My Theory on the current crop of mass shootings

Everyone has a theory.

Here's mine.

The current generation of young adults today have never learned to lose. They have never learned to fail.

They get trophies for participating, get passing marks for failed school efforts, get a pass on all their mistakes.

So they don't damage their self-esteems.

So we have a generation that has never learned to fail. They have never learned to cope. They have never learned to pick themselves up from falling because "we" have always picked them up ourselves.

They are adults with stunted coping abilities. They are adults having childish temper tantrums using adult tools.

They have to act out so they pick a topic, write a manifesto, join a group, anything to add a "justification" for their planned tantrum.

When a two-year old has a fit, he stamps his feet, cries and screams. When the same adult (who has never learned to deal with failure) has a tantrum, sometimes innocent people die.

We have to teach our children and adults that failure is a part of life. Be it a debate, a job interview, a date, an argument.

Failing is part of learning. Losing is part of growing up. Getting up after falling is a part of life.

We aren't really raising our kids, but are harming them if we can't teach them that.

I'm sure it's a piece of the puzzle, but it's a big puzzle.

You’re dead on DB! 👏🏽

Social media isn’t helping with this issue either...

a reply to: DBCowboy
Very well put and it shows the differences in parenting from generation to generation.
The pain of growing up in the parents life, will naturally try to alleviate it in their children lives. This has lead to isolation yet group think in the offspring through technology.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Totally agree that this is a huge part of the problem.
For years kids are told that they are special and when they get in to the real world they find out they're not.
The other part is releasing the names of the killers.
They want to be remembered like Manson.

Don't print any more than a vague description of the assailants.
27 yr old male.

So who is to blame? The young people, or their parents that never showed them the real world?


edit

I lean towards a total systematic failure involving both, as well as a society as a whole that denigrates men.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Yeah, some kids just never had a bite of reality sandwich followed by a serving of humble pie.

Kids will act out in different ways; it's only a numbers game until someone develops the lunacy and the means...

I do think it has a lot to do with the breakdown of the nuclear family unit though.

originally posted by: dubiousatworst
So who is to blame? The young people, or their parents that never showed them the real world?

You can't "infect" or subject someone with immaturity. So ultimately, it is the fault of the shooter. In todays parlance, these shooters never learned to "adult".

Yeah, the parents may have done a crap job, but at some point, you have to blame the person who did the killing.

If any 21 year old can't adult, then it's really their own fault.

And that's the problem with diagnosis. How do you gauge or diagnose immaturity? It's not a mental disease.

It's a behavior.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I agree for the most part. Though I think the complete isolation at this point in time does not help at all.

There was some bottom of the barrel study that stated that 30% of millennial say they don't have any friends, an only 20% have a double digit number of friends. It is a complete societal collapse, and not interacting face to face makes it so, much like that study about monkey raised without physical interaction being overwhelmingly violent once they are introduced into a population.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I don't know, participation trophies were more of a thing when I was a kid in the 1980's. Sure, they still have some kind of recognition for kids on losing teams now, but the importance of winning has GREATLY increased over the past 35-40 years.

I know people like to talk about it as a thing, but it must be in places far more liberal than the Chicago area.

a reply to: dogstar23

Maybe participation trophies was a poor example.

But it doesn't change the fact that if students can't rise to the level, then the threshold of success is lowered. That is rampant in schools and colleges today.

originally posted by: DBCowboy

originally posted by: dubiousatworst
So who is to blame? The young people, or their parents that never showed them the real world?

You can't "infect" or subject someone with immaturity. So ultimately, it is the fault of the shooter. In todays parlance, these shooters never learned to "adult".

Yeah, the parents may have done a crap job, but at some point, you have to blame the person who did the killing.

If any 21 year old can't adult, then it's really their own fault.

And that's the problem with diagnosis. How do you gauge or diagnose immaturity? It's not a mental disease.

It's a behavior.

However, I STRONGLY agree with THIS! Regardless of upbringing, or how rough/easy one's childhood was, at some point, only you define who you are.

If you're an adult who was abused as a child, or wasn't hugged enough, or were spoiled rotten, it isn't an excuse for being an abuser, its just part of what you were unable to overcome, and thus, part of the influence who made you the abusive/violent/criminal, etc. adult you are today. At some point...its all on you. People need to put their big boy pants on and grow TFU.

a reply to: Bluntone22

ive started just referring to them as what state/city it happened ie Ohio,gilory,el paso for example. works better in context but probally not that effective for a long term study as that would need numbers added most likely

It is a large puzzle for sure. Violent video games are another part, but gaming, in general, is also part of the problem. A kid can live another life, become a master at something or many things in a game, in a few afternoons your character can become god-like.

Then, in real life, as you get to be "adult age" you have to go get a job, go to work, where days are actually days, and really long, and all your hard work doesn't get you much compared to gaming worlds.

A mass shooting may be the only real way for some of these folks to parley their gaming "expertise" into the real world - the only way they can think of to be a "hero" like they are in the games they have spent, literally, thousands of hours playing in their lives.

a reply to: Sahasrara

eh im kind of in hard disagreement on that aspect, if gaming is the issue why aren't there issues in korea or china where gaming is huge?

www.thoughtco.com...

South Korea is a country infatuated with video games. It is a place where professional gamers earn six-figure contracts, date supermodels, and are treated as A-list celebrities. Cyber competitions are nationally televised and they fill-up stadiums. In this country, gaming is not just a hobby; it’s a way of life. Video Game Culture in South Korea Although the per capita access to broadband internet is high, most Koreans actually conduct their gaming activities outside of the home in local gaming rooms called “PC bangs.” A bang is simply a LAN (local area network) gaming center where patrons pay an hourly fee to play multiplayer games. Most bangs are cheap, ranging from $1.00 to $1.50 USD an hour. There are currently over 20,000 active PC bangs in South Korea and they have become an integral part of the country’s social fabric and cultural landscape. In Korea, going to a bang is equivalent to going to the movies or the bar in the West. They are especially prevalent in big cities like Seoul, where heightened population density and the lack of space offers residents few options for recreational and social interaction. The video game industry makes up a large share of South Korea’s GDP. According to the Ministry of Culture, in 2008 the online-gaming industry earned $1.1 billion dollars in exports. Nexon and NCSOFT, South Korea’s two largest game development companies reported a combined net income of over $370 million in 2012. The entire game market is estimated at approximately $5 billion dollars annually, or about $100 per resident, which is more than three times what Americans spend. Games like StarCraft have sold over 4.5 million copies in South Korea, out of a worldwide total of 11 million. Video games also stimulate the country’s informal economy, as millions of dollars are traded yearly through illegal gambling and betting on game matches. In South Korea, cyber competition is considered a national sport and numerous television channels broadcast video game matches regularly. The country even has two full-time video game television networks: Ongamenet and MBC Game. According to the Federal Game Institute, 10 million South Koreans regularly follow eSports, as they are known. Depending on the matches, some video game tournaments may garner more ratings than pro baseball, soccer, and basketball combined. There are currently 10 professional gaming leagues in the country and they are all sponsored by big corporations such as SK Telecom and Samsung. The monetary rewards for winning a league tournament are colossal. Some of South Korea’s most famous players like the StarCraft legend, Yo Hwan-lim could earn more than $400,000 a year just from league matches and sponsorships. The popularity eSports has even led to the creation of the World Cyber Games.

its not a small industry in america either but the koreans take it up a notch . i guess if its a "gaming issue" could be cultural differences but i just dont see it , and mass shootings/school shootings go back to the 1840s to now admittidly the earlier ones were smaller numbers(and mostly either related to accidents or grudges) but with video games not being invented yet i dont see it fitting the pattern

This is a tough one. I can agree to some degree here. And I do believe that the portion that I agree with falls squarely on the parents. But I also know that this is said by every generation...

For example, I'm going through previously unheard audio interviews (for work) done with the people that were responsible for the dawn of television (and the subsequent 20 or 30 years as television was solidified) and transitioning out of radio. It's all really interesting. They spend a good amount of time complaining about the kids of that time (especially those who are in their late teens and early 20s that were coming in) and how they don't value anything anymore, don't know what hard work is, they expect to be paid for nothing, have no respect for elders, etc.

The older generations are never going to understand the younger generations and think they are lazy and the younger generations are either unhappy with the cards they've been dealt and the job the elder generation did, or think the older generations have no idea what it's like to grow up in the current landscape.

I don't know if these things are ever quite so simple.

a reply to: DBCowboy


The flip side of the equation...

Many young adults have also never learned to accept the successes achieved by others.

Everything is viewed, by them, in stark terms of black and white...zero sum game.

If someone other than them succeeds...they see that person's success as something being taken away from them...resulting in resentment, rather than gracious acceptance and/or excitement for someone else's success.


If you are neither agreeing with, nor praising me...you should be condemned.

If you succeed where I have not...you must be destroyed.

a reply to: IAMTAT


In every day-to-day interactions there are winners and losers.

These extreme cases don't know how to accept losing.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
Everyone has a theory.

Here's mine.

The current generation of young adults today have never learned to lose. They have never learned to fail.

I dunno DB.... I have been beating the crap out them in Ace Combat.

To be honest, a mass shooter is a rare thing, back to back even more rare.... especially out of 327.2 million Americans.

The MSM inflates the crazies, they inflate the .01 percent. The problem is not mass shootings, it's the MSM.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Very good point. After all that pampering and being told how special they are.

They emerge into the real world and reality hits them like a greyhound bus .