An era of copycat shootings, suicides and work and school place violence. The term active-shooter is enough to stop any normal member of society in their tracks. The responsibility lies in humanity as a whole, Stephen King’s novel, Rage is about one such school shooting, in which a student flies into a rampage and kills both student and teacher. King now says he wishes he never wrote the book. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, but hindsight doesn’t make up of for the lack of responsibility to society at large. King’s book isn’t the only one. "Everyone wants to meet a saint, but nobody wants to be one."
Copycat effect violence begets violence
The sensational headlines and all of the attention is focused on the gunman or gunmen involved. For such attention-seeking individuals all that matters is the attention, the deadly deed to harm anyone doesn’t bother the gunman in the least. Copycat offenders usually have a long list of prior criminal history along with anger or hate issues and histories of violence. And as for the teen suicides, deliberately harming themselves? Suicide bombers? After the movie Jaws came out the media ran to the beaches digging up stories to put in front of it’s audience. “Headlines” which are in front of you every day.
Massive media attention and retelling the details
Such contagious phenomena has been around for centuries. The media is driven by stories of death and the people adore reading it. Awhile back I asked the one of the animal examiners for Examiner.com why she continued to write articles about abuse and neglected animals, her title had nothing to do with abuse of animals to be exact. Her reply was, when she wrote about how to take care of pets, she had no viewers, which meant no one was reading her articles, but the moment she reported on the worst crimes to dogs and in detail her views and the money she made went up markedly.
Tortures, violence, sex it’s all titillation in the headlines
Gun control? How about individuals having self control. The people are doing more than hurting others with guns, they are hurting themselves and animals using more than just a gun. The way to adjusting such violence and the lure of reading such horror in the news is placed is placed on the shoulders of the people. Mastering your own mind begets training and principles, the death and the violence that leads to death is not entertainment.
Reality sensationalism
The public wants to see the dead body of the wife missing her head, and they want the details now. The public demands they have the right-to-know the whole story, and they and pictures and the bloody details that go with it. Since the Connecticut School Shooting there have been 18 more school-driven shootings. The copycat shootings or offences used to go unnoticed because they happened on a local basis, now due to the global information spread of the internet everyone knows.
The copycat effect behavioral science
‘Complex occult.’ The study of examining media’s role in the avalanche of news coverage, including movies, causing a chain reaction of copycat events. Loren Coleman’s book, The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger Tomorrows Headlines. The idea behind it, you can practically predict tomorrow’s headlines based on the reaction of the public. Media intensity propels similar occurrences in ‘clusters.’ People get ideas and they run with them, the same can be said for town gossip long before media ‘hype’ and electricity.
Curb the dark and brutal side
They say censorship doesn’t work. But there is more to it than ‘cleaning up the news’ to make it prettier. It’s not about censoring. It’s about “too much information,” no tact or integrity. Gone are the days of “prime time” television viewing. Remember the days when children had a bedtime and adults could watch shows with cussing and talk about their bills without the children getting involved or upset. Cable television and the internet has invited public show and tell at every age. A drive to “break the headline” before everyone else dominates the scene.
Moral obligation
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. There is a fine line in what is the “right thing” to do and doing it any way. From scientists and researchers, corporations, politicians, all the way one down. The religious guy in the pulpit on Sunday’s has been taking a beating over this one by the immoral majority. People claim violent video games have no effect on people, and plenty of people in America own guns that have never fired them off in act of violence one single time. Not everyone comes from a steady mind, and you just never know what will trigger someone and set him off. If you take the guns out of everyone’s hands then you must take the remote control and the stereo and the table fork.
Take the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, if it weren’t for the strength of the media, sponsorship wouldn’t mean a damn or at least as much. Would the hyper drive to greed and its profits still exist? Not speaking in just his incident alone but in all athletes who have been found guilty of doping in long past? Articles are in circulation now coming out to say doping (using performance enhancing drugs) is not such a bad thing, after all Lance Armstrong did it, it must be so. Did this unleash a new era of “doping” athletes who worshiped Armstrong as their hero?
Some believe there is no copycat effect
Those people are trying to avoid a “nanny-ed state,” by ignoring what is so clearly and loudly, well put smack dab right in front of everyone’s face. Even Disney has change the kind of movies they produce now. How much protecting is involved? Does living in America mean we live in the land of “Sodom and Gomorah?” No integrity, morals, manners, principles, justice or more importantly soul? Will it take Moses to come down from the fiery burning bush on the mountain to rectify the situation or your will you at least save your own soul?
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