Stop making them famous.
How?
Stop disclosing their name—Call them busted person X
Stop broadcasting their face—How does it help anyone knowing what they looked like?
Stop telling their stories—Killing innocent people shouldn’t be a six-part mini-series like celebrating the work of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Stop spreading their fear—Terrorists’ terror spreads because we spread it.
Stop glorifying their violence—Our “entertainment” complex is the greatest promoter of violence (TV, movies, games, sports) on the planet because we demand it.
Stop tuning in—There’s a difference between being “informed” about another lunatic vs. rolling around like a pig in their murder like you’re watching CSI.
Fame-Obsessed World
We live in a fame-obsessed world and sick minds will do just about anything to break the Internet.
We can pretend there’s information value in turning nutcases into celebrities, or that it’s about honoring their “victims” (which we best do by stopping glorifying their killer), but the fact that we keep promoting active shooters only signals we want more of it.
Our media machine that spends billions of dollars promoting extreme violence like Deadpool and The Walking Dead most certainly gets this…
But if as a society we can get beyond our “fear” to rubberneck every massacre, we will most certainly reduce the amount of god awful programming, and likely reduce the number of future celebrity murderers.
Rather than tuning into the grotesque details on the latest nutjob, take a few moments to donate some money to support a worthy cause—The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence