Comments

  1. says

    I spotted the signs, but I thought they are just paraphernalia used to show typical USAmerican culture so I paid no real attention to them. So the hook got me in the end.

  2. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    example of “concentration blindness”
    pretty much what Drumph was doing, getting everyone to focus on “emails”, to divert our attention away from his machinations.
    *sigh*

  3. cartomancer says

    I thought it was going to be that the mystery correspondent was another boy… I was unsure just how it was going to end though.

  4. gijoel says

    I spotted the guns and ammo, and thought it was going to be a mass shooter. Then thought the other writer was going to be a boy.

  5. gijoel says

    Also I wish they’d give the “school shooters are bullying victims” meme a rest. A lot of what drives these mass shootings are aggrieved entitlement, and identity politics.

  6. says

    This is stewart wiseman’s gorilla being put to brilliant use. There’s so much wrapped up in this. It’s a statement about how easy it is to be self absorbed and forget empathy, no matter who you are. None of those kids were evil or wrong or malicious, they just weren’t paying attention.

    I’d like to think I paid attention at that age. I stuck up for some bullied kids, made friends with a bunch of them, even though I was on the football team.

    Later in my life I wish I had been more of an advocate for them, but I could only go so far in forsaking the popular kids. I was, after all, one of them. You don’t give up being popular in highschool for just anything you know.

    But I think I was fair with people, as fair as a teenager can be.

    I came from a broken home with an alcoholic mother who was abused by 3 consecutive husbands. I knew, at too early and age, what it felt like to be ignored, and I hated to see people be ignored. To this day I will reach out to the outsider and try to be a friend, if they want one.

    If that makes me a cuck, or a beta, or an SJW, then fine. I’m a cuck, I’m an SJW, I’m a beta. Whatever the fuck you want to call me is fine, but I’m right. I’ll die comfortably with that thought, someday.

  7. cahu says

    While I get its a poetic point or whatever, I don’t think it’s like this in real life. There isn’t a kid sitting in the library reading a book ‘how 2 be a shooter’. In real life I think many of us see people who might need help or a friend, and we CHOOSE to ignore it.

    Gun violence isn’t on the shoulders of other children to stop anyway. It’s on adults. Legislators. Voters.
    Maybe don’t let your kids buy machine guns!, America?

  8. rajid says

    It’s because of videos like this, and the ones on selective attention, that I’m no longer able to be on a jury.

  9. says

    The real question to me is: why the hell does a school library have a book about how to handle guns? But seriously, I find it a bit harsh (and desperate) to put the responsibility of recognizing school shooter behaviour (and what is that anyway?) on the shoulders of kids/teenagers. If it’s directed at teachers, they are at least adults, but it’s still a bit of a cop-out for a country that has a massive gun proliferation problem and a strong lobby to keep it that way. (Not judging, btw, Germany has woefully inadequate gun control laws because of hunters and “sport shooters” and worse implementation of those laws, and we did have our share of school shootings).

  10. jaybee says

    Why put it on the school kids to recognize signs of problems? Because they are tied into the social network, and teachers aren’t. There are a lot more kids than teachers too, so the odds of noticing something amiss is greater. The video isn’t suggesting that kids need to solve it. They just have to notice strange behavior and report to an adult.

  11. lanir says

    I’m generally on the side of the Sandy Hook Promise people when it comes to gun control. I don’t like guns and I don’t enjoy being around them. The gun laws in the US are ridiculously stupid.

    But this video feels way off track to me. It seems to trivialize things by highlighting a few signs I suppose you’re intended to use to decide who might shoot up your school. That sounds a lot more likely to lead to more bullying not less.

    Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I have at least the start of a reasonable test for that. Just look through other comments and see which sound more like they missed seeing the bad guy and which sound more like they missed seeing someone who needed help. For that matter, which direction did your reaction take you?