Desensitization (Virginia Tech Shooting)

[IQ89]

My reaction to the news of the Virginia Tech shooting was the something along the lines of, "Oh really, pass the salt." Maybe not quite that callous, but pretty close. My reaction to the Columbine shooting was much different, it bothered me for days. I've definitely become desensitized to the news of mass killings. I guess it has a lot to do with the war in Iraq. Every week or two you hear news of thirty or more people being blown up. When the suicide bombings first started, I was shocked. But now I'm becoming more and more use to hearing it.

A quick observation: My mom was born in 1933. She grew up in a small mid-west town. One evening, when she was about 14, some stranger was driving through town. He crashed his car and died. She remembered herself and everybody else in town feeling very sad and sorry for this fellow. To hear her recall it, I can just picture it having a real impact on the people in that small community (if only temporarily). Now, when driving in southern California, hardly a day goes by without hearing a traffic report about a fatality on some freeway. My reaction is the same as my mom's, indifference.

[NNNNOOOOONAN]

i think poker had a huge part in my lack of emotion toward things i'm not related to.
my buddy was working on a college paper about pornography and was browsing through some very intense BDSM/snuff films and i watched one with him. he sat there the whole time with a grossed out/concerned/wondering look on his face while i felt absolutely nothing.
same as a lot of other things people seem to get very upset about, i can't really find anything that shocks me anymore.

i really don't know anyone else like that so i just always assumed it was from playing so much poker.

[MusashiStyle]

how the hell do u get desensitized to people getting shot and killed at in school for no reason at all. ur sick.

[DWarrior]

What if I didn't feel sad even after the Columbine shooting?

Besides, it doesn't affect me in any way, and school shootings seem to be popular nowadays. If I'm to expel emotional energy on all the horrible things that happen in our world, I'll be an emotional wreck.

[nineinchal]

[ QUOTE ]
What if I didn't feel sad even after the Columbine shooting?

[/ QUOTE ]

It touched my heart.

[nineinchal]

[ QUOTE ]
how the hell do u get desensitized to people getting shot and killed at in school for no reason at all. ur sick.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was too busy multi-tabling, what should I do, start losing big bets over a TV broadcast?

[Brad1970]

What happened at Virginia Tech is a sad, tragic thing & I really feel for the victims & their families. Hopefully, something like this will not happen again.

With that being said, something I really don't understand is that when tragedy strikes (especially one such as this that is turned into a circus by the media...) people will get in front of a TV camera & cry, moan, & act like they just lost their best friend when in reality they didn't even know the victims, they aren't students at VT, never been to VT..but yet will play it up for the media just to have their 15 mins of fame. IMO, any tragedy brings out too many posers, gossipers, & curious onlookers. Not to mention the quick buck con artists who are making the "commemorative items" (t-shirts, trinkets, etc) to sell.

Just my $.02.

[PJo336]

[ QUOTE ]
What happened at Virginia Tech is a sad, tragic thing & I really feel for the victims & their families. Hopefully, something like this will not happen again.

With that being said, something I really don't understand is that when tragedy strikes (especially one such as this that is turned into a circus by the media...) people will get in front of a TV camera & cry, moan, & act like they just lost their best friend when in reality they didn't even know the victims, they aren't students at VT, never been to VT..but yet will play it up for the media just to have their 15 mins of fame. IMO, any tragedy brings out too many posers, gossipers, & curious onlookers. Not to mention the quick buck con artists who are making the "commemorative items" (t-shirts, trinkets, etc) to sell.

Just my $.02.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you! Im not saying this wasnt a tragedy, cuz it really really was. But why do we need to hear 80 different "pyschological specialists" on the news talk about why THEY think this kid did what he did. Who cares what you think you had nothing to do with it. Just tell the damn story.
And yes, the attention grabbing whores screaming feel sorry for me, even though they lived 20 miles off campus, or have one friend that goes there and he was beating off in his room at the time.
Too many people use these times to make it about themselves. Its not, its about the victims and their families and friends. Everyone else should give there condolences and butt out

Now thats like 10 cents right there

[Erik Blazynski]

The truth for me is that, though sad, this is a product of living in a free society. These things happen. When a bus load of people crash and 30 people died it was not sensationalized, the president didn't show up. So it's not the fact that 30 people died but how they died that apparently makes this important. But what's really happening is that shootings sell advertisements on pseudo-news stations, bus crashes don't. So every idiot news caster TELLS YOU HOW HORRIBLE IT IS AND PEOPLE BELIEVE IT. And the truth is that if they spent 5 minutes on it, the moment would pass and you would forget about it. So what is really happening here is that profiteering media are dictating how people react to just about everything. I think that this situation is more bad than good, but it is what it is.

-Erik

[DWarrior]

Now the real question is, do you think you could do 35?

I think it would take some good planning, I'm pretty amazed at 32, I personally don't think I could do more than 10.