Sometimes one data point is extremely important, and committing a high-profile murder of a social media princeling who has the ear of the President when you have a pretty normal and secure life with your whole future ahead of you is a pretty profound data point.
Again, you’re right, but that’s not what the article shows. The only evidence to support the idea that he’s a nihilistic kind of person is that one action. He could’ve snapped the week before and planned this stuff out after a TBI for all we know.
A TBI is basically license to throw everything you know about someone out of the window in the context of offering hypotheticals. There is very little else that would produce such a radical shift. In the absence of actually knowing that he got such a serious injury, which at least his partner or family would have known about, it’s unreasonable to take such a thing seriously. I think probably the only explanation involving a drastic personality shift that could be plausible is something along the lines of how taking LSD can trigger psychosis in people already susceptible to it (not that specific event, just as a general idea).
Anyway, I agree that you’re right that the basis for saying he was nihilistic leans mainly on information outside of the article, but it’s worth mentioning that the lack of a personal or political motivation for doing the aforementioned high-profile murder and then doing the meme stuff on top of it does still suggest nihilism.
Sometimes one data point is extremely important, and committing a high-profile murder of a social media princeling who has the ear of the President when you have a pretty normal and secure life with your whole future ahead of you is a pretty profound data point.
Again, you’re right, but that’s not what the article shows. The only evidence to support the idea that he’s a nihilistic kind of person is that one action. He could’ve snapped the week before and planned this stuff out after a TBI for all we know.
I’m a different commenter, just so you know.
A TBI is basically license to throw everything you know about someone out of the window in the context of offering hypotheticals. There is very little else that would produce such a radical shift. In the absence of actually knowing that he got such a serious injury, which at least his partner or family would have known about, it’s unreasonable to take such a thing seriously. I think probably the only explanation involving a drastic personality shift that could be plausible is something along the lines of how taking LSD can trigger psychosis in people already susceptible to it (not that specific event, just as a general idea).
Anyway, I agree that you’re right that the basis for saying he was nihilistic leans mainly on information outside of the article, but it’s worth mentioning that the lack of a personal or political motivation for doing the aforementioned high-profile murder and then doing the meme stuff on top of it does still suggest nihilism.