Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I suspect if you ask most people what the best moments of their lives are, there's very few who would say it happened when they were sitting in front of a computer.
Toronto van attack: Suspect quizzed after 10 pedestrians killed
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I suspect if you ask most people what the best moments of their lives are, there's very few who would say it happened when they were sitting in front of a computer.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
I think it got to a point where there was a large number of 'plants'. I bumped into a few anti fascists on that site especially around 2008. I was messaging a couple and trying to nudge them into pro working class conclusions and they were doing the same to me. I had inboxes inviting me to a John Tyndall remembrance meeting , a WNP meeting, had a long converstaion witha Mosleyite who was pro Islam but very anti jewish. Had a go at floating the need for a workerists type BNP , the British Workers Party ( Hibee can claim a lot of credit for that). Mind you when I was on Revo , the Workers Power Youth site I repeatedly got asked if I wanted to attend one of their meetings by a quite pushy student.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Not sure that it was meant to work tbh .I didnt have a long term game plan, just fits and starts. Mind you our intervention on the Revo Board and campaign for an international brigade for Iraq helped hasten the demise of Workers Power.
Yossarian
⏭️
Not sure somebody on Twitter whose avatar is an obscure character from The Wire gets to throw the first stone at nerds, tbf.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I'd hardly call Frank Sobotka "obscure". Typed the lonely, bitter nerd.
newbie
undisambiguated
Are there no reasons for believing that such confused, maladjusted young men have always been there, isolated in the shadows? Social media has allowed them to coalesce into an identifiable mutual support group that's lasted all of 5 months so far. They're now in the spotlight but without that it's hard to believe they'd have kept it up for much longer, whingeing about how unfair their mums, sorry moms, are to them.
I don't want to play them down- their views are disgusting and they're mostly American and there's more history there than here of serious tragedies resulting from unhappy young men with social issues. The Toronto driver may have been part of their group, his photo has been adopted by one of them as an avatar. Potentially they're dangerous, no question. But the whole point of their strop is that they're involutarily celibate, something that could change for each of them tomorrow if they meet ms/mr right. In that sense it's surely self-limiting?
nothing. No comparison is exact, but every few months there's another web community that briefly hits the news and causes similar outrage- those promoting anorexia or suicide pacts come to mind. Afterwards everyone forgets about them because in the scheme of things they mean so little.
I hope.
ps, nuking those you don't approve of is a really, really bad idea
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I'd say spending your formative years online is rather like being raised by wolves. Even if you did get far enough into normal society to meet Ms/Mr Right, would you even know what to say or do, even if you weren't part of the "he-man woman haters club"?
newbie
undisambiguated
the first bit describes every young person, and has done for a decade or more.
bimble
floofy
newbie the website we've all been looking at is just one little corner of a wider thing, obvs. And once you come to believe the things they hold to be true (incels / mra types who probably started off on ‘pick up artist’ type sites) I think your chances of forming a real bond with a human female will be pretty small. Is part of what makes it so sad.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
I saw a study that potentially linked depression, social media use, and decline in social skills last week. IT basically said that millenials are spending less time with their peers and depression and suicide has gone up, as social media use has also gone up. It couldn't tell if the social media use was the cause, or if it was the symptom. When I get more time, I'll try to look it up.
<Edited to add>
It might have been this one: Social media use associated with depression among US young adults
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Humberto
Well-Known Member
What a horrible and completely pointless act. And, following the discussion, what a selfish millieu whose only sense is that they should be gratified. I don't know if its a societal problem, can't understand it. They're probably not even especially bad people, that is to say, look at the rise of conspiracism and stuff like what these Christians have been doing as discussed in the thread about baby Alfie. Still, at least the majority can be counted on not to be a nuisance/danger to their fellow people because of some bullshit on the internet.
sealion
Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive
Who says it is ?
Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
I remember reading about an Animal Rights cell in the 80s that (iirc) consisted of three undercover plod (from different forces/groups operating independent of each other), two undercover journalists and one actual genuine activist. The makings of a sitcom right there.
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
Cats.
Benjamin F
Lost my faith in Nihilism
Sounds like the plot of G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday?
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Of which the relevance is...?
StigoftheDig
Humdrum mud drummer
I thought it might relate to some of his reported "eccentric" behaviour previously.
To be honest, I regret posting that.
RainbowTown
Well-Known Member
There is no relevance. It's just another lame excuse to try and justify a 'reason' for his actions. You know, the now cliched 'mental health' issues that sometimes arise when cruel acts like these occur. It's almost become de rigueur now to throw mental health into the equation. So much so that it does a great disservice to those people who truly are suffering and struggling with such problems, day in day out - yet do not feel the need to go out and murder numerous random victims at will. This guy knew exactly what he was doing. And why.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
unfortunately its, not the only incel group the concept has been around since 1993 invented by a woman who came out as a lesbian and is rather embarrassed by the whole thing 
this is the 3rd spree killing carried out by an incel two shootings in the states and the van attack
this is the 3rd spree killing carried out by an incel
two shootings in the states and the van attack
Yossarian
⏭️
The guy apparently murdered a lot of people just because he couldn't get a girlfriend, I think it's worth noting that he had a disorder that inhibits social interaction because it may be another piece of the puzzle in this particular case - though of course it's also worth noting that autistic people are no more likely to be violent than anybody else.
Aspergers/autism aren't mental health conditions.
Yossarian
⏭️
Details on more of the victims have been released - the "Chads and Staceys" being "overthrown" include the single mother of a 7-year-old boy, a Korean chef from a Peruvian restaurant, and a 94-year-old woman who went for a short walk outside her seniors' building to feed the birds.
10 people dead, 14 injured: Sohe Chung the latest victim of the Yonge St. van rampage identified | The Star
I live in Toronto, my wife was on that stretch of Yonge Street just two days before the attack, I seem to be getting angrier about this as the days go by.
10 people dead, 14 injured: Sohe Chung the latest victim of the Yonge St. van rampage identified | The Star
I live in Toronto, my wife was on that stretch of Yonge Street just two days before the attack, I seem to be getting angrier about this as the days go by.
I've no idea whether it's more common among autistic people but I've definitely noticed crossover between people posting on autism boards, and mra/redpill/incels and other far/alt right types. It's something I find really concerning (stupid way to put it, obviously it's concerning but ykwim) because, without excusing them at all, I can understand exactly how they get sucked in to this crap.
Having a sense of acceptance and belonging to some kind of community, a framework to make sense of why the world and people are the way they are, a set of rules to navigate social interactions... Those are a fucking attractive antidote to the alienation, confusion and frustration so many of us feel trying to live in a world our brains aren't built for—not to mention all the wider social/political/economic/etc stuff that's always mentioned as a cause of this shit generally.
It's fucked.
Having a sense of acceptance and belonging to some kind of community, a framework to make sense of why the world and people are the way they are, a set of rules to navigate social interactions... Those are a fucking attractive antidote to the alienation, confusion and frustration so many of us feel trying to live in a world our brains aren't built for—not to mention all the wider social/political/economic/etc stuff that's always mentioned as a cause of this shit generally.
It's fucked.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
If this was the case I would assume it was a knock-on effect of social exclusion, which is not an inevitable result of autistic conditions but a consequence of the neuroptypical world's failure to make space for people who think differently.
e2a: That said, there's clearly something going on besides poor social skills and internet access. I don't know what it is that breaks a person's mind to the point where they're capable of these crimes but it is separate from, and mercifully much rarer than any of the soundbite explanations you get when white people commit mass murders. That's why I don't like seeing 'oh, and he had Aspergers' added as an afterthought. I don't like that kind of cowardly implication of causality.
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harpo
Listening to Radio Jackie
Just because it may be linked to a mental health or personality difficulty, it doesn't absolve him of blame. Legally or morally.
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