and that’s for mental illness, in general) but the mental illness itself is generally incidental. But, of course, most people have a particular mental illness in mind when they mention it in this context and that’s severe mental illness, generally psychosis. The previous link mentions this as only being present in 5% of cases though this other source mentions 10%.
Regardless, these are clearly minority level numbers and, even if we wanted to stretch things and pretend they were higher for the sake of argument, still well and beyond below 50% as to make saying that mental illness, primarily, is to blame – end of story – just inherently untrue.
But, moreover – and the far more important part! –, the thing that shouldn’t be lost here is that the claim that mental illness is the cause has caught on as such a popular talking point because it’s easier to scapegoat.
It’s a simple answer that, for those unfamiliar, is going to make, supposedly, intuitive sense. The politicians like it – for much the same reason they like blaming violent media – because it doesn’t force them to do anything about the actual root issues (the social conditions that drive people to this desperation or create the far right ideas that become so popular that people write entire political manifestos beforehand) and it works so well as a scapegoat because people with psychosis are foreign (and, therefore, hard to understand) for the generally (more) mentally abled population.
The fact is that schizophrenics are overwhelmingly more likely to be victimized with violence than to be committers of it; but framing violent events like these as being driven by mental illness helps to prop up the misconception and ensure that people with severe mental illness are misunderstood.
Anyway, they were close because the beginning of their comment is spot on only to settle so assuredly on incorrect information but, more over, an unquestioned stereotype that causes real harm due to it being based on erroneous information.
Most people tend to agree that a person that decides to kill a bunch of random people and then themselves for no good reason is mentally ill, even if they haven’t been officially diagnosed with anything specific.
Because normal, healthy people don’t tend to just go “welp, I feel like some good old casual Friday night mass murdering and suicide tonight”.And in this specific case, she was not a particularity stable individual.
Most people
An appeal to general consensus and definition by crowdsourcing is inherently anti-scientific.
kill a bunch of random people and then themselves for no good reason is mentally ill
I mean, clearly the scientists and doctors who study these things didn’t draw that conclusion.
Being in a bad mental state is not, by any definition, an equivalent to being mentally ill. Mental illnesses are particular things, not a general blanket attribute for that person being “different from us” and non-standard.
And in this specific case, she was not a particularity stable individual.
Alright? I already said that some cases certainly involve mental illness. Your anecdotal pointing out won’t change the statistics and studies, though: those are a minority of cases and generally incidental.
But you have demonstrated for all of us scapegoating in action: your entire comment disregards science and evidence-based assessment for an anecdotal definition based on a sense of normalcy that allows us to say, “Fundamentally, those people are just different from us. Normal people wouldn’t do that.”
It isn’t helpful, though.
