Tik Tok school violence “threat”

[Belle RoseParticipant]

So yesterday some idiot made a vague threat of violence on Tik Tok. The premise was that today is “National shoot up your school day.” Basically encouraging people to do violent things at school. Many schools in our area have closed because of these threats. I can’t believe I’m having to explain to my child that there are threats of physical violence, and basically discussing whether or not it is “safe” to go to school. I suppose it is never really safe to do anything, but when you have these additional threats to kids, how are they supposed to process that? I basically laid out to him what happened, and explained there’s probably some idiot on the other side of the country, and that you’re probably just fine, but as a parent it’s like how can I even guarantee that? In this day and age, I cannot guarantee anything. I guess I never really could anyway. But it’s definitely something I never had to worry about when I was in school. I ultimately ended up giving my son a choice. I can’t believe I’m even saying that. This is the child who, for years hated school and would never go. Now he loves school and was looking forward to band class because they are doing duets. I gave him the choice, gave him the facts, and he ultimately decided to go to school. But as a parent sitting here, honestly, there’s a part of me that wishes had just stayed home “just in case.” But then what kind of message is that sending to him? It’s so confusing. I’m so confused LOL

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I think you’re both handling it in a very mature way.  He’s not going to allow one malignant jerk to ruin his education. Life is full of risk, especially in a country awash with guns.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

Our country has had gun owners for a long time. I think it’s more the recent access to social media along with peoples idiot mentalities along with gun ownership that makes the threats seem a lot bigger than they really are…

It’s kind of like, the city where I’m from, we always make top of the list of cities where people are murdered, every single year… But I lived there for decades without any incidents like that, it’s just all about who you associate with. The threat of violence is always there, but for the vast majority of people they are just fine.

[—Participant]

There does seem to be more of a tendency to fixate on these incidents. As news media turned more and more to entertainment media, it became very easy to target emotions such as fear, sadness, and morbid curiosity for profit. If they kept up a steady feed of content, they could keep profiting on our ability to turn away. But with so many mass shootings, it feels like we’ve been burning ourselves out. I think it was the Aurora shooting (theatre, not a school) where I sort of hit my breaking point with news media and the constant deluge of updates that were just rehashes of information already out there. They were using horrific violence as click bait and it was pretty sickening in itself.

By the time the Parkland shooting happened in Florida, it felt like the student response and the excuse to rehash debates on gun control took more of the spotlight than the shooting itself.

Admittedly, the fact that I’ve downsized the role new media plays in my life is shaping my perception here, but it feels like school shootings don’t carry the same headline weight they once did even with multiple deaths. Granted, Parkland was, I believe, the last incident with such a high fatality rate to date.

The statistical likelihood of one’s child or loved one being killed in a school shooting is exceedingly low. Still, there is something exceptional about the idea that so much could be ended so suddenly and without any rational explanation that is difficult to cope with, like certain people out there are landmines set to go off in some sort of twisted lottery. That does seem to stick in people’s minds, and even affects school policies with increased security measures rather than better support for students who are more likely to be injured by self harm or killed by suicide.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

If there’s a situation where someone can cause havoc anonymously, at no cost to themselves, just by pulling a TikTok prank – of course someone’s going to do that sooner or later.

[—Participant]

People have certainly made false threats either as pranks or in an effort to cancel school long before this. Anonymous phone calls from a pay phone. Email. Other social media platforms. I guess the fear of it going ‘viral’ is a concern. While almost no one would follow through, I can understand concerns that someone on the edge already might feel emboldened by the idea of solidarity.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

Well, if we now live in a world where any idiot with a tablet can make anonymous threats on a national level, and that’s not going unchecked… We are even less safe than we were before. All the time effort and money and resources that law enforcement has to spend focusing on one idiot, is then diverted away from their attention on other pressing matters in their local community. An already sparse law enforcement (Who usually goes unrecognized) is stretched even thinner….Our kids are definitely going to pay the price unfortunately… All I can say is, don’t be surprised when it blows up in their face. The person who did it will for sure be caught at some point. Hope they like prison

[Belle RoseParticipant]

…..And yet all of these religious nut jobs still think that it is “infringing on their rights” to impose stricter gun laws….So stupid

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Autumn wrote:

I can understand concerns that someone on the edge already might feel emboldened by the idea of solidarity.

That’s a potential concern.  But we live in a world of random crap already.  I refuse to worry about random crap like terrorism.

I understand that in the US they do “shooter” preparedness training in schools.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Ivy wrote:

The person who did it will for sure be caught at some point. Hope they like prison

It’s criminal to scare the shit out of kids and parents like that.

[—Participant]

 

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

I can understand concerns that someone on the edge already might feel emboldened by the idea of solidarity.

That’s a potential concern. But we live in a world of random crap already. I refuse to worry about random crap like terrorism.

I agree, but I’m also curious about the process of radicalization in individuals who engage in acts of extreme destruction. When the attack can be characterized as an act of something like Islamic Extremism, our culture likes to chalk it up to a failing of ideology—it’s a byproduct of fanatical devotion. But I’ve read at least a few times that the perpetrators are targeted for radicalization because of their mental state, often affected by feelings of extreme isolation, frustration, disempowerment, alienation and such.

There was a case in Canada where an individual drove a van into a crowded street in an effort to kill as many people as he could. This indirectly resulted in CSIS classifying the incel movement as a form of ideologically motivated extreme violence. The perpetrator was part of an online community with the likes of Elliot Rodger, and in his police interview he talked about both the violence they actually perpetrated and their plans to commit these acts pretty candidly.

In other shootings, the shooters had talked about wanting to set new record numbers of deaths. Whether this was for shock and awe or they were hoping to attain some morbid fame, it has that feel of desperately seeking some form of relevance and impact. There are other cases of rampage killers where the perpetrators knew something was off and tried to seek help only to find none.

I’m not saying that ‘mental health’ is a panacea to violence. But it does seem there is something about the way that we live that lets many people slip through the cracks in many ways that result in harm. While putting out TikToks promoting mass shootings isn’t at the level of actually killing people, there is that question of how someone developed such severely antisocial tendencies. When we talk about mental health in these contexts, there is a risk it gets conjured as a sort of bogeyman to handwave other issues—as if there is no explaining why that person did what they did; they were just off. And maybe there are cases like that (Elliot Rodger may have been one). But I’d wager in many there is a somewhat predictable pathology of what conditions dramatically increase the risk of someone acting out extreme violence on themselves or others.

I dunno. I feel like there is a lot that needs to change about the way we live and that more could be done to reduce the number of cases like this or actual attacks that doesn’t amount to retroactive response to terrorist threat.

I understand that in the US they do “shooter” preparedness training in schools.

We didn’t do it when I was a student in Canada, but my mom was a teacher and lockdown drills became a regular practice very much like fire drills. I don’t know if  they are still done to this day or if they are done in every province/ district, but it’s not just the US. Although, our adjacency and cultural similarity is probably a factor.

[jakelafortParticipant]

No doubt algorithms could be or have been developed to know the profile of the on the verge murderer including what kind of personality traits, encounters,  rejections, social relationships, devotion and contribution to certain social media channels and recent potential copy cat incidents.  Certain individuals by their nature are probably more prone to go off in a violent spree. I would wager that clear patterns emerge if and when the analysis is done.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Ivy,

I think you did a good job handling the situation. One thing I would add is to be the good parent and steer your kid away from that Greasy Kid’s Stuff called TikTok. It is owned by the mental and physical virus-spreading Commissars of Red China and can be no good for the young. Also realize that the online world is much more than Facebook and Twitter, neither of which I use or want to use and I do fine witbout them.

Steer your kid instead to things that teach something new and stimulates and entertains the mind in a positive, life-affirming fashion. Instructional YouTube, Vimeo, or Dailymotion videos, especially “how to play” videos showing amateur musicians covering favorite artists might be good for your musically-inclined prodigy. I”ve seen good things from Khan Academy, ForaTV, TEDTalks and other learning Channels that can also enrich minds of all ages on many subjects.

Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Tubi.tv, and Pluto.tv all have learning and entertainment suitable for kids of all ages and between all of them, you can find plenty to expand your kid’s learning.

Audio podcasts are something your kid can learn from and enjoy while exercising, riding a bike, exploring outdoors, or other situations where video viewing isn’t safe or desireable. iTunes, iHeart, and Soundcloud have many to shoose from and are all a treat for the mind!

Above all, remember that education is not synonymous with formal institutional schooling. Teach your kid how to learn and where to find references and resources and how to safely experiment and explore in human-occupied spaces and the rest of nature That way, the whole world can be a learning experience and no human-caused thuggery or natural disaster will ever stop your kid from learning for a lifetime!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling. Teach your kid to proofread too

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Simon,

The United States–when you count handguns, rifles, shotguns, machine guns, grenade launchers, bazookas, and mortar–has about a billion pieces of small arms and a trillion roinds of ammunition.

If the mere presence of all these weapons were sufficient to cause violence, our crime rates would be far worse than they are.

Some great reading on the subject, balanced from all sides, would be The Gun Control Debate: You Decide by Lee Nisbet from the Secularist publisher Prometheus Books, (get the latest version,) and Gun Control: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out by Don B. Kates,Jr., Attorney At Law.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spacing and spelling. Going off half-cocked, so to speak

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Simon, Autumn, Ivy, and Fellow Unbelievers,

To give some perspective, which I hope is some assurance:

I went to elementary school in the U.S. in the 1970s, when crime rates were far higher and there were bombings and bomb threats every day from all directions and sides, from The Weather Underground, Puerto Rican Nationalists, Symbianese Liberation Army, Irish Republican Army, Palestine Liberation Organization, Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and others.

I recall twice when our schòol got bomb threats and everyone had to clear the building in an orderly fashion and go far from the building while police searched the building.

Fortunately, no bombs were found and no one was hurt, but it does show how things can be and were even worse.

Fortunately, we now have the advantage of new knowledge of how to handle such scenarios, most notably from the experience of the heroes of Flighr 93 on 9/11/2001 and others like them in other actual attacks. This knowledge is incorporated in the strategy taught by law enforcers from Texas State University: Avoid, Deny, Defend (ADD.)

Here are videos about ADD shown in workplaces like my own (Warning: Strong, disturbing content):

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling. My Rx glasses are coming romorrow

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