People who commit crimes are responsible for crimes.
The creator of slenderman and the people who tell slenderman stories aren’t responsible for attacking that girl.
The people who attacked that girl are responsible.
They are not absolved of the guilt for their actions because they read some fiction.
Fiction is not responsible for assault, people who assault people are.
I’m almost 99% sure one of the girls was showing early signs of schizophrenia (you can watch the interrogation on YouTube, the girl was acting erratic and wasn’t fully in her senses; plus I believe her father had schizophrenia as well, which only amps up the possibility of the girl suffering from it too).
And the other kid (again, watch the interrogation) was relatively calm and collected while explaining what they’d done to Payton, and placed most of the guilt on her friend; when there are multiple accounts of her being actually violent, manipulative and bullying other classmates herself before. Her home life was pretty rough, too; go figure.
Neither of those kids were mentally prepared to make a rational distinction between fiction and reality.
In the end, the Slenderman case doesn’t prove that problematic fiction turns people into criminals: It proves that we need to care for what our kids consume more, and that fiction is only dangerous when mixed with someone who doesn’t know how to differentiate it from real life.
So your go-to defense of fiction is to armchair diagnose people with schizophrenia and imply we can proclaim someone unfit to make their own judgement on the basis of their brain functions.
can’t believe i have to keep saying this, but no, the attackers didn’t do what they did due to mental illness, that’s just what their lawyer said to get them out of being tried as adults / serving actual jailtime. they were of a sound mind when they did the attempted murder.
Reblogging this to agree that you should not armchair diagnose people on our posts please.
Do not contribute to the stigmatization of mental illness.
I never know how to say this without sounding condescending but when it comes to social media you can simply choose not to be around people who make you unhappy.
Hell even if you just suddenly don’t like them for no reason other than they’re a little annoying now. You’re allowed to and should unfollow.
Yes! This counts for us too! It’s okay to unfollow us we won’t be offended!
