All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel;
The monkey thought that it was a joke,
Pop! goes the weasel.
A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle --
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Pop Goes the Weasel --
Wikipedia
'These are all copycat crimes'
In the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech, familiar questions are being asked: why does this keep happening? And why does it happen so often in America? Lionel Shriver offers some answers
by Lionel Shriver -- The Guardian, guardian.co.uk -- 17 April 2007
[...]
Why do they happen? If it does not sound too tautological, campus shootings keep happening because they keep happening. Every time one of these stories breaks, every time the pictures flash round the world, it increases the chances that another massacre will follow. In the main, all of these events are copycat crimes.
[...]
Time was that appearing in the newspaper for doing something dreadful was a fearful prospect. But Americans appear to have lost touch with the concept of shame. Now that my compatriots have eschewed the old distinction between fame and infamy for the all-embracing concept of "celebrity", all that counts is being noticed. Even posthumous attention beats being ignored.
I would far prefer that this new killer remained anonymous. Were all such culprits to remain utterly and eternally unknown, the chips on their shoulders interred with their bones, their grudges for ever private, surely the frequency of these grotesquely gratuitous sprees would plummet.
Why does the Media give these unstable anti-social criminals the notoriety they crave?
-- Serving the public interest's right to know?
-- Just giving the people what they want (all the gory details) ?
-- Or simply because doing "car chase" journalism is SO cheap and easy?
Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters.
by G2geek -- Jan 10, 2011
Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.
[...]
Stirring the pot.
At any given time there are hundreds of thousands of Americans with combinations of personality characteristics (such as emotional instability, a paranoid ideology, and a propensity for violence) that put them at risk of going off the deep end and becoming lone wolves. All it takes is the right push, the right nudge at the right time, to dislodge a few of them and send them on their way to fifteen minutes of fame surrounded by dead bodies.
[...]
The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.
One or more unstable people responds to the incitement by becoming a lone wolf and committing a violent act. While their action may have been statistically predictable (e.g. "given the provocation, someone will probably do such-and-such"), the specific person and the specific act are not predictable (yet).
The stochastic terrorist then has plausible deniability: "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do."
[...]
There are always the excuses: It's just "random chance" ...
Nobody could have known ... that broadcasting those words of hate, those constant images of utter fear and chaos -- that
THAT would lead to other similar crimes of violence ...
Nobody could have known ... that our wall-to-wall coverage could inspire others to commit similar hate-filled "senseless" acts.
No one could have predicted that ...
Oh really?
stochastic
adjective
1) of, pertaining to, or arising from chance; involving probability; random
2) (Math.) designating a process in which a sequence of values is drawn from a corresponding sequence of jointly distributed random variables
The Media content-delivery world is precariously stacked on such "random, statistical theories" ... It's called Marketing, carried out by Editorial Policy, on a daily basis:
It's called: "If it Bleeds -- it Leads!"
Why the Sikh temple shooting got less coverage than the Aurora massacre
Two mass murders happened two weeks apart, but they get very different treatment by the media. Were the Dark Knight killings that much more important?
theweek.com -- August 8, 2012
[...] "the [Sikh] story has become just one item among many in the national news cycle." More than that, after Oak Creek there's been "none of the sense of outrage that followed the Aurora massacre, none of the national heartbreak and grief that seemed so pervasive only two weeks ago," says Riddhi Shah at The Huffington Post. The obvious question is: "Why is it that the American people, and the American media in particular, care less about this attack?" Here, four theories:
1. Sikhs are being treated as second-class victims
If the media gave the Aurora shootings "round the clock coverage because they thought [the American public] would and should care," what does the relative paucity of Oak Creek coverage say about the media, and about us? [...]
2. The relative randomness of the Aurora shooting is scarier
[...]
3. The Oak Creek shooting wasn't as dramatic
[...]
4. It's just media fatigue
If the Sikh temple shooting is being treated as just another mass killing, well, can you really blame the media? says Rene Lynch at The Los Angeles Times. Including Aurora, this was "the fourth such rampage this year alone," leaving a total of 30 dead and 65 injured, and "at this rate -- it's only August -- the U.S. could be on a sad track to reaching a regrettable new benchmark": In 2009, three mass shootings left 34 dead. In fact, since 2003, at least 195 people have been slain in mass killings and 207 injured. The Oak Creek murders are tragic, but "such mass shootings have become an all-too-common part of American culture." Expect the press to act accordingly.
Or maybe we should demand The Press start to cover "the issues" again ...
Instead of simply letting them just "turn up the heat" ...
Why does the Media give these unstable antisocial criminals the notoriety they crave?
Do these fear-generating thugs even deserve "their 15 minutes of Fame" ?
Our Celebrity-obsessed culture must find a way to start saying emphatically:
NO! No more stochastic carnage.
May their cruel hate-filled actions, no longer serve to inspire others, so predisposed ...
Our National Dialog must somehow return, from its continuing descent into the "notoriety gutter" -- back to the platform for National Discourse.
Maybe, just maybe, if it bleeds, it shouldn't lead ?
Who made that the rule? (Some bean-counting weasel, most likely.)