Copycat Crimes: Media Megatrends

[Abishai100]

The modern age is marked by media labyrinths (i.e., Facebook, eTrade, Bloomberg TV, etc.) and consumerism (i.e., eBay).

People who have network access and network tool-use sophistication are considered functional in society, which is why Internet hackers are the new terrorists.

The world of art provides us images of fictional 'super-villains' who represent modern age fears about functional failures. These villains literally 'hobble' our ability to get on in the modern world and are therefore akin to 'ghosts' in the proverbial philosophical machine.

Two such super-villain avatars are Electro (Marvel Comics), the mutant who can manipulate electrical grids at will, and Leatherface, the fictional chainsaw-wielding cannibal from the iconic Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror film franchise.

Electro impairs network functionality (i.e., power grids and electricity routes), and Leatherface stalks random pedestrians who cross his path in America.

Both of these ghouls impact our access to modern world traffic and serve as art symbols of modern age hysteria.

Remember those news stories of people committing copycat crimes modelled after Oliver Stone's controversial violence-glorification film "Natural Born Killers" [1994]? Well, what if this Halloween, two fanatical American men decide to copycat the criminal mania of Electro and Leatherface by short-circuiting a number of ATMs in Washington (by splashing water on them) and stalking trick-or-treaters in San Diego with a chainsaw?

This sort of copycat crime eeriness is the hallmark of modern insanity.

How safe are we every Halloween, with all these graphically violent Hollywood (USA) films being released?




Electro (Marvel Comics Wiki)

Leatherface (Horror Film Wiki)

 

[Skylar]

I really wouldn't consider Etrade to be 'media'.

 

[Abishai100]

Asylum for Bats


Yes, eTrade is not technically 'media' as we use the term formally, but the madness of all the communications signals out there in the world today literally creates an image of unfiltered noise.

How much would research into the pedestrian hysteria surrounding media obsession, reflective in anti-sociological films such as Woody Allen's fame-paranoia film "Celebrity" [1998], enhance our understanding of criminal insanity?

The Insanity Defense suggests that the accused party was lacking in mental capacity and/or sufficient strategy-formation ability to be ruled as being in control of their wits and hence may simply be themselves victims of something like temporary insanity.

When we watch films such as "Celebrity" [1998] or "Fight Club" [1999], do we feel we are confident about inspiration indices (i.e., mercantilism/profiteerism vs. democracy/exorcism)?

Why are arrested copycat criminals found making public cynicism statements such as, "We feed the media, and the media feeds us!"


Insanity Defense