Are your friends that nuts?
I don’t normally write blogs because I cant write all that good, so its just best to leave it up to the folks that can. On this occasion though, I thought I would. I got spell check on and it’s uncomfortable to say the least, but thought my stewbonics was a little inappropriate for this. Anyway …..on with the reason for this blog.
I’m sure most of you have heard by now that nineteen people were shot this morning in Arizona. Out of those nineteen, at least five people are dead. John Roll, a federal judge and a nine year old child are among those folks.
U.S Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot through the head and survived surgery. Some of her staff members, Dave Zimmerman and C.J. Karaurgin weren’t so lucky, as they too are among the dead.
This all took place at a Safeway parking lot during a schedueled public appearance. A twenty two year old man named Jarrod (not clear on the spelling as I heard it on the network news) shot these people point blank. So my guess is he was pretty damn close to them.
It goes without saying that my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their family members. Not to take away from the devastation of this horrible incident but I have to admit this got my attention for reasons I will explain.
This twenty two year old wrote on his status at Myspace….. “Goodbye friends” He had also posted some videos on you tube. Knowing what I know now, I am guessing he probably was going to shoot himself after the massacre, but because someone over powered him it didn’t happen.
Usually when you hear that coming from a fellow myspacer, the first thing that comes to mind is that they are deleting their account and chances are, they will be back in a week. We have all seen this, a dozen times at least, from some of our more disgruntled friends , am I right?
So imagine for a moment, that you were one of the people on Jarrods friends list. Would you be thinking that he was going to go out and kill a federal judge, and four others. Would you be thinking that he was going to critically wound a U.S. Rep? Would you be thinking he was going to shoot nineteen people before someone finally knocked him down and stopped him? My guess is…probably not.
Now to my point.. and I know I’m all over the place with this but I will get to that point.
In the course of three or so years, I have met some really crazy people. I thought some of them might need a pill or two to maintain a healthier lifestyle, I kid you not! For the most part, though, I just thought the craziness was a part of their on line personality. I wonder in Jarrod’s case, if he came off as just some freak a zoid online personality, when commenting or leaving status updates.
Most of us have all heard the expression, “the new appropriate is inappropriate. ” Over time I have gotten used to this idea and chalked the psychoid behavior of some of my friends to their disgusting sense of humor, and 99.9 percent of the time, it probably is. Here is my question, and more importantly, my point to all this babble above.
Have we as an on line community gotten so desensitized to the craziness, that we wouldn’t recognise a potential killer amongst us?
Has one of your friends ever given you pause in regards to this issue?
Give me your honest thoughts on this. I have second guessed myself about three times during the writing of this blog, so I am really interested in what you have to say.
thanks for reading!
*2 Kudos*
Not particularly, no. Good points however. Disturbing [particularly as I am an AZ resident] but good entry none the less.
I have no training in knowing when someone is dangerously unbalanced. Frankly we have some conservative loons on here one of which comes dangerously close to calling for armed insurrection and spouting treason. Will he use one of his many guns to pull such a stunt? Who knows. I see a country as deeply divided as we were before the civil war. I’ll be damned if I understand why. This is a terrible tragedy.
You should write more Robbie. You express your thoughts quite well.
I am not going to agonize over it. If the people he knew in real life didn’t know he was that disturbed, what chance do we have? We only see one very limited side of a person here.
It is a good question tho. Made me think….
One can never know. Maybe someone really good at psychological profiling could. If someone came out and said “I’m going to be on the news tonight.” Then maybe.
I’d love to give you my honest thoughts on this but I had to take legal action against my latest online stalker and cannot discuss the particulars. All I can say is that I am amazed at the number of people who give out their phone numbers to people they meet online. Of all the people I have met online, I can count on one finger who currently has my cell number.
I teach. In the few years I have taught, I’ve had a student bring a gun to class once that I know of. My guts told me what to do and needless to say, I was able to maneuver and alleviate that situation. Six campus police officers hauled the guy out of my class hogtied. No one was hurt and I didn’t make CNN 🙂 He is currently serving a 10 year prison sentence for carrying a concealed weapon on a college campus and threatening great bodily harm. At that same school, a prof was murdered one morning before class. This guy was off his meds.
I have been stalked by students. I have been threatened with bodily harm by students. I have students who write papers that raise red flags. My responsibility is to report and not to think any of this crap is a joke. I know that when the shooter’s history is uncovered, there were plenty of warning signs no one paid attention to and/or he is a guy no one gave a shit about until he went off. That’s the part that is sick–the people who are not crazy sit and do nothing.
I had a friend on myspace that I thought was a bit over the top, I deleted her…a month or so later, she got busted for being on the property of a Military installation…with several guns in her car. And she couldn’t understand why she got busted. I thought she was a little odd…
This guy was a nut, doesn’t matter what side of the isle he was on or weather he was a conservative or a liberal. A nut is a nut…
If they don’t tell you can’t anticipate who’s dangerous for society and who isn’t.If they tell anyone they are always watch and cought before it happens (well in most cases) I remember of a suicide b-day party message that was all over the net years ago and I got an invitation even lol but I thought it was a creepy joke .It was in the news later.
There is security over means of communication and it prevents organized crime.But you can’t be a psychic for everyone and you certainly can’t assume that everyone who doesn’t see life in pink is a potential criminal- that would be freaking max paranoia.
Not long ago a soprana from my part of the world left a message on facebook with slit veins and did it the next day.Executions are twittered.
This is internet.
I know two people who makes me wonder. One has a tendency to get violent, not with me or his wife. But with other people. The other person is just fuckin’ paranoid all the time. As for the online community? Yes, we have become desensitized. Look at the MySpace drama blogs. Some people knew their friends behavior was going to far. Yet, they did nothing. But boy, did they attack the person who attacked back. Anybody who has it in them to cause pain on the internet for no damned reason is someone I would be cautious about.
That’s a good question. I don’t have anything to add that hasn’t already been said by the others here. But I will echo one thing and that is to try writing more often.
I would hope that the onus for recognizing and/or acting on someone who is an immediate threat to himself or others should be on the people in someone’s RL… RL friends and family. I can imagine if something like that happened in our circle of online friends, and then something like that happened, people would wonder “why didn’t we see this coming?”… That would be putting a pretty high level of responsibility and importance of something that for a lot of is a fun thing… or becoming more of a fun thing.
You know, Robbie… I have had the same thoughts. It sure makes me think.
Recognize a potential killer? Many folks who study such things say everyone has that potential. I don’t think being desensitized as an online community fits at all. Police will find bodies in somebody’s basement, and when the TV news guy shows up, the next door neighbor says “He was quiet, kept his yard clean, never bothered anybody. I can’t believe he did this”.
The cops entered Jeffery Dahmer’s house when one of his would be victims escaped and flagged them down. They decided it was a “homosexual couple having a spat”, as their report read, and left. Dahmer had a human head in his freezer at the time.
The chances you’re gonna figure out somebody on your friends list is a potential killer are pretty slim.
Ya…….Robbie, I swear to Gawd……..you should write more cuz this blog is AMAZING!!!! It’s so sad to hear this and my prayers and thoughts to those that were injured or killed………BUT……….
Nobody will ever give an answer to why people kill over politics, or abortions, or racism, or even hate crimes. Sadly, all these nut balls see murder as an answer to their questions and opinions. I wished I had a better answer.
Well, beings that Im on the phone with ya and u hate it when I type and talk……I’ll pay more attention to ya now.
LMFAO
LOVE YA!
Good question. Probably one that women wonder about more than men. There have been a couple of ummm strange characters who showed up on myspace and bothered me for a while. I just deleted and blocked them. As far as hardcore nuts like the one in AZ, I have never gotten the feeling like that about anyone. I don’t have a clue what I would do if I ever did.
i know of one guy that is considered a joke, i too consider him a joke. I do believe that he has no intentions on taking actions on his threats but buy just witnessing the things he does online, on phone, on btr shows…put him in the right place, at the right time in the heat of his spazz attack he could actually lose all control and shoot someone.
Reporting someone for bizarre behavior is a dead end street.
Call the cops and tell them that someone online is behaving in a violent manner and see what happens.
Nothing.
It would overwhelm law enforcement trying to follow up on all the loons on the internetz.
Most excellent write BTW.
There just is no way of ever truly knowing what someone is capable of doing in the real world, so how could someone be expected to do it in cyber space. From a law-enforcement aspect, as of right now you cannot arrest or imprison someone for what they might be capable of doing or might do in the future. The laws on the books and the people who enforce them are and can only be reactionary in their power to protect. A profiler can give an opinion as to someone’s makeup and what they may do, but that and a $1 still won’t get you a good cup of coffee. Unless someone commits an actual crime there is noting that can be done. Hence where there is an action (a crime), there will be a re-action (an arrest), until then everything is only speculation.
Maybe they can start an agency such as the one in the movie, “The Minority Report”, where we can arrest and imprison people for the crimes they might or will commit in the future, but, once again science fiction. Is it reality if it has not truly happen?
You can only hope that people in the real world who are personally involved with someone who might show signs of mental problems can get them help before something does happen, but that is all that can be done.
Unfortunately, now everyone will look for a place to lay blame, and scream for more laws that will not and cannot prevent the unknown. All it will be is another reactionary Band-Aid to another nightmarish situation.
I can’t tell the difference from the people online who write “crazy” to the people who are likely to do something “crazy”. And a person would have to be some type of therapist to understand the signs of craziness in a blog I guess. And I don’t think people are desensitized as much as confused as what to do. Personally I have no desire to police or try to figure out what the next person online will do next. However, if someone feels that someone else is going off the deep end and feels the need to take action; then maybe they should report their blog to the social network administrator. And yes I would feel weird if someone on my friend’s list killed a bunch of people, but no one ever said that the social network was a safe place to be.
If you’re wondering whether it’s more likely now that a “crazy” person blogging or you-tubing might act out in violence, I think you’re missing the lesson of Saturday’s slaughter in Arizona.
Rep. Giffords was clearly a target in the shooting. Her office for months has been under siege by right wing protesters and Teabaggers because of her vote on Obama’s Health Care bill. Her office door was shattered the night of her vote.
Add to that the Teabagger endorsement of the carrying of firearms to public appearances by politicians whose views they detest and a heightened rhetoric of “refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” and you have set a very specific and foreseeable target of a public official for assassination.
Throw in for good measure the “targeting” by Sarah Palin of Gifford with crosshairs and urging Teabaggers to take aim and reload to take her out and it’s even more foreseeable that this particular target was hit.
I watched the kid’s you tubes. Pretty bizarre, but what I found remarkable was his insistence that Americans “read the Constitution” which is the mantra of Teabaggers.
A lot of groundwork of violent rhetoric was laid for this kid to 1) use violence for his political ends, 2) bring a gun to a public political event and 3) easily identify a target that needed taking out.
Now, contrast that with nutbag on the internet who decides to hate your guts. He/she is just nuts. There’s no support system like that afforded by the Teabaggers and Sarah Palin to come get you.
Relax. This is not about you. It’s about Teabaggers and Sarah Palin and their guns and their anger and their vigilantism. They provide the gasoline. All they need is a match.
Josh.
“Rep. Giffords was clearly a target in the shooting. Her office for months has been under siege by right wing protesters and Teabaggers because of her vote on Obama’s Health Care bill. Her office door was shattered the night of her vote.”
You blew my theory that he just wanted fame….darnit!!!
Must you always be so good at things?
You did extremely well here Robbie. You wrote a very interesting blog. I, for one, tend to just ignore the loonies. I feel most are harmless and I wouldn’t be able to know if anyone is serious or not. I keep well away from politics and religion because, they as you would be well aware, are the subjects most inclined to incite rage. I have reported someone for inappropriate behaviour, but it was not of this nature. If I was really concerned, I would report the person, no matter what the consequences.
If we can not beat someone at the polls we are going to shoot them now? Is that the plan? To vote with bullets?
I do not get it… srsly…
We pretty much have elections on a somewhat regular basis in this country… I mean true enough you have to pay attention because November jumps up on the calendar randomly…
All this “democrats are destroyin Amerika” bull shit… and the ready to take up arms crowd seems to be forgetting they have their say at the fucking polls, if they would stop blogging their inaccurate bull shit long enough to go vote maybe they could make a difference….
I refuse to live in a country where my vote can be negated by a squeeze of the trigger from some under educated loon who spent too much time on fringe nut job web sites reading about how socialist Christmas is…. These tin foil hat sporting loons would know true socialism if it gave them surprise butt sex….
P.S. If big oil pays no us taxes but gets subsidies its as socialist as the other stuff you scream about, and the car makers had a new ipo they are no longer government and we really did land on the moon…. now sto shooting people, you’re not a god damnned hero, you’re a murderer….
Can’t tell. No way to tell. Too slippery a slope to start punishin folks for what they might anyway. Good blog. Was this comment intelligible? I think probably not. 🙂
I think you wrote a damn good blog and you should do it more often and of course it goes without saying that your art is amazing and you express yourself extremely well with it. What happened in Arizona is a horrific tragedy and unfortunately we have no way of knowing if people would truly act on the things they say online. When I think back to the last several months on the spazz and we had people posting personal info, addresses, pictures of their homes and along with it threats to kill children and their parents and while they may have been “just words” to rile people up who’s to say that maybe someone else out there reading silently, obsessively, just collecting information wouldnt act on it? No one truly knows and some situations do warrant a call to the police if nothing else to just document the incident. It’s pretty damn scary that a simple meeting that a congresswoman had with her constituents has turned into a massacre. A child, a federal judge, the other 4 people killed and the rest injured, some so severely they dont know what the outcome is going to be including Congresswoman Giffords. All we can do really in these situations is offer our prayers and send good thoughts.
I must remind myself to stick to drawing.. and not write another blog. Holy cow the synapse in my brain have shorted out!
Robbie, you and Moosehammer have written the best blogs on this topic that I have read so far. You really need to consider continuing to write when you get the urge to enlighten us.
Good blog Robbie!
I can’t help but think that our accelerated flipping of the House and Senate majorities are signalling the helplessness the American public is feeling that the chasm between what we want from the candidates we elect and what they actually do is widening to this point in time that this situation has come to pass.
Remember now, this is not the only attack this week on government officials—we also had two instances of letter bombs in Maryland and DC with government agencies targeted.
I’m not saying these were all related, but damn. 3 serious attacks against our institution of government is worrisome to say th least.
I’m not on your friends list. Don’t worry… (hehe!) 🙂
This is horribly sad….
Yesterday I posted on my Facebook that this was obviously the workings of someone mentally ill and a friend of mine took exception to this saying that this should not be a defense. I wasn’t in any way defending this person, but in my mind, it would take someone insane to take a gun and shoot at a group of people including children.
As for our friends on MySpace or any other site, we have no way of really knowing each other. We take it at face value that most are sane, kind, fun, on and on, but we don’t know… there were certainly a few that I met while there that I suspected were not well balanced for one reason or another. Does that mean that I thought that any of them were capable of murder–NO WAY…. God only knows what is going on with people though in reality…
I think too that what happened says a lot about our society in general. Sarah Palin (who I think is horrible and despicable) put out that awful “crosshair’s of who she thought should be “taken out.” Now most of would roll our eyes at the stupidity of this, but someone who is mentally ill would take this literally and did.
I think that this is a lesson as to the power of our words which can indeed hurt. Use words with care. Think about what you are going to say before speaking, saying only if it benefits the listener and when they can hear you. Otherwise, most people need to learn to just shut up…
Nice blog, Robbie!
You sure know how to underplay your talent! This is an excellent, insightful blog. I am so impressed with your thoughtful responses to peeps! <3
Now that I think back a little, some people I’ve had communications with online dod come across as a bit crazy. It’s hard to tell who is just doing it for attention or other reasons, and who might be crazy.