Murder article emphasizes AS in perpetrator

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Sweetleaf
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28 May 2014, 8:56 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
I read an article about the shootings & watched his 7min video. There wasn't a mention of AS in either, but I did notice AS traits being described both in the article and by the shooter in his video and wondered if he had a diagnosis.

Also, it's been my experience that AS is treatable and we can in fact change how we perceive the world. Further to that, it's not the whole rest of the world's responsibility to change to accommodate us. It's up to us to do what we can for ourselves to fit into the world and make sense of it. People need to take personal responsibility for themselves and their actions vs. blaming everyone else or society at large for them being different. You're under no obligation to agree with me, but that's the way I see it.

As for the media and AS/murderers.. I think it's just a bit of a trendy fear inducing topic they can use to get ratings and sell advertising. It'll all blow over soon enough whenever there's a new boogieman to sell on the 6 o'clock news.


I have to disagree with some of that as I think it is societies responsibility to help accomodate people with physical or mental conditions that interfere with their functioning....just as it is every individuals responsibility to do what they can to help them self, though how much an individual is capable of that varies. Also I don't think we nessisarily have to 'fit in' but being able to co-exist with people is the important thing but that goes for both sides.


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Sweetleaf
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28 May 2014, 9:05 pm

BornThisWay wrote:
Read the post carefully please.

If I am wrong about the drone operator/ gamer connection, then I am the victim of a story that was published in the main stream media...I thought my information was accurate. I will have to look this up further.

I maintained that first person shooter video games desensitize a user to the idea of shooting people. I did not say they made people go out and kill others. However, when a psychologically fragile boy spends countless hours playing these games he is reinforcing the use of violence to solve a problem. Add in frustration, a psychotic inability to tell right from wrong and reality from 'the game'...give him access to real guns...welcome to a real mess...

I have no doubt that lots of AS kids do just fine playing the games, and for basically healthy adults - of course it's no big deal. But don't deny that in every recent AS shooter case, violent video games was a behavior they indulged in before they went out and shot people in real life. There is an obvious link with that and their fundamental mental illness .... that should be enough for parents to be very careful about carefully monitoring any AS child's media and gaming exposure.

My main point is that kids on the spectrum might do well to avoid these games, and that these violent video games might not be healthy or conducive to their general mental health. AS kids have enough issues just figuring out how to function in the a world that does very little to accommodate their natural developmental curve in a positive way without providing them with violent social fantasies.

It really gets down to whether being on the spectrum is a mental illness or a mental condition. Plenty of people with AS are not mentally ill - certainly not in the manner of the UCSB shooter. But for the ones who are mentally ill ... are violent video games a good idea?

edit: I just put the term - drone operators/ gamers - into the search engine box...329,000+ results and the many interview articles maintain that the experience for the drone operator is basically the same as gaming. if you just look at the titles of the games themselves, I think you might reconsider the idea that there is no connection between the virtual and the real.



Well I have autism and mental illness, and while I don't play video games a lot when I have I do like the action games which happen to be violent...but I don't feel that has ever really contributed to any rage towards people or caused any desensitization. I also tend to like those sorts of movies/books and i like metal and darker music but yeah I don't feel like I have issues with 'violent' media while some people could. I think it certianly should be up to the parent to like if they know their child and don't think something is good for them they can limit it or disallow them from that particular thing(though not sure parents are always right on that)...but I'd certainly be opposed to the government telling people they can't play such games if they have a mental illness.


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Callista
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28 May 2014, 11:11 pm

Yeah, I don't think so. If a person can't tell the difference between a story and real life, they've got more problems than could ever be solved by removing video games.

And if you took video games away from a violent person, they'd read violent books, or watch violent movies, or draw violent pictures.

What causes the problem, most of the time, is a kid with a lot of energy and very little impulse control, in an environment where nobody teaches them how to control themselves--either because the parents control the child so much that the child never learns to control himself, or because they don't take an interest and never teach him how to handle himself. I say "he" because a high testosterone level really does make it easier to punch somebody... Not that girls can't be hostile, too, but they tend to want to destroy your reputation instead of your face.

Anyways, sure, it's nice to think such a simple solution could change things, but it can't. And video games have positive benefits, too--problem solving, learning the game, better visual-spatial thinking. Those aren't negligible benefits, either. A lot of the problem-solving strategies I use in real life, I learned from games. It's no exaggeration to say that computer games have made my life a lot better--just like books and music have.


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daspie
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01 Jun 2014, 5:00 am

Callista wrote:
I am autistic with ADHD, recurrent depression, PTSD, and I am on disability and unemployable.


May I know, why are you unemployable?



BelleAmi
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02 Jun 2014, 2:50 am

I know that I am glad that, as a very depressed and traumatised teenage, I was not able to get my hands on a handy pump-action killing machine to express my feelings! I imagine any human being is capable of murder, considering how popular a passtime it has always been. The availability of totally lethal hardware is obviously a factor to these sprees.


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