I don't believe the blame can be put on society either. I grew up watching Nightmare on Elm St. and all the other popular horror movies. Never made me a slasher. The biggest problem with society and parenting is they don't hold these kids accountable and there's always an excuse. This younger generation has been so desensitized. Everybody wakes up looking for a reason to protest and be pissed off. I don't get it. A murderous animal is turned into a political issue. Total bulls***!
Where exactly does the blame lay then? I think you're saying no one but the individual can be blamed, am I right? How does a person become a "murderous animal"? Could it perhaps be family influence and greater societal influences like the movies or the internet? Are some people just fundamentally flawed? I think that might be the case for a very, very small minority. The rest are fucked up by other people, all the nasty shit that they see, hear and have done to them in their lives.
You say Nightmare on Elm St. didn't turn you into Freddy but what was the rest of your life like? Something or someone prepared you to deal with Elm St., to digest it and understand it as a work of fiction. Flash forward 30 years or so.....The youth are positively saturated with violent, sexual, materialistic imagery, it is nearly impossible to escape or avoid. This isn't rent a cassette tape movie time, this is real life stuff. A nearly endless series of real world atrocities, well covered by the media, any depraved act you can imagine recorded on cheap cameras the world over and spread on the internet. Of course they're fucking desensitized! Fact is fiction and fiction is fact. Who's to blame for that?
The idea that the classic American nuclear family, if families like America were still great or could be great again, could prevent these kinds of incidents is a stretch. I believe it's wishful thinking and lusting after an ideal that probably would be ill suited to handle these wild times. I don't remember the Leave it to Beaver episode where they cover torture porn or the Lassie episode where the dog fetches the sheriff to stop the school shooting. Even good well meaning people sometimes fail to raise goods kids, it is impossible to control and manage everything they will exposed to and influenced by.
Now throw in the fact that these confused kids can go out and by the weaponry they see their favorite movie star, or youtube star, using to kick ass and right wrongs. At a time in their lives where they don't know their own ass from a hole in the ground. Even you older guys have lost your grip, people your age are not any better equipped to handle the carnival of carnage we've all been exposed to in the last couple of decades. The mid life crisis has been described as a momentary attempt to recapture the impetuousness of early adulthood, thus predisposing these old boys to behave like young boys and fall into the very same trap. Only they have more money for more guns and ammo so they can kill even more people.
