I’ve kept quiet on the recent rampage killing since I wasn’t really sure what to say but since this is something that happened in my hometown where I’ve lived my whole life I feel the need to say something.
For those who don’t know, a man drove a vehicle into a crowd, killing 10 people and injuring 14. He was part of the incel community and active in online hate groups.
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This happened in Toronto, my home for my whole life and for the forseeable future, a city that I believe to be one of the greatest in the world. Moreover, it happened due to incel ideology, something that many of us (myself included) have used as a joke and a punchline.
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That’s because, to any sane and moral person, it IS a joke. The idea that women are not a group of people, but a vast conspiracy of gatekeepers to physical and emotional intimacy that choose to deny it to you, specifically, because they hate you. It’s practically an SNL sketch.
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But, there are men who believe it wholeheartedly, to the point that something like this could happen in a city considered one of the safest in the world. We could do more handwringing about mental illness, but that’s not really what this is about.
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This about the idea that people are somehow entitled to physical and emotional intimacy, and if they don’t get it, it’s a failure not on their part, but that of society as a whole.
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I’ll be honest and say that this is an attitude I have observed on Twitter as well. It’s something that’s led to a fair bit of drama and stupidity. Heck, it’s something I’ve done too. When faced with the mere prospect of rejection, we have a tendency to short circuit completely.
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We could chalk that up to emotional fragility, and the fact that, were it not for a lack of meaningful connections in real life, most people would not feel the need to seek them out on the internet to the extent that we have.
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We could say that, since internet friendships are ultimately a substitute for real life friendships, that leads to a starvation for affection that has negative repurcussions on our mental and emotional stability. And, well, all of that would be true, and it’s a big factor.
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But this is not an issue that begins and ends with lonely nerds on the internet. Not here or in the incel community that the killer in my home was a part of. Everything is connected, and everything happens for a reason.
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Society, primarily through the media we consume, tells us how emotional connections are important and things everyone must have, but rarely does it go into HOW to make and maintain them.
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This is especially true for anime. Why do these people like each other? Because one of them said something nice with dramatic lighting, or because of some wacky romcom scenario. It doesn’t matter, just look at how much they love each other. Look at how sweet and perfect it is.
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Only, that doesn’t happen. Outside of family, unconditional love doesn’t really exist, and even then it’s not necessarily a given. Love isn’t something that’s just handed to you because of how great you are, nor does it stay no matter what you do because “the power of friendship”
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But because we’re taught that personal relationships are these pure and untouchable things, that makes it harder to deal with when they don’t just naturally happen, or if they even show the slightest crack.
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The fact is, it’s possible for someone who says they’ll always be with you to eventually hate your guts. It’s possible to have the best intentions, but to go through life hated and alone. That’s not good, or bad, it’s just life, and billions of people live with that every day.
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Anime, games, media - those are nice things to have, and it’s possible to learn valuable things from them too. But if you base your happiness, your identity, your relationships, how you view the world on them, you’re just living a lie. Sooner or later, that’ll catch up to you.
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This ended up being kind of a tangent, but the point is that something that is prevalent in all of society, but especially here, led to someone doing a horrible thing in my home. Please, do not make that same mistake.
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As a socialist, I feel weird giving libertarian-esque lines like “Life sucks and is unfair. You want this important thing? You’ll have to EARN it.” But, well, there are some things we can change and some things we can’t. We can change systems, but we can’t change human nature.
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I might end up writing something more detailed about this in the future, but for now, please go outside. Go to the park. Eat something different.
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Anyway, that’s all for the Sincere Adam Power Hour. Tune in next time when a beloved Twitter user flips their car four times because they were jamming out to the Devilman OST
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End of conversation
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