#a large portion of us are prison abolitionists on both sides

[brokenorbornthatway]

Man it drives me up a wall to come across an anti saying shit like "but the slendermen incident" (whatever that is/was), "but people who emulate fictional serial killers", but but but whatever people who saw something fictional and used it to justify their bad choices.

Just.

You do realize that none of that takes away from the fact that fiction isn't real and the rules of reality should not be imposed on fiction right? People do absolutely horrible things to each other for more reasons than either you or I could possibly think up. Someone choosing to enact something awful they read in fiction isn't any different than someone choosing to do something awful because they read a news article about it.

Think about that for a second. People absolutely have emulated serial killers that they heard/read about from the news. So then, by anti logic, would the solution be to never talk about serial killers on the news ever again in case someone uses it to justify hurting someone else? I sure fucking hope not.

The problem isn't with the news and it isn't with fiction. The problem lies with the people who actually commit the heinous acts and societal issues we have that make it so easy for people to feel for whatever reason that they can and should turn to committing real acts of violence.

Working as a culture to destigmatize having violent thoughts and urges, educating from a young age about these thoughts and urges (and what do about them if you feel them or think someone else is), and providing ample resources for healthy non harmful way to embrace those thoughts and urges would go soooooooooooo much further than arbitrarily trying to police things that are only tangentially related to the core problem.

Honestly, it's my belief that almost (we won't say every because nothing is a monolith) every human alive has violent thoughts and urges to some to degree. We are still animals. We are highly intelligent apes, but apes nonetheless. Look at the violence in other apes and in beings all throughout the animal kingdom. We still have the instincts/genes/biological coding that drives us to hunt, kill, fight for territory, attack any possible threat, do whatever it takes to stay alive and sometimes these instincts+our intelligence lead to people wanting to or causing harm. Some people, for a myriad of reasons, struggle more with violent thoughts and tendencies than others.

I just think if we embraced and acknowledged violence as part of our nature on a foundational level and gave people the tools to handle it without shame or causing harm, there would be a massive reduction in violent crimes. This is done a little bit through things like contact sports, fighting sports, violent fiction and video games, etc, but I think proper education about why people want violent things in the first place would make a huge difference.

I just wish antis would stop pointing the blame of people who do violent things "because fiction told them it was ok" on fiction and point it at the people doing the violent things and the society that allows it instead

-an annoyed researcher