<p>That part of it reminds me of the leader kid of the two killers in the “Dartmouth Murders”. For anyone who is interested in the true crime stories, its a chilling account and quite similar in an odd way.</p>
<p>But if you read through his published self-history, he did have some incidents of throwing drinks on people, and in one case attempting to push people off of a 10 foot wall. I have a suspicion that if we had been in a classroom with him that we might have given descriptions of him that were not completey consistent with the impression that you get form reading his autobiographical writing. </p>
<p>CF–I am usually totally on the same page with you , but I repeat, I do not see anything here that reads as an awkward, on the spectrum kid who snaps. This is an arrogant, entitled, angry psychopath who found a community of equally angry, entitled psychos who supported his sense of agrievement. For the life of me, I can’t see how you are equating him with Aspies and others who are awkward and bullied. Nothing in this story equates with that. I think you are doing Aspergers people no favor by equating him that way.</p>
<p>He hated women and wanted revenge. Because he deserved it. Our culture supports that attitude. That’s what we need to deal with here.</p>
<p>There may be a cultural component to the wanting to go out with a bang part of this. And, yes he wanted attention. Good grief, he wrote his story and made a video. But, there’s also some mythology in the skittle shooting since the skittles were part of a meth cocktail and that particular teen was pounding the shooter’s head into concrete at the time. But I guess those are incidentals. </p>
<p>The news stories describe him, as a child, as socially awkward and bullied. We know he was bullied because we have a quote from one of the bullies!</p>
<p>I quite agree that he was angry and entitled. The issue here is whether he was a sociopath who didn’t use his social skills to make his life what he wanted because he had a grandiose belief in his own specialness and superiority, or whether he was an autistic who didn’t use his social skills because he had none.</p>
<p>And Flossy, that implication is, frankly, offensive. I’m sure there are many racist websites asserting it, though, with no evidence. Can we keep the murdered teen out of this discussion. Please?</p>
<p>Gladly. Been there. Done that. But, lets also stop lumping a bunch of totally unrelated killings together. </p>
<p>This case involves an obviously troubled young man with rage and resentment issues who probably stopped taking his meds and went on a killing spree near UCSB. I think madman fits nicely. </p>
<p>This Asperger’s thing is a red herring.
There are plenty of people who are on the autism spectrum.
They get bullied.
They are socially awkward.
They may be socially oblivious and just not care or even understand how they are perceived.</p>
<p>The idea of lashing out and extracting revenge for how they are treated seems very much counter to how they view themselves and others. I doubt that they are sitting there wondering “How can I be more popular”.<br>
(I would be happy for an expert to chime in).</p>
<p>But regardless, there is nothing about an Aspy diagnosis which would include: “careful, he may be a mass murderer one day”. That is a different mental illness entirely.</p>
<p>Yes we should.
But while we are at it, you should keep out biased, incorrect and inflammatory words like “murdered teen” since murder is a crime of premeditation and based on the jury verdict that did not happen. </p>
<p>Oh, and our culture does not support anything about this tragedy. Sure, you can find some wacky website to support anything. And, even the shooter said he didn’t agree with most of the anti-woman fringe stuff. But he was mad at the sorority girls and wanted payback. It’s pretty simple, really.</p>
<p>One of the things Adam Lambert’s father said in the Atlantic (I think) article was that they were so happy to finally have a diagnosis of Aspergers that they stopped looking for other issues. His father said it’s clear NOW that he had Asperger’s AND other problems that went untreated because they were undiagnosed.</p>
<p>And in the Lanza case we had poster after poster blaming the Lanza’s for not getting more help for their son. Meanwhile, this kid had more help. Same result.</p>
<p>Parts of our culture does support the idea that woman owe men something. Is there an effort to overturn this idea? Yes. Is it still present to some extent. Yes. </p>