St. Louis School Shooter - Another "lonely" young male taking it out on society

So yesterday a 19 year old walked in to a school he used to attend and started shooting. Two killed and seven wounded. The shooter, Orlando Harris, was killed by the police. He used an AR-15 and had over 600 rounds of ammunition.

Today they released portion of a note he left in his car. It listed other school shooters in the U.S. and the number of people they'd killed. He said he wanted to be the next name on the list.

He also said, “I don’t have any friends, I don’t have any family. I’ve been an isolated loner my whole life. This was a perfect storm for a mass shooting."

The knee-jerk reaction is "mental health issues." Well, yeah. Clearly. Randomly killing people isn't exactly a solid mental health platform. But maybe it's not something than can be diagnosed. Maybe we're creating these people with social media as the main ingredient.

Bill Maher is hit and miss for most everyone but this commentary, which has to include the little jokes but probably shouldn't, examines the role of loneliness and frustration and how it's been created/exasperated by social media. Lot of truth there.

[media=https://youtu.be/WGp-omDD3V0]

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

Whodunnit · M

It's way too easy to blame social media for this. Social media exists in all 'first world' countries and yet not all experience this level of horrific violence, nor anywhere near as often. Not only that but school shootings predate the advent of social media.

We're in danger of making the same mistakes by putting all the blame in one area that we did in the past with rap music, video 'nasties', and of all things the Dungeons and Dragons roleplay game.

Ynotisay · M

@Whodunnit I don't know about putting "all" the blame in one area. That would be pretty foolish. But to say mass casualty school shootings by "disenfranchised" young men hasn't increased in line with the popularity of social media wouldn't be accurate. It has. The numbers bare that out. There's a reason many list their manifestos online. Or leave trails in social media forums.

Whodunnit · M

@Ynotisay It used to be diaries or notes left behind to let people know the reasons. Now it's just social media.

The medium of informing people has changed, the ill-will, societal, and psychological reasons they fly off the handle remain largely the same.

It can certainly be argued that social media does a lot of harm to society, but it's merely a communication tool. The method of how and why we use it is the crux of the problem. You can use another tool, a hammer to build a house, or you can misuse that tool to bludgeon your family to death.

Is the hammer the reason they did it?

Social media (nor hammers for that matter) is not the problem. It's America's inability to sufficiently detect and/or deal with their mentally ill or socially disaffected that's the true problem which needs to be solved. No other Western country seems to have this issue to the same degree. Other countries have social media, they have hammers, they even have guns, but they don't have regular school shootings.

Ynotisay · M

@Whodunnit I agree with a lot of you said. But there's something that comes with social media that changes the game. Anonymity.
And yeah. Other countries have social media but don't have the level of school shootings. No doubt. But there's obviously countries that are far more violent. And in many of those nations social media plays a different role. It's been weaponized. Either by terrorists or by governments. And there's a boat load of studies out there that draw a direct correlation between social media use and mental health issues. I just don't think that we're in a place yet where, collectively, we can use social media responsibly. I think social media, up to this point, is using us. Not all. But many. I think it's something we need to get a handle on as a species. It's still very, very new and we haven't figured it out yet.