Asklemmy

44290 readers

1513 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What is the psychology of people who idiolize mass shooters, sees them as heroes and replicate their acts? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Im not fully grasping how the mind of those "copycats" works. People who are obsessed with Columbine for example, and want to do a mass shooting. That is their thought process? Is there some study I can read exploring what's on their minds?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] qooqie 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most are in desperate situations and are truly hurting. So they see someone do that and they tend to think “that would teach the people I view as hurting me a lesson”. They then commit the act and realize it was absolutely not what they wanted and a stark realization of what they did and what their life will become dawns on them. And so they commit suicide.

This is not a blanket statement, but in general this appears to be what’s going on

[–] jeffw 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree with most of what you said, but I think the decision to end their lives is often premeditated, not a sudden decision where they realize they fucked up. It’s why some will leave notes or manifestos behind.

[–] qooqie 8 points 1 year ago

Some for sure. That’s why this isn’t a generalization, but after hearing some psychiatric interviews with ones who were caught they often said it wasn’t what they wanted and they knew their life was over and they were really scared

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So they see someone do that and they tend to think “that would teach the people I view as hurting me a lesson”.

I'd bet that works because it seems to be is a culture of solving problems with people you don't like by shooting said people.

Damn, that could perfectly be a short description of the US foreign policy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only the foreign policy?...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well, I'm not from the US, I can only attest what I see and suffer myself.