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What we know about CEO shooting suspect

bbc.com

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Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#691

Post by iambateman »

mbesto wrote: post #689
munksbeer wrote: post #586

Usually I don't tend to get caught up in stories like this. But one thing has me completely fascinated, is how far off the deep end the internet went over the last few days. A murderer became a cult hero online. I saw many posts even suggesting "the snitch" should be hunted down and get what's coming to him/her. I try not to overreact to stuff online, but this took me a bit by surprise. Things really feel like a melt…

> how far off the deep end the internet went over the last few days. Side note - the "internet" is very likely a mix of bots and real humans nowadays. What might seem initially like a real person saying "hunt the snitch down" could very likely be a bot that is meant to sow and influence discord. That bot's followers could very likely be real people who then say "ya i agree with this account! get your pitchfork!"

This is generally true but I've never seen clear evidence of bot activity on HN – have you? I think it's very likely that those reactions on Twitter are 50/50 bot, but I've seen HN people posting their own version of "wow, what a guy" in ways that were convincingly human and very surprising.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#692

Post by clownpenis_fart »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #66

I'm weirdly not too surprised due to this belief I have that software developers would make effective criminals. A lot of this boils down to a belief I have that not getting caught in the first place is easy. Murders have something like a 50% solve rate and you can decrease your chances of getting caught with a little knowledge on how to evade common forensic techniques along with some planning. Those who get caught…

[dead]

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#693

Post by intended »

donatj wrote: post #607
agilob wrote: post #529

The wealth gap in 2012 US is larger than it was in pre-revolution France. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/us-inco...

[flagged]

The average person is the average which includes some of the richest people on the planet, so I’m guessing you were thinking median?

While the sentence is likely true, the sister statement to it would cover historical relativism.

Society is generally expected to evolve and improve - this being the whole point of it.

So being absolutely better than the past is not as relevant to the conversation as how poor people are with comparison to their peers in their own country.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#694

Post by _yb2s »

kypro wrote: post #592
munksbeer wrote: post #586

Usually I don't tend to get caught up in stories like this. But one thing has me completely fascinated, is how far off the deep end the internet went over the last few days. A murderer became a cult hero online. I saw many posts even suggesting "the snitch" should be hunted down and get what's coming to him/her. I try not to overreact to stuff online, but this took me a bit by surprise. Things really feel like a melt…

I thought it was a joke when I saw the posts on the Reddit homepage celebrating the murder and even the murderer. Partly because I thought Redditors were above that type of thing, but also because I thought it was against their TOS. It's a real reminder of how little sympathy people can have about people who they consider the enemy or the "other". I'm almost certain nearly all of the people celebrating the murder bel…

This overall dynamic has become very concerning to me- people have sorted themselves into echo chambers online that dehumanize anyone not in their group- to the point of justifying murder for just for not being in their specific group. This has happened universally across the political and ideological spectrum. Parts of Reddit for example has a seething hatred for anyone elderly “boomers” and/or well off “billionaires and landlords” with lots of extreme essays on why people in these groups should be systematically harmed or even executed becoming well liked. Anyone adding nuance to the discussion is attacked- empathy and nuance are labeled as themselves evil. Everything is based on a cartoonishly oversimplified model of the world with pure good and evil actors- not understanding that unfair outcomes are most often simply the banal result of bad planning and locked in structures that appear organically and can persist even when everyone involved wants them to change but can’t coordinate well. This dynamic is repeated everywhere and not unique to just the right or left. Nothing good will come off this.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#695

Post by [deleted] »

intended wrote: post #687
munksbeer wrote: post #586

Usually I don't tend to get caught up in stories like this. But one thing has me completely fascinated, is how far off the deep end the internet went over the last few days. A murderer became a cult hero online. I saw many posts even suggesting "the snitch" should be hunted down and get what's coming to him/her. I try not to overreact to stuff online, but this took me a bit by surprise. Things really feel like a melt…

> Things really feel like a melting pot at the moment, with so much pent up anger amongst people who actually lead pretty decent lives. One of the reasons that many people voted for Trump, is nihilism. The real belief that Trump is the one most likely to burn the ‘system’ to the ground. That is the brightest hope some voters have.

[deleted]

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#697

Post by alabhyajindal »

navane wrote: post #574
gwd wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems he wanted to be found. I talked to someone personally who at some point had committed a series of crimes, and at some point they started doing things that were more and more likely to get them caught; they told me they thought to themselves, "What am I doing?" But they didn't stop, and eventually got caught. In a different story, a few years ago I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk outside my house, and som…

There's a decent book written about exactly this, Crime and Punishment, by one of those Russians. Pretty hilarious read too.

I immediately thought of this when I read the parent comment.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#699

Post by francisofascii »

profsummergig wrote: post #239

How did someone recognize him from that half-face photo? There must be millions of people in the East Coast who look like that.

A young guy wearing a mask in Altoona would stand out. He probably would have been better off not wearing the mask in that case.
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