Aspies For Freedom

What was his motive?

His play sucks.

Yes.

i've always been annoyed by this-- people are "loners" for all kinds of reasons, and many of the less social people I've known have actually beeen more mentally and emotionally healthy than the gregarious extraverts. less dependent on other people for emotional stimulus and affirmation.

contrary to the stereotype, there are about the same number of extraverted, charismatic murderers as quiet, standoffish ones. think Charles Manson, f'r instance.

I don't think any of us really believe he is an Aspie ich' ;p - I think more that we're taking bets to see if some journalist tries pin the blame of Aspergers post-mortem, given the number of high profile incidents in the last year or two in America involving Aspies.

It;d be an intresting cross examination of public perception of Aspergers if people associate "murderous loners" and "aspies" incorrectly.

My take:
1. Loners don't have to be Aspies.
2. Aspies can be killers, but they're not any more likely to be.
3. Asperger's doesn't cause people to kill anybody.
4. It's easy for the press to say a killer was abnormal--it makes everybody else feel better about the craziness of the world, because then they can just say it was the craziness of one brain.

Many people write horror stories or murder stories and even make a living at it.  They are not killer.  It could even be that the assignment was to write a play about rage and revenge as a theme.  

I made some very violent art in college.   People found it disturbing and even fascinating.  The instructor asked me if I was ok.  I actually felt some catharsis when I finished the art work.  

I read that this student had been in a mental institution for a time.  It seems he committed himself but maybe it was for suicide.   Any person knows never to tell someone else that you are going to kill yourself because you will end up in a hospital.  He must have learned that before he planned to go out and kill people and himself.  

Also some women complained about him.  I do not understand about what.

Now people are just looking for someone to blame for the shootings.  They want to blame the college for not warning the students or anyone since the shooter is dead.   I do not understand why people are so "helpful" in trying to prevent miserable people from committing suicide.  Why can't an easy and quick painless method of suicide be made available to people who want it?  He could have just killed himself without killing everyone else too.

Spending time by yourself makes people think you're up to something.
It's just the way it is.

On the ITV lunch time news today they mentioned in passing, "he didn't make much eye contact with other students", and on his video he had bullets lined up in rows.

I'm afraid Apsergers may get a mention soon.

I highly doubt he was an aspie though, he was clearly severly mentally ill, bitter and disturbed.

Yeah, I've written some pretty violent stuff myself. It's more that I want to put my characters in extreme situations than I want there to be violence, though... I've also been known to do stuff like have a character's family die, or give him some form of insanity... I guess you could say a theme in my writing is often, "what happens when a human being loses everything?" Sometimes the characters turn into villains, sometimes into heroes... I guess I find that pretty fascinating. But it doesn't make me a violent person.

Or he could've been a "severly mentally ill, bitter and disturbed" Aspie... They aren't mutually exclusive, y'know.

"B" probably describes me best but I take it that "C" is how Mr Cho interpreted the world.
It's doubtful anybody could have talked him out of these paranoid and delusional thoughts, but appropriate medication could have headed off the disaster.

Maybe, but it oviously wasn't appropriate. Now that I think of it, I agree with those who say that the police should have had the powers to get involved when he first began his "stalking" behaviour. That wasn't an angle I'd thought so much about previously.

Honestly, I feel so alone now. Why? He said he was avenging the weak. He thought the perfect revenge would be to kill the affluent, the likable, and women. So basically, his idea of avenging my people was to kill my REAL people and my friends.

The world doesn't think I exist, and this was the cruelest reminder.

Loner, yes. Aspie, no.

Aspies have trouble reading people.

Cho appeared to have very little trouble reading people. In fact, he read people all too well, and knew exactly how to scare the living daylights of them. That's not Asperger's. That's serious, deranged, bad-seed sociopathy.

Before I split up with my (now ex) fiancee a couple years ago, we owned a rather really difficult to manage pit-bull/boxer mix named (presciently) Meshugga. When we split, she got him and I got the affectionate sweet dog. I haven't thought of him in a while, but I did when I learned about Cho.
At what point do questions of mental illness, nature vs. nurture, good vs. evil simply become irrelevant? Some dogs and humans are simply dangerous. What on earth do we do with people like this? There aren't the kind of resources for dealing with the criminally insane that there used to be. Putting them in prisons makes me think of "Minority Report" and putting them in psych wards is totally unfair to the other patients.
It's so frustrating!

And as for females being "loners", that was truly anathema and such girls were considered "weird", "ugly", "doomed to spinsterhood". Even now, there is this societal expectation for females to be sociable at all times.

I'm just intermittently sociable, and that is with people I know, like, and trust.