I'm really starting to dislike "mental illness" as a motivation or excuse for people doing horrible things. Not only is it really dismissive, it also tosses a blanket over more specific and relevant issues. Just because someone does something you can't understand doesn't make them mentally Ill.
Not to blanket mental illness, but if stabbing other people bunches of times doesn't say "brain-sick", then I'm not sure what does.
There are many shades of illness. Just because someone is mentally ill and does awful things doesn't mean everyone who has a mental illness is capable or likely to do awful things.
It means that one person that was sick did bad things.
Is it that scary to think that perfectly sane people can stab others?
It's scary to think that people can stab others, sane or otherwise.
But to my limited understanding, the vast majority of people-stabbing-people suffer from a mental illness, and the stabbings tend to be, or at least result from, symptoms of that illness.
Which means it isn't exactly unreasonable to assume that it is likely that a person-stabber suffers from an illness, statistically.
the line between mental illness and mental health can be incredibly blurry
but really, if you spontaneously develop the belief that a fictional character is real and you have to kill someone to curry its favor, that sounds remarkably like some forms of schizophrenia
I'm really starting to dislike "mental illness" as a motivation or excuse for people doing horrible things. Not only is it really dismissive, it also tosses a blanket over more specific and relevant issues. Just because someone does something you can't understand doesn't make them mentally Ill.
Well I mean they thought slenderman was real and that they should worship him.
Just believing ludicrous stuff doesn't make you mentally ill. You get into a place where this kind of stuff is talked about often enough, where it's normalized, eventually it starts to sound pretty believable.
Especially at twelve years old.
mental soundness in the legal sense means you are capable of understanding what you did was wrong
religion is actually the one clear piece of evidence that no, not all people can readily discern reality from fiction. and it's all in the way they've been taught to approach a text.
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
I feel comfortable diagnosing someone that believes that invisible all-powerful beings command them to kill random others as mentally ill
but again, I am thoroughly not an expert, and I am eager to be taught otherwise
do we label islamic extremists schizophrenic, the lot of them? is that helpful?
I mean this is a ridiculous comparison but first of all the leaders of almost all Islamic extremist groups are criminal cartels who aren't religious and use poor, uneducated boys and indoctrinate them to the point of being willing to give up their lives for a religious cause. And these people are basing this off of a religion that has existed and been socially ingrained for thousands of years and is reflected in every part of the culture they grow up in, not to mention they are raised in a region that is constantly in some sort of armed, violent conflict and are often the victims of violence and have seen friends and relatives murdered.
Meanwhile slenderman was made up in 2009, no one worships him, no one indoctrinated these kids, no one supported their beliefs, and they grew up in Wisconsin.
+7
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
and people discuss mental illness insituations like this because occam's razor
cheating on your taxes or shooting a bank teller during a robbery are things that make "sense" in that a sound person would do them
stabbing a girl a bunch of times because a make believe internet boogun totally wants you to do it to move up in his society is not
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MetalbourneInside a cluster b personalityRegistered Userregular
I'm really starting to dislike "mental illness" as a motivation or excuse for people doing horrible things. Not only is it really dismissive, it also tosses a blanket over more specific and relevant issues. Just because someone does something you can't understand doesn't make them mentally Ill.
Well I mean they thought slenderman was real and that they should worship him.
Just believing ludicrous stuff doesn't make you mentally ill. You get into a place where this kind of stuff is talked about often enough, where it's normalized, eventually it starts to sound pretty believable.
Especially at twelve years old.
mental soundness in the legal sense means you understand what you are capable of understanding what you did was wrong
that's very clearly not the case here
Unless I missed something, there was nothing that said those girls didn't know what they were doing was wrong. Applying the label of mental illness is just speculation at this point.
do we label islamic extremists schizophrenic, the lot of them? is that helpful?
I mean this is a ridiculous comparison but first of all the leaders of almost all Islamic extremist groups are criminal cartels who aren't religious and use poor, uneducated boys and indoctrinate them to the point of being willing to give up their lives for a religious cause. And these people are basing this off of a religion that has existed and been socially ingrained for thousands of years and is reflected in every part of the culture they grow up in, not to mention they are raised in a region that is constantly in some sort of armed, violent conflict and are often the victims of violence and have seen friends and relatives murdered.
Meanwhile slenderman was made up in 2009, no one worships him, no one indoctrinated these kids, no one supported their beliefs, and they grew up in Wisconsin.
it was just an extreme example used to highlight the fact that the very definition of mental health hinges on social norms
+1
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
I'm really starting to dislike "mental illness" as a motivation or excuse for people doing horrible things. Not only is it really dismissive, it also tosses a blanket over more specific and relevant issues. Just because someone does something you can't understand doesn't make them mentally Ill.
Well I mean they thought slenderman was real and that they should worship him.
Just believing ludicrous stuff doesn't make you mentally ill. You get into a place where this kind of stuff is talked about often enough, where it's normalized, eventually it starts to sound pretty believable.
Especially at twelve years old.
mental soundness in the legal sense means you understand what you are capable of understanding what you did was wrong
that's very clearly not the case here
Unless I missed something, there was nothing that said those girls didn't know what they were doing was wrong. Applying the label of mental illness is just speculation at this point.
at least one of them literally thought it was a way to get up in the world
religion is actually the one clear piece of evidence that no, not all people can readily discern reality from fiction. and it's all in the way they've been taught to approach a text.
one could argue that religion is not technically fiction
fiction is created with the full knowledge that it is imaginary
religion is actually the one clear piece of evidence that no, not all people can readily discern reality from fiction. and it's all in the way they've been taught to approach a text.
Oh eff off if that's how this is going to go. A belief system, while not something I agree with, has nothing to do with being unable to discern reality or not. Get off your high horse.
There are regulars here on this very forum who would ascribe to matters of faith and I'm not cool with just condescending to them across the board.
religion is actually the one clear piece of evidence that no, not all people can readily discern reality from fiction. and it's all in the way they've been taught to approach a text.
Oh eff off if that's how this is going to go. A belief system, while not something I agree with, has nothing to do with being unable to discern reality or not. Get off your high horse.
the point is that belief systems are fucking cemented during childhood, which these kids were going through! they're not even adolescent! nobody said to them 'this slenderman malarky is not something you should buy into as much as you buy into your God and your government!' it's weird and rare and messed up that it happened that way for them but it did.
religion is actually the one clear piece of evidence that no, not all people can readily discern reality from fiction. and it's all in the way they've been taught to approach a text.
one could argue that religion is not technically fiction
fiction is created with the full knowledge that it is imaginary
anyway, i bear liability for taking this to a place that it shouldn't have gone to. it's not useful, so i apologize.
edit: i do agree that there are huge differences between belief systems and fictions, and that creepypasta is not the former. i was just getting worked up.
why would you try anyone as an adult who wasn't an adult, ever, under any circumstances
Well because some actions are so heinous and our rules for adulthood are so arbitrary that sometimes it makes sense. If a seventeen year old commits rape or premeditated murder, it kind of makes sense to try him as an adult because he is, really. What actually separates a guy five months out from 18 and a guy who just turned 18? Nothing really.
Obviously for twelve year olds it is not really defensible.
it seems like how you would deal with this is to have different standards for adulthood depending on the crime, like maybe the threshold for adulthood is set at sixteen for premeditated murder and eighteen for housebreaking
i mean, if that's the way you wanted to handle it, i'm not a criminal justice specialist
but it seems weird to me that you can decide whether or not to try someone as an adult based on the individual case, especially when you can't, like, decide if someone is over the age of consent or legally allowed to drink based on the same criteria
why would you try anyone as an adult who wasn't an adult, ever, under any circumstances
Well because some actions are so heinous and our rules for adulthood are so arbitrary that sometimes it makes sense. If a seventeen year old commits rape or premeditated murder, it kind of makes sense to try him as an adult because he is, really. What actually separates a guy five months out from 18 and a guy who just turned 18? Nothing really.
Obviously for twelve year olds it is not really defensible.
it seems like how you would deal with this is to have different standards for adulthood depending on the crime, like maybe the threshold for adulthood is set at sixteen for premeditated murder and eighteen for housebreaking
i mean, if that's the way you wanted to handle it, i'm not a criminal justice specialist
but it seems weird to me that you can decide whether or not to try someone as an adult based on the individual case, especially when you can't, like, decide if someone is over the age of consent or legally allowed to drink based on the same criteria
No I think that would be better. Otherwise doing a case by case basis makes it arbitrary, like in this one. It's an arbitrary rule to try and fix an arbitrary standard.
This is pretty fucked up. I find it hard to agree with prosecuting them as adults, what with the whole believing they can kill to make a fictional character happy and all.
From a different perspective, seeing that twelve year olds can't figure out that Slenderman is a fictional creation sheds some light on how little time it takes for an invented story to become treated as serious myth.
as awful as this is, can we as a society choose to reform these, fucking literal, children?
instead of throwing them a boiling pit of acid that makes them completely unsociable for the entire rest of their lives?
like sheesh
The problem is that when you're dealing with a type of crime like this- unprovoked and extremely violent, there's little hope of rehabilitating the perpetrators. And even just trying to rehabilitate somebody like that is dangerous. You run the risk of them tricking everybody into thinking they're "cured" only to go off and do something worse because now they think they're smarter than the police and above the law, like what happened with Edward Kemper and John Wayne Gacy.
as awful as this is, can we as a society choose to reform these, fucking literal, children?
instead of throwing them a boiling pit of acid that makes them completely unsociable for the entire rest of their lives?
like sheesh
The problem is that when you're dealing with a type of crime like this- unprovoked and extremely violent, there's little hope of rehabilitating the perpetrators. And even just trying to rehabilitate somebody like that is dangerous. You run the risk of them tricking everybody into thinking they're "cured" only to go off and do something worse because now they think they're smarter than the police and above the law, like what happened with Edward Kemper and John Wayne Gacy.
i'm going to avoid any proper real talk about this because really, what i think one way or another is ill-informed in every Important way and I honestly have no idea how to deal with something like this
but holy hell how does a 12 year old get stabbed that many times and not die
that is something, wow.
Posts
It's scary to think that people can stab others, sane or otherwise.
But to my limited understanding, the vast majority of people-stabbing-people suffer from a mental illness, and the stabbings tend to be, or at least result from, symptoms of that illness.
Which means it isn't exactly unreasonable to assume that it is likely that a person-stabber suffers from an illness, statistically.
Stole my post.
but really, if you spontaneously develop the belief that a fictional character is real and you have to kill someone to curry its favor, that sounds remarkably like some forms of schizophrenia
Of course not! They're evil and out to get us! They know exactly what they're doing!
mental soundness in the legal sense means you are capable of understanding what you did was wrong
that's very clearly not the case here
but again, I am thoroughly not an expert, and I am eager to be taught otherwise
I mean this is a ridiculous comparison but first of all the leaders of almost all Islamic extremist groups are criminal cartels who aren't religious and use poor, uneducated boys and indoctrinate them to the point of being willing to give up their lives for a religious cause. And these people are basing this off of a religion that has existed and been socially ingrained for thousands of years and is reflected in every part of the culture they grow up in, not to mention they are raised in a region that is constantly in some sort of armed, violent conflict and are often the victims of violence and have seen friends and relatives murdered.
Meanwhile slenderman was made up in 2009, no one worships him, no one indoctrinated these kids, no one supported their beliefs, and they grew up in Wisconsin.
cheating on your taxes or shooting a bank teller during a robbery are things that make "sense" in that a sound person would do them
stabbing a girl a bunch of times because a make believe internet boogun totally wants you to do it to move up in his society is not
Unless I missed something, there was nothing that said those girls didn't know what they were doing was wrong. Applying the label of mental illness is just speculation at this point.
it was just an extreme example used to highlight the fact that the very definition of mental health hinges on social norms
at least one of them literally thought it was a way to get up in the world
one could argue that religion is not technically fiction
fiction is created with the full knowledge that it is imaginary
into the carbolic acid I go
Oh eff off if that's how this is going to go. A belief system, while not something I agree with, has nothing to do with being unable to discern reality or not. Get off your high horse.
There are regulars here on this very forum who would ascribe to matters of faith and I'm not cool with just condescending to them across the board.
the point is that belief systems are fucking cemented during childhood, which these kids were going through! they're not even adolescent! nobody said to them 'this slenderman malarky is not something you should buy into as much as you buy into your God and your government!' it's weird and rare and messed up that it happened that way for them but it did.
hmm
hmmmmmmmm
edit: i do agree that there are huge differences between belief systems and fictions, and that creepypasta is not the former. i was just getting worked up.
it seems like how you would deal with this is to have different standards for adulthood depending on the crime, like maybe the threshold for adulthood is set at sixteen for premeditated murder and eighteen for housebreaking
i mean, if that's the way you wanted to handle it, i'm not a criminal justice specialist
but it seems weird to me that you can decide whether or not to try someone as an adult based on the individual case, especially when you can't, like, decide if someone is over the age of consent or legally allowed to drink based on the same criteria
let's put a pin in that and never take it out again
No I think that would be better. Otherwise doing a case by case basis makes it arbitrary, like in this one. It's an arbitrary rule to try and fix an arbitrary standard.
...
Give children the ability to get away with crimes AND get their parents thrown in jail? I don't see any way that doesn't work out!
It's flawless, right?
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Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
instead of throwing them a boiling pit of acid that makes them completely unsociable for the entire rest of their lives?
like sheesh
haha
suckers
steam | xbox live: IGNORANT HARLOT | psn: MadRoll | nintendo network: spinach
3ds: 1504-5717-8252
[citation required]
in a less snarky form: i call bullshit on this
but holy hell how does a 12 year old get stabbed that many times and not die
that is something, wow.
armchair egotist atheism is for assholes and reddit and I have no god damned interest in moderating that discussion