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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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focusing on the victims and their stories.

Doesn't that inevitably engender talking about the carnage, the shooters, and their motive?

It feels like wishful thinking to believe you can control a story so meticulously that the most titillating, sensational and puzzling parts of a story - i.e. the components most people want to know more about - could be left out in favour of someone talking about how hard it is to lose their son or friend in such a violent manner (the one component of the entire story that we can already imagine and know intuitively without needing it reported to us)?

Also, I feel like school shootings (in the media sense of the term, not the usual gang related shootouts that make up the vast majority of cases) have been somewhat decreasing compared to the past decade - maybe we have become a bit numb to it through over-saturation and that's dissuaded potential school shooters? 30 years ago shooting up a school could make your name and face legendary, you could become a kind of patron saint for outcasts and losers overnight. Today it's a crowded space, much more difficult to become part of the school shooter Pantheon like those Columbine kids.