I have complicated feelings about both this video and the second talk that @443 posted. I spent a very large part of my life on the spectrum from passively not wanting to live anymore to actively...
I have complicated feelings about both this video and the second talk that @443 posted.
I spent a very large part of my life on the spectrum from passively not wanting to live anymore to actively making a plan to commit suicide. It is only because of internet friends that I am here today - I have lost contact with them now, many years later, but I owe those people my life. I very much understand the impulse to burn everything to the ground, and to want to hurt people as bad as you are hurting. To let out the pain in any way you can. But on the other hand, it is an impulse. To obtain a gun and plan a mass shooting is a premeditated action in a way I don't feel like suicide usually is.
In my old job in content moderation, I have had the misfortune of having to watch videos of mass shootings. It is truly awful to watch. And these guys in these videos, they're just...doing their thing. They never give off the aura of being in crisis. One of them was laughing like he was having a great time.
I find it very hard to relate those people back to the desperate feelings of suicidiality that I know. Very clearly, something has to have gone wrong in your brain to do this, but I find it hard to find empathy for them. It is very hard to understand what breaks in a person to make them cross that line.
Don't really know where I was going with this. I don't really have a good conclusion to all of that, and certainly don't have an answer to the problems. I do feel quite badly for Sue, to have your life imploded like that because of something your child does is unimaginable.
Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters who committed the Columbine High School massacre, murdering 12 students and a teacher. She's spent years excavating every detail of her family life, trying to understand what she could have done to prevent her son's violence. In this difficult, jarring talk, Klebold explores the intersection between mental health and violence, advocating for parents and professionals to continue to examine the link between suicidal and homicidal thinking.
I have complicated feelings about both this video and the second talk that @443 posted.
I spent a very large part of my life on the spectrum from passively not wanting to live anymore to actively making a plan to commit suicide. It is only because of internet friends that I am here today - I have lost contact with them now, many years later, but I owe those people my life. I very much understand the impulse to burn everything to the ground, and to want to hurt people as bad as you are hurting. To let out the pain in any way you can. But on the other hand, it is an impulse. To obtain a gun and plan a mass shooting is a premeditated action in a way I don't feel like suicide usually is.
In my old job in content moderation, I have had the misfortune of having to watch videos of mass shootings. It is truly awful to watch. And these guys in these videos, they're just...doing their thing. They never give off the aura of being in crisis. One of them was laughing like he was having a great time.
I find it very hard to relate those people back to the desperate feelings of suicidiality that I know. Very clearly, something has to have gone wrong in your brain to do this, but I find it hard to find empathy for them. It is very hard to understand what breaks in a person to make them cross that line.
Don't really know where I was going with this. I don't really have a good conclusion to all of that, and certainly don't have an answer to the problems. I do feel quite badly for Sue, to have your life imploded like that because of something your child does is unimaginable.
Another relevant ted talk on school shooters: I was almost a school shooter | Aaron Stark
Poor woman