r/progun • u/OrcusGroup • 8d ago
Idiot A cat video addiction makes someone more likely to commit a mass shooting? These people have lost their minds
https://www.courthousenews.com/meta-back-in-court-over-white-supremacist-mass-shooting-in-buffaloFrom a real court transcript from a few weeks ago in the New York Court of Appeals, Patterson v. Meta Platforms. Families of victims of the 2022 Buffalo supermarket mass shooting sued multiple social media platforms, insisting that their addictive platform design and algorithms played a role in radicalizing the shooter.
The plaintiff’s attorney is attempting to make the case that the broad addiction to social media itself is what radicalized the shooter (not the specific type of content he was consuming on the platform).
When the judge asked her if addiction to cat videos would make someone more likely to commit a mass shooting, the plaintiff’s attorney stated “yes”.
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u/RationalTidbits 8d ago edited 8d ago
Best of luck showing how social media “made” one guy murder, but not the hundreds of millions of everyone else.
Or how bullying, isolation, mental illness, poverty, and dozens of other factors weren’t in play.
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u/NoTinnitusHear 8d ago
Yup. I went to school with a mass shooter. Bullying, social ostracization, a single mother that was a drug addict, being a white supremacist (warning signs were there, literally had videos of Hitler embedded on his MySpace), and an obsession with Columbine were certainly all factors.
The bullying was the easiest factor for me to observe. People say kids need thicker skin. But that’s developed over time. When you’re a 2nd grader and kids are telling you your Dad bounced because you’re such a weird piece of shit, turns out that has some influence on the way you develop into a young adult. Kids are absolute nasty evil little fucks to each other.
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u/RationalTidbits 8d ago
Imagine anyone picking up a criminology or sociology study and expecting that the entire explanation for murder or any human behavior is a single page that says “guns” or “cat videos”…
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u/OrcusGroup 8d ago edited 8d ago
https://reddit.com/link/pdt1b5j/video/kn0h6ds0fgth1/player
Transcript. I’d rather have used this but this sub prefers links. Sorry the part I’m referencing was buried in paragraph 8 haha.
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u/OrcusGroup 8d ago
https://reddit.com/link/pdt1exo/video/w8o2u024fgth1/player
And something to brighten everyone’s morning
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u/Toybasher 8d ago
“Without the changes in his brain and his psychology caused by social media addiction, the shooting may not have happened,” Jennifer Bennett, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the court’s seven judges.
I think that's a hard argument to actually prove in court.
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u/uuid-already-exists 8d ago
Sadly this is just lawyers and families trying to make a buck off of a tragedy.
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u/jtf71 7d ago
It’s the lawyers convincing the families that they MIGHT win some money and MIGHT be able to “change” social media or the gun industry or whatever.
The lawyers know it’s not going to win.
The lawyers should be disbarred for abusing the system and have to pay the defendants costs out of their own pockets.
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u/goat-head-man 8d ago
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u/OrcusGroup 8d ago
10/10 worth the open for anyone reading 😆
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u/goat-head-man 8d ago
My SIL, a retiree with cats who CCs a S&W Featherweight thought it was hilarious.
The plaintiff's attorney thinks this is true, probably.
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u/HybridP365 8d ago
Correlation, not causation.
People who are likely to commit mass shootings are generally loners with mental health issues. Those types of people also are more likely to be terminally online than others. The shooting and the addiction stem from the same behavioral traits. Not the other way around.
These people are stupid, disingenuous, and just trying to get a pay day. The supermarket doesn't have enough money to be worth sueing. But the social media companies definitely do.