It was a sociological experiment!

[Cain]

You have to teach people to be snitches when they are young.  Its not like the good old days, when we used to hang people simply for being too close to a snitch, oh no....

[Jasper]

The only reason the world can go on working the way it does is because of people who break rules.  Snitches will ruin everything.

[Cramulus]

High schools probably suffer a lot more, yes.

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=18518

I know the media have a role in playing everything up, no matter how unlikely or out of the norm it is, but from reading Going Postal by Mark Ames, it seems schools use the shootings that take place in order to get rid of troublesome students they dont like, based on "the profile".  Equally, bullies are usually given a free hand to keep any "wierdos" in line. You can imagine how some of these Bible bashing freaks might react to a kid who wears a little too much black for their liking, or who has 'unwholesome interests' in terrible things like wearing trenchcoats and listening to shitty bands.

How is Going Postal, by the way? That's on my I'd-Really-Like-To-Read-This-But-I-Don't-Have-The-Time list.

[Cain]

Really interesting.

http://www.alternet.org/story/77226/ Mark Ames' take on the most recent shooting, with a link to his commentary on V-Tech at the end of the article.

[Cramulus]

very interesting read, esp the Virginia Tech article linked at the end. He makes some really good points, especially about how the media's mishandling of this epidemic is really making it worse. He mentions a newspaper article about online communities who venerate Eric and Dylan - the Columbine shooters. The article cites one girl who belongs to 20 (twenty!) of these groups and regards the killers as gods.

Ames writes, "The point of the article is that the Internet shows just how sick our kids are. It does not consider the possibility that maybe the kids aren't simply evil but have valid reasons for making Klebold and Harris into heroes. Perhaps they are considered heroes for valid reasons, and the Net allows us easier access into the unofficial truth."

great point. He then goes on to say:

It isn't the schoolyard shooters who need to be profiled -- they can't be. It is the schools that need to be profiled.

A list should be drawn up of the characteristics and warning signs of a school ripe for massacre:

• complaints about bullying go unpunished by an administration that supports the cruel social structure;


• antiseptic corridors and overhead fluorescent lights reminiscent of mid-sized city airport;


• rampant moral hypocrisy that promotes the most two-faced, mean, and shallow students to the top of the pecking order; and


• maximally stressed parents who push their kids to achieve higher and higher scores.

I was in high school during Columbine. In fact, I had to end an Assasination game I was running at the school because we were all gonna get expelled if they found out we were brining water pistols to school and hosing each other. THAT'S NOT A GAME IT'S A CRIME. But valid, at the time. I had friends who wore trenchcoats every day, and got SO MUCH MORE harassment after Columbine.

Justified, that is, if you look at these crimes from a future historian's point of view. Imagine a historian 100 years from now, with no emotional investment in our contemporary culture, looking back on how we live today, and thinking to himself, "My god, how could those poor wretches cope with such hell?" It doesn't take a time machine to think this way. Unofficially, today a lot of people look at these murders as justified, as some kind of vindication. Sympathy is all over the Web. It's revealed in black humor, in "wage slave" T-shirts and in the success of movies like "Office Space" and "Fight Club." It's revealed anywhere it can safely be expressed.

[mungojelly]

We have a sacred obligation as Discordians: WE MUST GIVE PEOPLE A WAY TO GO CRAZY THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE GUNS.  People are only able to freak out in ways that are provided to them, because minds are like trains that need tracks.  This society is working so hard to plug up holes that when people flip out they can only imagine to do it by acting like the craziest parts of the establishment: They declare war.  We must let it be known that there are more civil ways of utterly rejecting your society.

GO TO SCHOOL NAKED!  Yes, that's right, they will arrest you and try to make a big heavy downer scene about it.  Oh what a downer, they'll say, you mildly resisted our established order.  We are totally, they will say, going to depress you into thinking that that won't make any difference.  DON'T BE STUPID; OF COURSE IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!  TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES IN THE JAIL CELL!  WHEN THEY FINALLY LET YOU OUT, GO BACK TO THE SCHOOL NAKED!  You won't throw them a fucking INCH from their oppression by shooting people; THEY HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT.  They didn't think of someone coming to school naked; they have no plan for that whatsoever.

GO TO SCHOOL, COMPLY WITH YOUR BODY LIKE ALWAYS, SIT DOWN IN CLASS, BUT WHEN ASKED ANY QUESTION EITHER VERBALLY OR IN WRITING, RELIGIOUSLY ANSWER: "I cannot think about that question because if I do so I will lose my internal autonomy."  Do you realize how much more that will flip them out than shooting people?  If you shoot people they will be defensive, they will button their assholes up even more.  If you start saying to them: "I'm sorry, but I can't think about the question you just asked me, because to do so would threaten my own internal autonomy," it will fucking get under their skin.  They will STOP demanding that you attend their brainwashing sessions-- they will demand that you GET AWAY FROM THEM BEFORE THEY START TO BELIEVE YOU.

If you are so FUCKING autonomous, so FUCKING willing to reject your society, that you can summon up the will to shoot yourself as well as others, YOU ARE VERY VALUABLE TO THE DISCORDIAN CAUSE.  Kill yourself the right away: KILL ALL OF YOUR INHIBITIONS!  KILL ALL OF YOUR SUBMISSION!  If you really have nothing to lose, then ACT AS IF THEIR WORLD HAD VANISHED, act as if you are truly free.  If you are not able to do that, if you find it easier to kill your body than to kill your submission, then I must ask you: Are you rebelling?  Are you a soldier in the resistance?  Or are you fighting for them?  Whose reality are you sustaining?  That's fucking right.

[Cramulus]

Hi, Mungo Jelly, welcome aboard

We have a sacred obligation as Discordians: WE MUST GIVE PEOPLE A WAY TO GO CRAZY THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE GUNS.  People are only able to freak out in ways that are provided to them, because minds are like trains that need tracks.  This society is working so hard to plug up holes that when people flip out they can only imagine to do it by acting like the craziest parts of the establishment: They declare war.  We must let it be known that there are more civil ways of utterly rejecting your society.

I'm not sure that public nudity and subsequent arrest is an adequate subversive alternative to the old rifle and clocktower gimmick, but it's a good start.

KILL ALL OF YOUR INHIBITIONS!  KILL ALL OF YOUR SUBMISSION!

I can dig it, but killing ALL of my inhibitions seems kind of outlandish. How does the saying go? Doing everything exactly opposite of the mainstream is just like being a part of the mainstream, because you're still using the mainstream as your primary point of reference...

So if you're totally rejecting the mainstream, (that is, ignoring it completely and going about your business) then you're nude not as an act of subversion, but of personal freedom. Right?

So if it's a push for personal freedom - why be nude at all, if it's gonna land you a weekend in jail?

[Roo]

I can dig it, but killing ALL of my inhibitions seems kind of outlandish. How does the saying go? Doing everything exactly opposite of the mainstream is just like being a part of the mainstream, because you're still using the mainstream as your primary point of reference...

So if you're totally rejecting the mainstream, (that is, ignoring it completely and going about your business) then you're nude not as an act of subversion, but of personal freedom. Right?

So if it's a push for personal freedom - why be nude at all, if it's gonna land you a weekend in jail?

It seems to me that it's virtually impossible to do anything that can't or won't be compared with what the mainstream is doing.

Therefore, if you like being nude, be nude. Some will see it as subversion, and others will see it as an expression of personal freedom. Some will take pictures.

[AFK]

Yet others will be looking for icepicks, steel wool, or some other abrasive/pointy object. 

[Roo]

You're a cruel man, RWHN.

[AFK]

Stick around, it gets worse.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We have a sacred obligation as Discordians: WE MUST GIVE PEOPLE A WAY TO GO CRAZY THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE GUNS.  People are only able to freak out in ways that are provided to them, because minds are like trains that need tracks.  This society is working so hard to plug up holes that when people flip out they can only imagine to do it by acting like the craziest parts of the establishment: They declare war.  We must let it be known that there are more civil ways of utterly rejecting your society.

GO TO SCHOOL NAKED!  Yes, that's right, they will arrest you and try to make a big heavy downer scene about it.  Oh what a downer, they'll say, you mildly resisted our established order.  We are totally, they will say, going to depress you into thinking that that won't make any difference.  DON'T BE STUPID; OF COURSE IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!  TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES IN THE JAIL CELL!  WHEN THEY FINALLY LET YOU OUT, GO BACK TO THE SCHOOL NAKED!  You won't throw them a fucking INCH from their oppression by shooting people; THEY HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT.  They didn't think of someone coming to school naked; they have no plan for that whatsoever.

GO TO SCHOOL, COMPLY WITH YOUR BODY LIKE ALWAYS, SIT DOWN IN CLASS, BUT WHEN ASKED ANY QUESTION EITHER VERBALLY OR IN WRITING, RELIGIOUSLY ANSWER: "I cannot think about that question because if I do so I will lose my internal autonomy."  Do you realize how much more that will flip them out than shooting people?  If you shoot people they will be defensive, they will button their assholes up even more.  If you start saying to them: "I'm sorry, but I can't think about the question you just asked me, because to do so would threaten my own internal autonomy," it will fucking get under their skin.  They will STOP demanding that you attend their brainwashing sessions-- they will demand that you GET AWAY FROM THEM BEFORE THEY START TO BELIEVE YOU.

If you are so FUCKING autonomous, so FUCKING willing to reject your society, that you can summon up the will to shoot yourself as well as others, YOU ARE VERY VALUABLE TO THE DISCORDIAN CAUSE.  Kill yourself the right away: KILL ALL OF YOUR INHIBITIONS!  KILL ALL OF YOUR SUBMISSION!  If you really have nothing to lose, then ACT AS IF THEIR WORLD HAD VANISHED, act as if you are truly free.  If you are not able to do that, if you find it easier to kill your body than to kill your submission, then I must ask you: Are you rebelling?  Are you a soldier in the resistance?  Or are you fighting for them?  Whose reality are you sustaining?  That's fucking right.

In Portland it is not illegal to walk around nude in public, but they would send you off school grounds if you showed up starkers, and that seems fair and reasonable.

If school bothers you so much, why not just quit? Or get your GED or something.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hi, Mungo Jelly, welcome aboard

We have a sacred obligation as Discordians: WE MUST GIVE PEOPLE A WAY TO GO CRAZY THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE GUNS.  People are only able to freak out in ways that are provided to them, because minds are like trains that need tracks.  This society is working so hard to plug up holes that when people flip out they can only imagine to do it by acting like the craziest parts of the establishment: They declare war.  We must let it be known that there are more civil ways of utterly rejecting your society.

I'm not sure that public nudity and subsequent arrest is an adequate subversive alternative to the old rifle and clocktower gimmick, but it's a good start.

KILL ALL OF YOUR INHIBITIONS!  KILL ALL OF YOUR SUBMISSION!

I can dig it, but killing ALL of my inhibitions seems kind of outlandish. How does the saying go? Doing everything exactly opposite of the mainstream is just like being a part of the mainstream, because you're still using the mainstream as your primary point of reference...

So if you're totally rejecting the mainstream, (that is, ignoring it completely and going about your business) then you're nude not as an act of subversion, but of personal freedom. Right?

So if it's a push for personal freedom - why be nude at all, if it's gonna land you a weekend in jail?

To quote Sean Nelson, "When you base your whole identity on reaction against somebody, it's the same as being in love".

[Cainad (dec.)]

To quote Sean Nelson, "When you base your whole identity on reaction against somebody, it's the same as being in love".

HAHAHA, that's brilliant!

"Do everything you can to oppose the terrorists!"

[Faust]

if ever feel the clocktower rifle urge coming on i will simply dig up john lennons corpse, shoot it from a clock tower . take a photograph in black and white and call it postmodern social commentary and make millions. when i am rich i can afford to make everything i dont like go away.