It’s simplistic to blame the shooting on video games or video game communities. I expect near negligible portion of persons who play video games and/or are a part of such communities are involved in real life shootings. And the vast majority of shooters are not in to such video games or related communities. This is particularly true for the games Robinson is listed as regularly playing, which are some of the most popular video game series of all time with hundreds of millions of persons purchasing/downloading the games – Minecraft, Call of Duty, etc.
One could just as easily choose countless other aspects of Robinson’s life and say they are a cause. For example, perhaps the shooting relates to Robinson’s family being in to hunting and encouraging Tyler to shoot guns from a young age. Perhaps it relates to Kirk being a manifestation of Robinson’s internal perfectionist conflict from having a conservative family and being in a Mormon community, while being in a romantic relationship with a trans partner . Perhaps Robinson has a history of psychological challenges that worsened when living on his own, which manifested as dropping out of college in first semester several years before the shooting, in spite of having 4.0 HS GPA + high test scores.
I was talking about this with my S, early 30’s, this weekend. He said that he is glad that the internet did not exist in its current state when he was in middle school. He said that (despite my attempts to monitor his usage) he was exposed to things he wasn’t able to process … and he thinks it is far worse for kids today.
I should have made it clear that it is a particular, but widespread, strain that absolutely does live in these communities. We saw it years ago with Gamergate. Does it make most people who fall into that kind of nihilism violent? I’m sure not. But there is a very dark mindset that is being spread in non-mainstream communities, but initially accessed in mainstream ones.
It’s my understanding “Gamergate” involved some 4Chan/8Chan users re-posting a long and disparaging breakup post written by the boyfriend of a female video game designer who made non-traditional games, such as Depression Quest; then starting an online harassment campaign against the female game designer and other women in the industry. I am not aware of any of the participants being involved in shootings or physical violence themselves, but some did do despicable harassment/threatening/… type actions online.
Billions of people play video games. One survey found that 80% of Internet users aged 16 to 44 play video games. By some estimates approximately one third of the world’s population plays video games. When 1/3 of the world’s population does an activity, you are going to a lot of people in that group who do both amazing and awful things. You are also going to find many video game users who participate in both positive and negative online communities. For example, the recent Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis was a former video game designer who participated in video game communities. I expect a notable portion of younger Nobel Prize winners are video game enthusiasts. And you can also find persons involved in horrible real life crimes who are video game enthusiasts and involved in related communities, like your Robison example.
The Internet can no doubt make it easier for one to find like minded persons of unique values or bubbles with self-reinforcing of unique views via social media. However, I’d be wary of attributing much of this to video games or video game communities because a particular person(s) played video games and/or were involved in video game communities.
My husband would be mortified but he plays an online game. Complete with a chat option.
To me it seems a lot like this community. It’s that, a community of like minded individuals
It’s not violent and it’s not political. The sad part is that there are games that can be.
I’m not sure if we will know what caused this young man to do this horrible act of violence. To me, the online community didn’t seem so violent and subversive but more of a community. We will find out more. Some things have no explanation unfortunately
I am not saying that games cause violence. I think I made that clear. My point is that those toxic communities and acts, of which Gamergate was one example, reach young men somehow. Parents on this thread have said that their young men were reached out to on those gaming platforms. My S is far older so I’m only going by what I’ve read here and elsewhere. You disagree. I think we don’t have much else to debate.
There are definitely gamer communities that are on the up & up. My SIL met one of his now-good friends that way, as adults. The problem, as has been noted, is that it’s a way for questionable people with questionable motives to recruit young, impressionable kids they would otherwise not be able to reach. I know an adult woman with a husband and kids who completely blew up her life because she got involved with people and activities that she would never have met without the internet. And I know people who met partners on the internet and have a great life. But the scary stuff that exists … the stuff that exists in dark spaces of the internet and seems to prey on lonely kids struggling to find their place in life … is often ruining lives.
There are countless online communities that young males, as well as persons in other demographics, participate in. Some relate to gaming, and a much larger portion relate to other activities. It’s easy to create such communities. I’ve owned 2 websites, with popular discussion forums that centered around unique interests, sort of like the CC forum. One of them was especially popular with younger males (recent university grads in their 20s). People searching for keywords quickly found the website and discussion forums. Connecting with like minded people allowed members to discuss their interests and created a sense of community. There were a few meetups in person as well.
In more recent years, forums like this one and the ones I created seem less popular among younger persons. Reddit subs, Discord channels, and social media groups seem to be replacing more traditional forums; which are even easier to create. A person with no funding and minimal technical knowledge can often create one of these online communities in a matter of minutes.
Many of these online communities are positive and helpful to a large portion of participants, often being an important both as a source of knowledge and for positive social interactions / community. However, news media often focuses on the ones that are negative, and a small minority are really horrible, some far worse than any communities I’ve seen referenced in this thread. Someone who has violent interests or interests in illegal activities can create an online community that focusses on these topics, and people searching for such topics can quickly find the communities. The communities can help members become more proficient in the violent/illegal activities, create a bubble in which the activities seem more normalized than among the general population, help community members find opportunities to participate in the activities, etc.
I don’t know a lot about video games and online gaming (my kids are too old for current stuff, and they were more into music etc). So I do have a tendency to be wary about them. But… I did listen to one podcast that speculated that city violence is down because teen boys can play with gaming guns, not real ones. Get sense of community online rather than in street gangs. Can’t say if it’s really true, but it was a interesting thought.
This horrendous incident happened in a town near mine. I can’t begin to understand how a young man can do something this terrible, and then call himself the victim. I am sure, though, that that stance, though I won’t say the act itself, was exacerbated by following the misogynist Andrew Tate. I don’t know how and why he and that whole “manosphere” world are reaching (some) young men, but I think we need to know more and do more to counter it.
Wow @garland. I have heard he is arguing that the car was stolen (he was not caught in the car but reportedly had left the scene and was later caught). Police are asking for ring camera footage and other evidence. So much misinformation and speculation about this horribly tragic story.
This happened in my husbands hometown, my in-laws still live there (around the corner from the scene of the crime.) We were shocked and saddened to hear this news - horrible and disturbing.
He has basically admitted it on camera on his Youtube, it sounds like. I refuse to listen to any of his garbage if it’s still online, but this is my understanding. I think the “stolen Jeep” story has been thoroughly debunked.
More about him. It’s shocking that he went for so long like this and nothing was done:
Glad to hear the stolen car defense has been debunked. The only point I agree with that he made (in the article, I did not listen to anything) was that there needs to be better ways to deal with people, especially teens, with mental health issues. Clearly, there were lots of signs of problems for this guy.
It is not clear if there was a restraining order and if the police did nothing to enforce it. Neighbors (and maybe the family) saying he parked outside her home every day for months and nothing was done. Seems she would have had a case for an RO if he was stalking her.
It is also really unfortunate that certain police officers that are related are being blamed for the lack of action, with literally no evidence in support of that.
That was also addressed early. The police chief (of a neighboring town) uncle has spoken up clearly that he in no way had anything to do with and absolutely condemned, his nephew’s actions. It is too bad he had to.
As far as mental health, of course this country needs to address that more, always. But it’s really early to know if there is any merit to his particular claims. Whether he was trying to access mental health support or not, and what the outcome was, is not known beyond his recordings. This is a fairly wealthy town, and I would imagine there were far better resources available than for the average lower income or homeless individual who can’t afford them. But I guess more of that part of the story will come out eventually.
Before Vincent Battiloro was charged with intentionally hitting and killing two 17-year-old girls at 70 mph, he shared rambling livestreams that included his need for “vengeance” against one of the girls.
If he was a Tate follower, this likely means he was upset that she wasn’t interested in him.
If he was bullied, I feel bad for him. At the same time, being bullied does not mean the victim of the bullying gets a free pass to act out. A school shooter in the news was bullied, and his parents declined to get him mental health treatment, but he was not justified in his actions and is spending his life in prison. We can understand the pain of being bullied, and we can believe that young people should have better access to mental health services … but that doesn’t mean that illegal actions are somehow excused.
I’ve been following this thread for a while, and I think I’ve finally made up my mind (for what it’s worth). I teach young men between 18-24, and I’ve seen all the theories, watched the young men succeed and fail, and seen younger teens struggle with the issues that stay thorny in college men. I think it’s that male brains, testosterone-influenced (as I’ve read in science articles) are simply more vulnerable to the quick hits of pleasure of digital life. They get addicted to screen culture–so similar to porn culture–and then nothing else is as satisfying. That’s why young men will actually talk about wanting to stay home and get high and play video games. It’s better for them than socializing with girls/romantic partners. Even if the men aren’t this extreme in addictive behavior, the culture interferes with their school performance. It’s that simple, to me. They just have fewer defenses physiologically against what’s being thrown at them. Anyway–I’d love to hear it if anyone thinks this is off-base. The very successful young men I know were raised with very low screen time (like, an hour or two a day).
I think this is accurate, but one piece is missing.
That piece, IMHO, is that the dopamine culture reinforces that these quick hits of pleasure are always easy to get; kids aren’t used to friction. It can be difficult to put yourself out there and be rejected or even risk rejection so that kind of friction feels extraordinarily difficult. Those of us who are older have dealt with that kind of friction; we’ve built those muscles.
I really fear we have a whole generation of kids who haven’t developed resilience. Some of that is the screen culture; some is the codependent parenting.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. For example, you mentioned drug use. Youth drug use by gender in CDC survey is described at Alcohol and Other Substance Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among High School Students — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2021 - PMC . As quoted below, teen females had a higher rate of drug use than teen males, including a higher rate of binge drinking. One could also make similar comments about getting dopamine hits from social media posts / texts or dating / sex and focusing on these activities over schoolwork, rather than addiction primarily being an issue for socially isolated males. I expect the title question of this thread is a complex and multifaceted issue, with many contributing factors, rather than having a simple explanation or simple solution.
Compared with males, females had a higher prevalence of current substance use in 2021 for alcohol (26.8% versus 18.8%), marijuana (17.8% versus 13.6%), binge drinking (12.2% versus 9.0%), and prescription opioid misuse (8.0% versus 4.0%) (Table 2). Females also had a higher prevalence of lifetime alcohol use (53.2% versus 42.0%), lifetime marijuana use (30.9% versus 24.8%), lifetime prescription opioid misuse (14.8% versus 9.5%), and lifetime inhalant use (9.4% versus 6.8%) compared with males.