Welcome back, and glad to hear your surgery went well.

It’s probably a bad thing that one of the first things I think of when these atrocities happen is that naggling question of “Was this all it appears to be?” (since I am well past the point of accepting that many of the Powers that Be would be willing to stage something like this), and fear for the ramifications of what will happen to we the living. Both instincts make me feel guilty and for good reason, since the victims are the more important in this case, but we have to live in the aftermath.

I can already hear the score-calling and attempts to gain an advantage using the bodies of the dead on both sides, scoring political points off of what is ultimately not that political an event next to the perp’s human depravity.

@Richard Aubrey

For some reason, the Slenderman stabbings are rarely mentioned. One reason, I suppose, is that nobody died.

But the point is a couple of impressionable girls, maybe twelve years old, got an idea that to be an acolyte of some on-line cartoon character they had to kill a friend. Friend, fortunately, survived and I believe one of the perps is just out of juvie mental health facilities.

I heard about that, both at the time (in part because I follow pop culture and assorted internet mythos a bit too close). To add to that, what horrified me about this was that Slenderman is, quite literally, a monster. He/It might not have been as outright EVIL or Malevolent as he/it’s been portrayed in the more recent video-game driven interpretations (ironically similar to what’s happened to Sirenhead), but He/It was still an utterly ruthless, horrifying supernatural predator that views humans as just another form of prey. So even if you THOUGHT you could summon this thing by doing this (to one of your FRIENDS no less) why would you? It’s not some kind of supposedly beneficent or benevolent spirit or a kami you can hope to appease.

This is like dragging a friend into shark-infested waters with you and then cutting them open in the hopes of attracting a legendary shark. Like…Why Even?

That I think points to something incredibly depraved in the spirits of the perpetrators that isn’t touched on as much, and why this can’t be just brushed aside with “naive kids believing internet legends” or the like. Because this is not how some kind of reasonably sane or moral person would act in response to thinking Slenderman Mythos might actually have a ring of truth to them, because you’d probably react to them like you would advice (even if bad/inaccurate advice) on avoiding a dangerous predator (Which is what old school Slenderman ultimately is).

@neo

A firing squad would be something that some of these shooters would want.

Even if that is true (and while it is true for a great many murderers it isn’t true for all of them), then I am more than happy to accept this is a rare case where their wants and mine align.. I recognize that the Death Penalty pathway is difficult, arduous, and long for VERY good reasons (we do not want to do it casually or risk the innocent suffering) even if I think it has swung a bit too far in that direction, but once the appeals have run I think it is time to punch their tickets. I view it as unjust and inhumane to foist the continued expenses of keeping them up past the point of final appeals on innocent people, including the victims and loved ones of the victims. It’s particularly ironic and bitter that we do so in a culture that is increasingly comfortable talking about euthanasia for people guilty of nothing greater than age or incurable infirmities while we are supposed to keep the likes of the Younger Tsarnaev alive indefinitely.

Besides, our prison system is overcrowded as it is.

This is only one case illustrating the incompetence of Illinois law enforcement.

The Aurora IL shooter was an adult felon. Still got his gun card.

There is some discussion of SSRIs in this case. The question for me is whether homicidal thoughts are affected by SSRIs. The argument has been for years that anti-depressants just activate a person who has been depressed and inactive. The enormous increase in their use might raise more questions.

A lot of troubled people take SSRIs, so it becomes extremely difficult to tease out whether the SSRIs are part of the cause or are along or the ride. I’ve discussed this before and linked to studies indicating how incredibly difficult it is to get a comparable control group of effed-up people who are not on some sort of antidepressant or drug with which to compare the group who are.

Tucker can read a list of shooters who were on SSRIs but it is definitely not all of them, plus for many we have never been given the information yes or no.

Oh, and that “fatherless” list is bogus and yet you see it referenced over and over.

“…raise questions…”, eh?

So would that happen to be the same father who expressed such surprise and sorrow???
(As usual…given just a bit of time, the plot thickens…)