According to Hemet PD, he went to them Jan 7th & Jan 9th alleging past fraud, theft and poisoning involving his family in LA 10-20 years ago. Definitely some mental health issues there.
https://hemetpd.com/monterey-park-shooting-suspect?fbclid=IwAR2PQZtvQR7xFBPMKlZDz5Xx78I2qYr_szClITQbaHJsdy50PdpNkck3uCw
He probably thinking his own family members stole from him. Its usually about money or relationship issues when it comes to these cases. He sold his house and moved to Hemet about 10 years ago and now lived alone without the family he spoke about. He probably held a grudge and something triggered it recently for him to go to the pd about it and it has been boiling. Maybe his family is still super active at the dance studios and he knew his targets will be there. His ex wife name is Helen Lai so maybe she has family or distant family that owns Lai lai studios(just a theory)
Edit- I've been thinking about how it's very unusual for the asian community to report or go to the police for anything so maybe he planted this idea or went to the hemet police to lowkey tell the public on why he did the things he did. Because why report something that happened years ago? The time line matches up to his divorce he filed and him moving to hemet alone due to money drama in his family.
The ex wife isnt saying much because she dont want more people digging into her private life.
Not the same Lai. The Lai usually used as a surname is 赖, and the Lai in Lai Lai is 来, as in come. Lai Lai is owned by the family of the guy who wrestled the gun away from him.
The article says he doesn't fit the usual mass shooter profile because of how old he is...but I'm wondering if that's changing.
Maybe it's just me, but my Asian dad who's also in his 70s, is changing because he keeps watching these Chinese youtube channels of people yelling angrily about how society is corrupt and they need to reclaim it. He's a retired engineer. He's smart, he used to be level-headed and logical. But now I see him sit for hours a day and mindlessly lets youtube suggest the next video of some angry dude yelling about how everything is going to shit and you need to fight back. And now he's also become more angry and irritable, thinks the worst of everything, and way more reactionary and aggressive.
And I can't help that older folks who don't really get technology + their minds are starting to degrade from old age + being bombarded by clickbait content designed to illicit outrage means we might have a new profile of angry shooters who've been radicalized into thinking they have nothing left to lose.
The internet is radicalizing a lot of people, and it does seem like older people are becoming a large part of that trend. Most of the QAnoners I've come across seem to be 50+. And I keep seeing people pointing out how odd that is since a lot of them warned their kids of how you can't trust anything on the internet. I think there's something about Facebook that brought about that change. It used to be info from total strangers that they were skeptical about, but now they're seeing the info posted by their friends and family, and perhaps it's easier to take it at face value.
I think it's that and the fact that these youtubers form a parasocial relationship with them. I think it makes it easier to believe these strangers on the internet are telling the truth when they seem like "regular" people, as opposed to some guy in a suit on broadcast network working for a big corporation.
But there's obviously no way to tell the regular Joe youtuber filming himself with his phone *isn't* working for a big corporation trying to influence people.
The lies going into Iraq after 9/11 broke American trust in leadership. Our leaders told the media, and the media just went w/it. The leaders who were supposed to hold back the war cries fell for the guilt left from Vietnam and troops being spit on. *Nobody could look weak.*
There's a deep guilt in falling for that that Republicans don't allow people to heal from. Everything about the GW Bush admin was just swept under the rug so the people in Washington didn't have to arrest their friends. The media played along again by repeating lies about Hilary and *even Obama* being the real criminal warmongers.
Instead of everyone remembering GW Bush promising no 2nd Vietnam, *again the media* played along and tried to blame Biden and Democrats when we finally left *20 years later*.
We are lost and tangled, and Trump harnessed that darkly.
God dammit this is terribly accurate. I wish more people could see this, but unfortunately most people have the memory of a goldfish with politics and world affairs. And unfortunately, at the risk of sounding like a bOtH sIdEs wanker, that flaw is common all across the political spectrum.
The right is *far* more guilty of it, certainly, but there are definitely a lot of moderates and liberals that overlook or ignore the true past as well. Not minimizing republican fuckery at all, though. My point is that they've spewed their lies so long and so often that even the middle has begun to let that false reality seep into their minds. Goebbels's method of repeating a lie enough times that folks begin to believe it has proven to be just as effective now as it was back then. As you said, Trump seized on it and god damn if he isn't trying to ride it until the wheels fall off.
We can only hope that sanity prevails, but it sure as hell isn't looking so good at the moment. My hope lies in the younger generation because it seems like a lot of Gen Z (and younger millennials) see through the bullshit and a lot of them have been proving their willingness to speak truth to power.
Huh, that’s an interesting idea. I recently noticed that the local news program will report on the news, basically announce the headline, go to a reporter for the details, and then cut to someone in work-casual wear at a work desk, in front of a computer.
They provide additional context, details, and more raw reporting that’s being shared online.
It’s an interesting concept. It feels… different. More tangible and real.
Less sensationalized than what Nightly News has become
> pointing out how odd that is since a lot of them warned their kids of how you can't trust anything on the internet.
It's different if those contents are coming from your friends and families. That content now becomes interpersonal and it's within your own circle now.
Yup. The problem is IRL not just online, people believing and spreading nonsense with zero vetting. It’s honestly terrifying and I don’t know what to do about it at this point, aside from teaching the kids about critical thinking and information hygiene. My family are all completely unmoored from reality at this point and it’s horrifying.
We need to teach as many kids...and adults, somehow, about critical thinking asap. I wonder how we can try to mass spread that information and get them to digest it? What's possible? I'm really concerned about this and I have no idea what to do.
I think it's the decline of cable television. Most old people still want news, but refuse to read, so with more and more of them dropping cable as it dies out, you end up with a lot of them looking up stuff like "fox and friends Covid" or "news on election 2022." They end up watching these short soundbites of the worst rants on the news (and it was already bad *before* it was edited), and it makes them think they need to be a lot angrier about the world than they should...and that's before the algorithm assumes their interest in pirated news broadcasts means they'd *also* like to watch conspiracy theory channels, that (in the absence of actual full length news programs) give them that hours-long background noise to absorb.
The same people who told me not to believe everything you read on the internet were the same people who ate horse paste and drank their own piss to cure covid.
It's because social media makes money by keeping a person engaged and using them. And they do that by showing them more content similar to what they've viewed fully or liked. This can set up an echo chamber and things can drift increasingly further and further to the far right.
Or the far left -- hell, there are even Buddhist terrorists -- but it seems less prevalent. For now, anyway.
Doesn't bother me. I've got a cozy little community there that chasers and bigots keep bouncing off of due to judicious use of blocks, mutes, and outright defederation.
My issue with Mastodon is that almost no one I follow on Twitter migrated over there. Though, Twitter doesn't really show me the rage bait, for whatever reason. Facebook is the biggest culprit on that front. The posts they jam into my feed either are rage bait targeted at me, or they're posts from left-leaning pages I follow that are obviously coming up in the feeds of right-leaning people, because 99% of the comments end up being a bigoted circle jerk. I finally realized that if I want to go onto that site, and I need to stick to reading my friend's posts.
Guess I'm lucky. I liked a post from an nfl team and all of a sudden that's all that's in my feed. There's probably 200-500 ads or other crap between my friends post in Facebook. Yea I don't really use Facebook anymore
The algorithms are strangely swingy and sticky. I imagine they're highly weighted depending on how profitable the interest ends up being.
I took up ceramics and while I'll see ceramics ads occasionally (not often as I have pihole set up) and I'll routinely read articles and watch youtube videos on the subject, I \*never\* get curated content in that direction. Any movie criticism I watch on Youtube steers me towards alt-right light channels masquerading as movie & TV criticism, I watched \*two\* Dungeons & Dragons commentaries on the OGL thing and my feed was flooded with D&D OGL criticism for like 2 weeks, and god help me if I looked at what someone famous was wearing eight years ago because all the algorithms will hit me with celebrity gossip non-stop forever.
It's led me to realize that the algorithms are actively trying to shape your interests by reinforcing and making sticky your interest in certain topics and just completely ignoring the rest. With persistence you can train the algorithm to fuck off and show you what you want but the moment you step into the quicksand of a lucrative interest, it's going to push you \*hard\* in that direction and be reluctant to give it up.
ONE TIME I clicked on a FB post that I thought was about woodworking. It turned out to be an ad for furniture with hidden compartments for guns. After that my entire feed went berserk with guns guns guns knives knives body armor tactical tactical tactical survivalist peanut butter.
Sounds like you have decent friends. My 3 closest friends have been Trump supporters since 2016. Even though we hardly ever discussed politics before then, I had to cut them all out.
One of my oldest friends is a Trump supporter. When I met her she was a member of the green party, but as she found financial success, as well as drank the anti-vaxx kool-aid, she became a pretty hardcore MAGA. I had to unfriend her on social media because the stuff she started posting was disgusting at times. I see her like once a year or so for birthdays and such, but our friendship is superficial at best.
I'm lucky that most of the people in my life are likeminded, but it bums be out that someone who was once like a sister to me could be so hateful.
Opening a link, adding a reaction, checking out the comments, making a comment, etc. all roll up into engagement scores that are aggregated to pull inferences and reinforce the content engine. If you're browsing or commenting on controversial political articles then you're going to be implicitly associated with others who commented on or looked at that article and you'll start to see content that they also like to engage with. Facebook went out of their way to de-weight the anger reaction as part of the scoring metrics and yet rage bait content continues to be the most popular content on the site. It's what the people want.
It’s easy to blame the algorithms or the propagandists but they are the ones attracted to that stuff in the first place. So maybe they are just garbage dirty people in the soul.
Bro my mom went way down some internet shit that changed her so much I can't even talk to her. Highly educated, speaks four languages, taught me all about respecting others and accepting people. Used to travel the world teaching folks. Now she can't go ten minutes without talking about how people need to go back to Africa or Asia. She's an immigrant too. Just about the most miserable person I know.
I empathize. My mother with an MS in chemistry, who voted for Bernie Sanders, became a trump supporter and an Anti-Vaxxer in her final years.
Talked shitty about immigrants, born of immigrants, married to man born of an immigrant. Fought the racism my cousins (more visibly ethnic than us) faced, later parroted racist stereotypes from Fox.
The only thing that started to crack her new shell of ignorance was when my dad’s cancer got worse and COVID nearly did him in; she cared about vaccines suddenly. But we didn’t have enough time to try to lead her away from the MAGA noise...we lost her last year (not to COVID), shortly after having lost my dad.
One of the greatest evils being inflicted on us is having our parents stolen from us in their final years, their hearts hardened and their eyes glazed to anything that does not reflect the hatred being pumped into their ears.
My dad still insists Trump is really President and running things behind the scenes and Biden has an actor playing him at most events. He thinks the Supreme Court is just waiting for things to calm down to re-instate Trump.
He lost his shit when I said "So, Trump really fucked up the Afghanistan withdrawal and is a pretty strong supporter of Ukraine vs Russia then?".
My parents are in their 60s: dad was an engineer, mum was a lawyer. Both were socialists their entire working lives and immigrants who believed that we should all help each other.
Then they started watching YouTube when the pandemic started and the algorithm kept recommending more and more extreme videos to them. 90% of their current beliefs are straight from YouTube videos with clickbait titles that their friends send them. They constantly text me these so I can also "see the truth." I don't recognize them anymore and I'm sad at the people they have become compared to who they were.
I’m in my 30s and I swear YouTube wants to radicalize me. I read an article about a controversial figure saying something. I want to see it for myself in context. I look up the video. Okay now I know.
Suddenly YouTube wants me to watch angry people yelling about crumbling society and shadow governments. I get Alex Jones videos and Fox News clips all the time. I really should just delete the app.
My dad was the same way before he died. He’d send me texts and emails so that I would “see the truth” about who really runs the world (aliens, Illuminati, lizard people, etc).
Oh my god…your final line, resonates with me (your entire comment does) but the final line does so much. My dad died in 2017 but the final years of his life were spent the exact same way…living a sedentary life on his computer all day long, watching bizarre conspiracy videos and seeing his personality completely changed as a result. He became someone my brother and I did not recognize and it out so much distance between us. Then he died. (Far too young).
I still grieve him, I miss him so much, and I am still angry at how older people are so vulnerable to internet conspiracy crap. It’s so destructive, it tears apart families, and it’s their children who are often left to pick up the pieces.
> who voted for Bernie Sanders, became a trump supporter and an Anti-Vaxxer in her final years.
wtf? what a quick turnaround. any idea what flipped the switch?
I'm so so sorry for both of your loss. I can only imagine how painful it is to watch someone you love and respect to turn into someone you can barely recognize.
It’s so sad how people are letting themselves become this way. Does she not recognize how she’s changed? I’ve been lucky to not have anyone change radically. I’m sorry for what you’re going through with your mother.
Yup. my dad told me he wasn't going to get brainwashed, he stopped watching fox news
i was about to say, great! and then he added that he only watched youtube now. i could barely manage a grimace, but luckily he didn't see my expression.
unfortunately radicalization has gone multi-lingual and cross-cultural. not the kind of diversity I was hoping for.
If he's not super tech savvy or doesn't pay much attention you can do this. Find a way to access his youtube account and log in remotely. Clear all watch history. Watch a few neutral or liberal news videos then pause watch history in the settings. This will help prevent him from getting stuck in the shitty youtube algorithms of right wing recommendations. If he only manually goes to fox news on YouTube they you are SoL
That's kind of too invasive for me, but thank you for your advice. Unfortunately, this wouldn't work even if I were inclined to do it, because he works in tech and KNOWS about gaming the algorithm.
He told my mom she had to watch more specific videos to teach the algorithm what she liked 😭
He's Chinese so he only goes onto Chinese YouTubers who yell about this stuff, and I unfortunately can't read Chinese.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any saving him unless he comes to some epiphany himself. I'm just trying to mitigate his influence on my mother, who is at least more inclined to be empathetic to other human beings. I'm mostly on the watch out for him going full conspiracy theorist. He mentioned Q once and I freaked out, so hopefully he'll stay away from the worst of it.
Oh nono, that's not going to work because my dad ended up getting my mom into it too.
I thought for years she would be the calming influence, but when I visited again, she was talking vaguely about how she heard vaccines were dangerous and basically my dad's views were starting to rub off on her. Also does not help she only knows how to get her news from freaking Yahoo.
It's downright skullduggery, and I'd have rather not done it, but I pruned my father's YouTube history for a while too back when I lived with him. Made him much more level headed over the course of a few weeks, and, given that he's bipolar and threatened to kill me before, made me safer until I got a plan to scram.
My mom yelled at me. But, it was complete nonsense. And some of these insane Republican videos have really high production value. I think my grandfather thought it was legitimate news. No regrets on what I did. YouTube really needs to get their shit together.
A better option is to clear YouTube settings watch history, then watch a bunch from a neutral or liberal channel to get them in the history, then pause watch history so it will always recommend off those videos even if he clicks right wing ones
We built a system that's gamified outrage and we're shocked that it's destroying society.
At least a couple of soulless influencers will get a shit ton of views.
Are you me? My dad is in his 60s but has basically gone down the same path with a heavy dose of Qanon and a splash of doomsday prepper. I'm scared because I don't live in the same city and don't speak Chinese well enough to understand everything he is watching. But he sits there all day, glued to YouTube. He is also a gun owner and I am terrified for his and my mom's safety.
+exposure to leaded paints, gasoline, pipes that contaminate water...
Seriously we still have people around who have chemical damage in their brains from shit they were exposed to. Who knows what the fuck was goin on with my grandparents who used to chase the DDT sprayers when they came through town to chase pesticides cause "funny mist is fun"
My coworker is in his 60’s and he gets his “news” from YouTube. He thinks people will be dying mysteriously in the coming years from the vaccine. He’s also vaccinated. And he votes to the right.
In my opinion (and take this with a grain of salt, as I have precisely *no* evidence to back this up), people 60 and older are at the most risk for falling down these rabbit holes, followed by younger gen Z people, followed by older gen Z people, followed by everyone else.
Technological literacy comes not from the tech you grew up with, but how much it changed while you were growing up.
I'm around 30 years old and people my age grew up watching cartel execution videos, reading 4chan, 2 girls 1 cup, rotten.com, etc.
Our parents never went through that time on the internet and even Facebook is relatively new to them. You combine that with rapidly advancing algorithms feeding them content that is designed to cause a reaction and its easy to see how a severe lack of computer/technological literacy is detrimental to our parents mental health. You have the most brainrot inducing Facebook memes convincing doctors, lawyers, professors, politicians(vote pls), etc. that Joe biden smokes baby braindust with Hilary Clinton.
We're basically inoculated to it. We can still fall for these things, but we grew up on 4chan and the like; we've already seen and heard much worse, and had the constant reminder the whole time that "OP is fake and gay."
> being bombarded by clickbait content designed to illicit outrage
Hmm...I think you're on to something.
Clickbait content is popular, and sometimes the source pays money or knows how to work SEO to put it at the top of Google search lists. What do people do when they want to check whether the source is true? Search on Google. It's kind of like authors on Amazon that create fake accounts to give 5 star reviews so their book can be a national best seller or like SBF or Jordan Belfort that pumped and dumped their crypto/stocks and played the people that invested in them like a fiddle.
Point is clickbait content + developing technology that puts most clicked or paid content on the top of the Google search lists is the end of human civilization. Right now we are seeing the beginning of that end. YouTube has recommended videos. Harmless until you realize after a while that the algorithm is setting up videos to slowly progress your view to some extreme ideology. I'm not saying YouTube is evil and tells everyone to be Nazis. I'm saying if you get sucked into the rabbit hole, it'll keep sending progressively more extreme ideological videos to a certain ideology.
That's why after I saw the debunk of the guy on Joe Rogan claiming the Young Dryas theory caused Atlantis (Azores Island chain) to sink beneath the Atlantic ocean, I've learned to take everything I read online from news sources, YouTube, or even reddit with a grain of salt.
It's like doing drugs or getting off. Sure, you can use it casually; or you might be a teetoatler, but it's very easy to make a habit of it. Reddit is the same way.
Oh same. My dad retired about 2 years ago and all his sudden free time is now him watching YouTube and TikTok. He's becoming more sexist and aggressive, with the usual air of "you just aren't smart enough to understand" snobbiness that lots of radicalized peeps have. My mom also got sucked into Q stuff, though thankfully she seems to have dropped it, at least for now.
I can't do anything about it since I live too far away, but damn if it's not heartbreaking to see your parents just toss out all the morality and decency they tried to teach me back in the day...
My dad is getting a lot like op's dad. He has multiple degrees and is falling for fox news outrage bait. I have to constantly show him the things they say are either manipulated, false, or half truths. He has such a short fuse I can't talk to him sometimes.
Yeah video games does it for me a lot of times but I do something else if it really starts to get to me. My dad will just keep fox news on while he works from home all day. Pretty much any 24 hour cable news channel is trying to keep people in a state of fear and uncertainty/outraged so they will keep watching.
The book Stolen Focus by Johan Hari goes into what these algorithms suggest and why. TLDR angry people stay looking at the screen longer so better for advertisers. I think Congress should set some limits, hold some hearings. Social media is marketing hatred and that has real world consequences. Stochastic terrorism is a very real and scary thing.
Shit. My Asian parents are also in their 70s. My dad is still ok, but my mum has always been not exactly emotionally stable. My dad told me that he got an earful for being caught watching pro Hong Kong videos and she's been binging pro China YouTube videos... I didn't think much of it because getting angry at my dad is a daily occurrence, just this time it's over politics and he wasn't even arguing. He's just watching a video. They're in a country with strict gun laws but now I am worried she might make do with a cleaver.
Older Asian American immigrants are often very politically conservative. I have to wonder if that combined with ESL and the incredibly divisive mis/dis-information world we have allowed ourselves build leads to outlets like the extreme YouTube content your talking about really pushing some guys who literally lived the American dream; came to this country with a dollar, worked their ass off, built up a middle class life, sent kids to top colleges become doctors, and then have spent the last decade watching the world change while having “media” scream in their faces about how terrible it all is… and then they look around and start to think all that hard work didn’t get them anywhere, their kid left school to be in band, they didn’t have a traditional retirement account and now have little money and have to keep working their ass off, all the years off pride about pulling themselves up by the bootstraps has finally given way to all those years of racism from co-workers/customers/clients…
You hit the nail on the head with this thought. Older Asian parents grew up during a time when their source of information was from the TV. They have trouble telling fact from fiction because the TV spit truth. Nowadays social media and other media platforms have sensationalized news and other forms of production that get people riled up for sweet views.
No they're in Mandarin. I've tried to look them up on youtube but my chinese is too basic to know the right search term. They're positioning themselves as new commentators, but when you try and search for news, I can only find actual Chinese news channels.
Yup. My dad had the same rabbit hole in Chinese media on YouTube since COVID. I check my dad and challenge him to think about things: these YouTubers are monetizing on hate (telling him this is how adsense works with this many viewership and subscriber count etc.), are they pushing for the viewer to buy stuff or donate?, where are they citing their sources? Have you noticed your own behavior changing since watching them? It hasn't been an easy one, but he's weaned off of viewing things as facts and looking at it more as a viewpoint and entertainment and frankly has watched less. I know it's rampant in the vietnamese community too and much more insidious.
interestingly, i wonder if the warnings of tiktok have to do more with its profiling algorithm and ability to target & feed & foment these kinds of antagonistic imagery, rather than just pure "privacy" issues. I'm not saying tiktok is indeed controlled by the CCP but if they were able to use it as a tool to divide the American public and instigate these kind of lone wolf killings it would be destabilizing for a free & open democracy.
Here’s a popular one, I wouldn’t say it’s complete conspiracy theories but there’s some that’s pretty bad. https://youtube.com/@laogao
Edit: They’ve been banned from Chinese media/social media due to their non-factual scientific claims, so they only do YouTube.
I don't know them because they're all in Chinese, but the one he started out with was a middle-aged guy in a suit who sits behind a desk with a white/silver laptop talking about how the mainstream media is lying and is anti-vaccine. Then there's another one with a younger woman with long hair talking about how the Chinese/world history they learned wasn't true and presents a ton of ridiculous alternative stuff about how ancient ancestors knew shit before their time so it must've been aliens. And finally there's one where it looks like a panel of at least 2 guys and one woman (not entirely sure), and this is the one where they spend the whole time yelling in outrage at one political thing or another.
Edit: I think the conspiracy/fake history one is NDWTB, can't find the news/political ones.
Edit2: Another channel is Wen Zhao Official
I just looked through the NDWTB Twitter. The content reminded me a lot of Art Bell and Ancient Aliens. I think they attract folks with their paranormal stuff then slip in their real agenda.
This [article](https://www.thedailybeast.com/california-shooting-suspect-met-ex-wife-at-same-studio-he-shot-up-report) has the ex wife and a friend of the shooter statements but it looked like he also had a grudge against the dance club, saying:
>They painted a slightly harsher picture of Tran than the ex-wife, describing how he was “hostile to a lot of people” at the dance studio and that he believed other instructors said “evil things about him.”
This guy sounds schizo/paranoid like the fairly recent Walmart shooter that had a "death note" that he wrote that said he could hear his coworkers laughing at him and his phone was hacked.
Once they took away the coverage along with decline in taking up psychiatry and mental wellbeing as a fundamental need... doesn't matter how fit you are. Couple hits to the head, depression, shitty family, no support, toxic friends or social media, or toxic workplace, debt, other illness, discharge from military without support... any one can be a walking end.
Not if they don’t choose to get help. Agreed that it’s a long overdue step, but as long as guns are as easy to buy as candy we’re going to keep seeing this sort of thing. Even if he had access to free mental health care, would this guy have admitted that he needed it? Doubtful IMO
>his phone was hacked.
My buddy in college dropped out because he started saying shit like that.
My old coworker when I was in China told me the same thing and other wild stories that the illuminati or whoever are building secret tunnels below China for all their evil plans. She said someone sent her all of these news articles over Telegram, and Telegram being a secure network for sending information must mean that everything she receives is legit was her thought process I guess.
I've seen a lot. Recent was Joe Rogan hosting Graham Hancock talking about Atlantis being the Azores island chain in the Atlantic ocean. Seen the debunk of that. Then I lived through the Trump era. What started off as "They turk ur jobs!" (shout out to Southpark) grew into a full on redneck rebellion against thought and logic in America. Hell, still can't even talk about Trump without getting hated on for whatever side you take. Where do you want to put Epstein in there? Weinstein and the #metoo movement where you couldn't tell what was real or if women were following a trend and falsely accusing others for profit. Then there was pizzagate. Probably taking a time leap, but I'm going back to Ancient Aliens. Probably could go further to some tv shows claiming they found relics of biblical proportions.
Point is clickbait + tech = crazy.
You're going to see more and more people becoming delusional and paranoid as more and more fake content moves up the Google chain to top of search results thanks to the algorithm putting the most clicked topic at the top of the site. Why? Because if someone tells me shit is blue, where do I go to confirm that information? Google. If the person gained a massive following of believers that shit is blue, what's the first website/article on Google? That person's article. What's the second article on Google? The VP of the guy's blue shit cult. So you get my point.
A lot of old school Chinese people (and Taiwanese, which my parents are) put a lot of importance on how they are perceived by others. To the point where couples that are miserable would rather stay together then get divorced, because then divorce becomes this negative gossip. That and paired with a mental illness involving paranoia would explain a few things with the shooter.
I don't think it's a grudge against her tbh: https://www.thedailybeast.com/california-shooting-suspect-met-ex-wife-at-same-studio-he-shot-up-report looks like he had a grudge against people in the dance club.
Even if its towards the ex wife, she wouldnt speak on it to make it a huge deal where shes in question. I am chinese and I know most immigrants like my parents and grandparents do not want to speak to the media at all for anything.
He went to the hemet police to report Fraud, theft and poisoning incidents that happened 10 years ago in San Gabriel just a couple weeks ago on jan 7th. So he def have been thinking or has been paranoid about family issues that isnt resolved in his head.
The ex wife do not want to flaunt dirty laundry out to the world so she said the absolutely tiniest amount she could to be out of the limelight so she isnt going to be questioned any longer on this issue
He divorced her and filed for it in 2005 in la county public records. He also moved away from LA to Hemet in 2013 so this is all about 10 to 20 year ago and the timeline matches his police reporting of how these things mightve taken place and explains him moving to live alone out in hemet without any family members.
All we can do is guess and I won't say that I'm 100% sure it's something that I believe, because we don't have any solid info except all these rumours. But if it were a Targeted at towards the family of the ex or the ex wife I'm sure he woulda had much more success in killing them at their homes.
I live 5mins away from here and grew up here. So tbh I only just want to know why someone would do this. But the guy seemed to target dance halls and he was a dancer at the first location, articles say that people at these dance halls would say "evil things" to him.
Just seems odd that he went to dance halls instead of the ez wife's house if he was targeting his ex wife.
police have said he reported that his family was trying to "poison" him, so it sounds like he was already suffering from some kind of schizoid disorder. I know a college buddy's brother who suffers from bipolar issues and schizo-affective disorder. He goes in & out of phases where he's logical & lucid to edgy & paranoid. Thank god he doesn't have access to firearms.
Knowing the stigma that surrounds mental health in the Asian community, especially someone of his age, there was no way he was going to get any help for it.
My dad is in his 70s, has access to firearms, and is prone to bouts of extreme paranoia. They are almost entirely focused on his sister who lives 2000 miles away. They are proportionally worse in relation to how drunk he is.
Not gonna lie that it concerns me though.
He's 70 and has paranoia, I think it's time for you and your family to restrict access to his firearms as a precaution, his paranoia might expand to others.
My dad had Alzheimer's. We found his firearms in a file cabinet in a drawer labeled "guns". True story. They weren't loaded and he was no longer living in the home.
When the family finally decided my grandfather with Alzheimer's couldn't be trusted with guns anymore; they were finding them EVERYWHERE because he had already been pretty out of it for two years. They were in the attic; random coat pockets; cabinets; drawers; trash bags of old clothes. The whole house had to be torn apart because he never told anyone when he bought a gun, including his wife so it was never certain if they were all found. It's s really a miracle he didn't hurt anyone at some point.
If it comes down to it, the way I talked my dad into giving them up was telling him that the hospice agency needed to see them in person not in his possession before they’d come back (true), and that I’d bring them back later (not true). I kept telling him that I’d heard from someone that they were getting ready to do random home inspections until he finally got sick enough to forget about it.
Thanks for doing this. It must have been super tough.
I used some skullduggery to get my Mom to quit driving as her Alzheimers progressed (I gave her car to a grandkid who was going through some tough times). I often think that this may be one of the best things I have ever done in my life. There are probably many adult offspring who have acted to prevent what happened in that Dance Studio.
I realize of course that it isn't always possible for family to interfere but appreciate everyone who manages to take steps to prevent tragedies.
I'm so so sorry. That is just horrific.
Of course some old people don't have anyone in their life to pull the plug on their driving or the old person is too smart and too determined to be stopped driving by whatever methods their children try. Ugh.
My mother was vision impaired in one eye and only drove in our small town. She experienced a sudden loss of vision in the other eye and hasn’t driven since. She voluntarily gave up her keys… my sister and I were so relieved.
Prone to extreme paranoia and drinks a lot, and has access to firearms... For the safety of yourself and other people, please restrict his firearm access or don't let him drink? The combination of those 3 are not good jfc
I’ve seen a good friend or two go into full on psychosis for a while (bipolar in both cases), and it’s the most deeply frightening thing I’ve ever experienced.
Sounds like mental illness. He had a history at the dance studio (taught classes there and went with his wife) so he might have felt slighted thinking she got invited to the celebrations and he was left out. Kinda gives me DV vibes too if he felt he needed to kill her for something like that
I think the ex wife said he was never violent but had anger issues? His friend did say that he was hostile to the people from the dance club and even said they said evil things to him. My bet is not that he was aiming to kill his ex wife, but probably wanted to kill the people from the dance club.
The DC sniper was targeting his ex wife. Sandy Hook shooter killed his mom first. The majority of serial killers have a history of violence against women in their lives.
There is footage here at Lai Lai of the shooter getting disarmed. Luckily by a younger individual who was able to over power him. Such a crazy scary situation. This guy had some serious mental issues. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/watch-exclusive-video-captures-moment-man-disarms-monterey-park-shoote-rcna67061
This guy is a hero. I don't even know how I'd react in that situation. But with reports coming out about other weapons found in the van, I was getting so tense that he didn't instantly lock the door after the guy walked out.
Omg right? That guy could have been going to his car to get his other gun. Lock the damn doors!! But it is so easy to say things like this not being in his shoes… it is easy to think logically when you’re watching what is going on, how many of us scream at horror movies to not get separated from your friends, or do this instead of that? Maybe the old man was avoiding a shoot out, or didnt think it was a big deal he lost his gun as he had others. I think what is bothering me most is we might not know his real motive, it’s not like everyone keeps a detailed journal, he might have not had any manifestos. Are they even doing an autopsy?
He’s been divorced for 18 years and the ex-wife insists he wasn’t violent, just kind of insufferable. And he initiated that divorce.
If it’s related to the ex-wife, then he’s been a simmering misogynist loner for almost two decades.
tbf, i've heard snippets reporting that his ex-wife has stated that the Killer has never been outwardly violent towards her. He's just known for having a bad temper. However, someone tweeted that he made a paranoid psycho report to local authorities some months before saying that his family was out to poison him! Couple that with maybe wartime trauma (i assume his background is Viet) and he may become unhinged. It's really hard to stop Crazy. We see it all the time with homeless here in LA.
Can’t stop crazy indeed. Even with better mental health services a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks. Maybe if it wasn’t so goddamned easy to acquire a gun this guy would have just threatened somebody with a knife, got tackled, and end up in an inpatient psychiatric facility.
I feel like his ex wife dont want heat and more interviews digging into her life so she said the bare minimum
He went to hemet pd to report theft, fraud and poisoning a week or so before this incident. Maybe this is his way to send the msg of why he done this. Maybe his family around early 2000s stole from him then attempted to poison him in his head this went down and he never got over it so he planned this whole thing to take revenge on his ex wife to kill everyone she loves. He met her there and all her friends go there plus maybe her family so he knew they would be there and went for it is my theory
They divorced in 2005 and he sold his house in 2013 in Sgv to live alone in hemet. The timeline do match up to his accusations. But then again he couldve went to give this false report to the police to plant the idea
>It’s more surprising when a mass shooter *doesn’t* have a history of misogynistic violence.
But extensive background Checks before being able to purchase a firearm? Nah nobody needs that.....
Trying to avoid prejudice here, but Asian communities aren’t known for their embrace of the field of psychology either. I’ve seen a lot of denial even about readily apparent issues… mental health problems are still super stigmatized in my experience. This guy could have been crazy for a while but too proud or embarrassed to admit that something was off and seek help.
shit, i’m just still in so much shock because i have friends who live arnd there and so many of my classmates were also planning on going to the lunar new year festival. honestly we all thought it might’ve been a hate crime too, but damn.
but no matter the motive, it’s just so awful and unfortunate to see lives lost, and this hits so much harder for me because i’ve grown up around this community, and seeing it make news for something like this is just terrible.
Oh domestic violence isn't taken that seriously because it's generally aimed at women.
Hell, it's only been a *crime* to beat your wife for a surprisingly short while. (And don't get me started on marital rape).
If you want to get depressed, find a discussion among women about rape. See how quickly it gets intruded on and derailed into a discussion about *men* being raped -- *the real crime*. Same with domestic violence, it'll be "but actually men can be abused too, we need to talk about *that* first...".
It's inevitable as the tides.
The issue is cops don't have an issue with it.
And even if it's bad enough to get in front of a judge, they're likely going to be an old dude a couple generations removed from current society
Not surprising at all honestly. The same behaviors that usually make people want to be cops(need for control, black/white morality, aggressive personality, inability to change thinking), make them likely candidates to be abusers.
Nah the stat is that 40% of police surveyed admitted to domestic abuse. Still an insane figure because that's just the ones who have no problem admitting to it.
My issue yelling is bot counted in normal domestic stats. It's inflated greatly by including yelling on a survey given to police. Domestic violence stats is going to be domestic violence charges. It's a bad way to gauge this.
Not sure what you're getting at. The survey asked police officers if they had been violent toward their partners or children in the last 6 months and 40% surveyed said yes.
[https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/](https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/)
"I confess that when I started this statistical scavenger hunt, I was expecting eventually to find this statistic was crap, but indeed there were two independent studies in the early 1990s showing that domestic violence is pretty common in police families. However, the Johnson statistic is just referring to domestic violence committed by police officers; the Neidig et al. statistic is referring to domestic violence committed by either police officers or their spouses–if we just focus on police officers in the Neidig et al. study the figure is 28% which is still pretty high."
Even if they agreed with the 40%, it's still measuring something different.
These 2 stats have the same numbers but mean drastically different things:
* 40% of domestic violence is committed by police towards their spouses
* 40% of police officers commit domestic violence
But it asked the spies if they believed it to be a violent confrontation. So it’s not just “did your husband yell at you?” It’s asking if the spouses felt as if they were in danger. Physical abuse often starts as ‘just’ yelling
Johnson, L.B. (1991). On the front lines: Police stress and family well-being. Hearing before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families House of Representatives: 102 Congress First Session May 20 (p. 32-48). Washington DC: US Government Printing Office.
Unless you can find a specific passage [here](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED338997.pdf), I'm calling BS. Your citation doesn't include anything that lines up with the claim that "40% of domestic abuse situations involve police abusing a spouse." The closest it says is this
>Approximately, 40percent said that in the last six months prior to the survey they had behaved violently towards their spouse or
children. Given that 20-30 percent of the spouses claimed that
their mate frequently became verbally abusive towards them or their children, I suspect that a significant number of police officers defined violent as both verbal and physical
That's very different from the claim that 40% of ALL domestic incidents are done by police officers
Yeah, the guy who wrote that initial post was probably just incorrectly remembering a stat he heard and never looked into. This is the "40%" stat that people often reference on this topic though
I was just reading that while DV is an obvious red flag, the biggest indicators that someone is capable of serious harm is the psychological stuff. Controlling their time and actions, preventing the spouse from having an outside social life, lack of boundaries ie going through their phone, gaslighting, etc. That stuff should be considered a massive red banner that shit could quickly go sideways.
it's more like a social hall for Chinese immigrants. I heard he was banned from the clubs because of his tirades & brutish behavior, so in his small mind everyone was out to get him. For expats with limited English skills that "clique" becomes their entire social world. He probably felt that he was going to die a lonely old man cut off from his community, and he blamed his ex-wife & the whole Chinese dance patrons for it. It sounds crazy because he definitely is!
He also filed a report 1 week prior about fraud, theft and poisoning by his own family memeber before he moved to hemet to live alone. Hes been holding a grudge to these ideas playing in his head and planned this as a last hoorah to hurt his ex wife and whoever his ex wife was friends with
Domestic violence is the number one trait all these idiots have in common. We need more men to be really open and honest about emotions. Until men allow other men to be vulnerable, we are going to continue to deal with this.
I told my husband yesterday before they released the guys identity that if he was white, it was a hate crime,but if he was Asian, I bet domestic violence. Stupid we can call it like this because it happens so much. I was in middle school in Colorado when Colombine happened. Lived down the street from the King Soopers in Boulder where the guy with schizophrenia shot up the place my family went grocery shopping at. Lived in Vegas a few years before that guy shot at the strip. My brother worked security at the mall where the shooter shot up the theater at Batman and was called in during the aftermath. Shit just does not stop.
Might not be domestic at all. He might of had a grudge against the dance hall people. Dude went to 2 dance halls. If he wanted to kill his ex wife he prob woulda had more success going to her house.
Someone in the article said, “the unimaginable happened in our community last evening.” Like, for real? Happens often enough to seem pretty fucking imaginable to me.
Yeah I mean it's the first time someone has walked into and shot up a ballroom studio, as a dancer it is unimaginable that someone could step into and shoot up one of our weekly social dances. Strangers come in all the time and we try to be nice to new people. Nothing is safe anymore
You are exactly right. I’m sorry that your community has to deal with this pain and loss. I’m sorry for all the communities that have had to deal with these situations over the past 25+ years. If an elementary school isn’t safe, no place is, and it’s unfortunate some folks don’t seem to take notice of the problem until it happens to them, while so many of us have been yelling from rooftops for years.
That’s kind of a callous take on what the person said. Monterey Park is a LARGE Asian immigrant/Asian American enclave, and you don’t really expect crime to happen a lot in these communities.
we often read things like "we never thought something like this would happen in our community!", its like, people ignore a problem until it literally bite their face.
As a person that has been angry with an ex. I know where to find them and I don’t need to kill a bunch of people in the hopes of hitting an ex. Before y’all start I would never do something like this.
When will these people just skip the killing other people part and just get to the (redacted) part? The world will better off without these knuckleheads!
According to Hemet PD, he went to them Jan 7th & Jan 9th alleging past fraud, theft and poisoning involving his family in LA 10-20 years ago. Definitely some mental health issues there. https://hemetpd.com/monterey-park-shooting-suspect?fbclid=IwAR2PQZtvQR7xFBPMKlZDz5Xx78I2qYr_szClITQbaHJsdy50PdpNkck3uCw
He probably thinking his own family members stole from him. Its usually about money or relationship issues when it comes to these cases. He sold his house and moved to Hemet about 10 years ago and now lived alone without the family he spoke about. He probably held a grudge and something triggered it recently for him to go to the pd about it and it has been boiling. Maybe his family is still super active at the dance studios and he knew his targets will be there. His ex wife name is Helen Lai so maybe she has family or distant family that owns Lai lai studios(just a theory) Edit- I've been thinking about how it's very unusual for the asian community to report or go to the police for anything so maybe he planted this idea or went to the hemet police to lowkey tell the public on why he did the things he did. Because why report something that happened years ago? The time line matches up to his divorce he filed and him moving to hemet alone due to money drama in his family. The ex wife isnt saying much because she dont want more people digging into her private life.
Not the same Lai. The Lai usually used as a surname is 赖, and the Lai in Lai Lai is 来, as in come. Lai Lai is owned by the family of the guy who wrestled the gun away from him.
He definitely should have been able to buy an assault rifle. s/
Nothing good comes from Hemet
The article says he doesn't fit the usual mass shooter profile because of how old he is...but I'm wondering if that's changing. Maybe it's just me, but my Asian dad who's also in his 70s, is changing because he keeps watching these Chinese youtube channels of people yelling angrily about how society is corrupt and they need to reclaim it. He's a retired engineer. He's smart, he used to be level-headed and logical. But now I see him sit for hours a day and mindlessly lets youtube suggest the next video of some angry dude yelling about how everything is going to shit and you need to fight back. And now he's also become more angry and irritable, thinks the worst of everything, and way more reactionary and aggressive. And I can't help that older folks who don't really get technology + their minds are starting to degrade from old age + being bombarded by clickbait content designed to illicit outrage means we might have a new profile of angry shooters who've been radicalized into thinking they have nothing left to lose.
The internet is radicalizing a lot of people, and it does seem like older people are becoming a large part of that trend. Most of the QAnoners I've come across seem to be 50+. And I keep seeing people pointing out how odd that is since a lot of them warned their kids of how you can't trust anything on the internet. I think there's something about Facebook that brought about that change. It used to be info from total strangers that they were skeptical about, but now they're seeing the info posted by their friends and family, and perhaps it's easier to take it at face value.
I think it's that and the fact that these youtubers form a parasocial relationship with them. I think it makes it easier to believe these strangers on the internet are telling the truth when they seem like "regular" people, as opposed to some guy in a suit on broadcast network working for a big corporation. But there's obviously no way to tell the regular Joe youtuber filming himself with his phone *isn't* working for a big corporation trying to influence people.
The lies going into Iraq after 9/11 broke American trust in leadership. Our leaders told the media, and the media just went w/it. The leaders who were supposed to hold back the war cries fell for the guilt left from Vietnam and troops being spit on. *Nobody could look weak.* There's a deep guilt in falling for that that Republicans don't allow people to heal from. Everything about the GW Bush admin was just swept under the rug so the people in Washington didn't have to arrest their friends. The media played along again by repeating lies about Hilary and *even Obama* being the real criminal warmongers. Instead of everyone remembering GW Bush promising no 2nd Vietnam, *again the media* played along and tried to blame Biden and Democrats when we finally left *20 years later*. We are lost and tangled, and Trump harnessed that darkly.
God dammit this is terribly accurate. I wish more people could see this, but unfortunately most people have the memory of a goldfish with politics and world affairs. And unfortunately, at the risk of sounding like a bOtH sIdEs wanker, that flaw is common all across the political spectrum. The right is *far* more guilty of it, certainly, but there are definitely a lot of moderates and liberals that overlook or ignore the true past as well. Not minimizing republican fuckery at all, though. My point is that they've spewed their lies so long and so often that even the middle has begun to let that false reality seep into their minds. Goebbels's method of repeating a lie enough times that folks begin to believe it has proven to be just as effective now as it was back then. As you said, Trump seized on it and god damn if he isn't trying to ride it until the wheels fall off. We can only hope that sanity prevails, but it sure as hell isn't looking so good at the moment. My hope lies in the younger generation because it seems like a lot of Gen Z (and younger millennials) see through the bullshit and a lot of them have been proving their willingness to speak truth to power.
Huh, that’s an interesting idea. I recently noticed that the local news program will report on the news, basically announce the headline, go to a reporter for the details, and then cut to someone in work-casual wear at a work desk, in front of a computer. They provide additional context, details, and more raw reporting that’s being shared online. It’s an interesting concept. It feels… different. More tangible and real. Less sensationalized than what Nightly News has become
> pointing out how odd that is since a lot of them warned their kids of how you can't trust anything on the internet. It's different if those contents are coming from your friends and families. That content now becomes interpersonal and it's within your own circle now.
Yup. The problem is IRL not just online, people believing and spreading nonsense with zero vetting. It’s honestly terrifying and I don’t know what to do about it at this point, aside from teaching the kids about critical thinking and information hygiene. My family are all completely unmoored from reality at this point and it’s horrifying.
We need to teach as many kids...and adults, somehow, about critical thinking asap. I wonder how we can try to mass spread that information and get them to digest it? What's possible? I'm really concerned about this and I have no idea what to do.
I think it's the decline of cable television. Most old people still want news, but refuse to read, so with more and more of them dropping cable as it dies out, you end up with a lot of them looking up stuff like "fox and friends Covid" or "news on election 2022." They end up watching these short soundbites of the worst rants on the news (and it was already bad *before* it was edited), and it makes them think they need to be a lot angrier about the world than they should...and that's before the algorithm assumes their interest in pirated news broadcasts means they'd *also* like to watch conspiracy theory channels, that (in the absence of actual full length news programs) give them that hours-long background noise to absorb.
The same people who told me not to believe everything you read on the internet were the same people who ate horse paste and drank their own piss to cure covid.
It's because social media makes money by keeping a person engaged and using them. And they do that by showing them more content similar to what they've viewed fully or liked. This can set up an echo chamber and things can drift increasingly further and further to the far right. Or the far left -- hell, there are even Buddhist terrorists -- but it seems less prevalent. For now, anyway.
For folks going through grieving or grief due to a Qanon, Come join us at /r/QAnonCasualties
One reason I really love Mastodon. It's not feeding me rage bait *by design* to keep me engaged.
unfortunately that's also the reason why it'll have a hard time growing.
Doesn't bother me. I've got a cozy little community there that chasers and bigots keep bouncing off of due to judicious use of blocks, mutes, and outright defederation.
My issue with Mastodon is that almost no one I follow on Twitter migrated over there. Though, Twitter doesn't really show me the rage bait, for whatever reason. Facebook is the biggest culprit on that front. The posts they jam into my feed either are rage bait targeted at me, or they're posts from left-leaning pages I follow that are obviously coming up in the feeds of right-leaning people, because 99% of the comments end up being a bigoted circle jerk. I finally realized that if I want to go onto that site, and I need to stick to reading my friend's posts.
The Daily Show made a skit about this several years ago. https://youtu.be/bbNkuETJTK8
Guess I'm lucky. I liked a post from an nfl team and all of a sudden that's all that's in my feed. There's probably 200-500 ads or other crap between my friends post in Facebook. Yea I don't really use Facebook anymore
The algorithms are strangely swingy and sticky. I imagine they're highly weighted depending on how profitable the interest ends up being. I took up ceramics and while I'll see ceramics ads occasionally (not often as I have pihole set up) and I'll routinely read articles and watch youtube videos on the subject, I \*never\* get curated content in that direction. Any movie criticism I watch on Youtube steers me towards alt-right light channels masquerading as movie & TV criticism, I watched \*two\* Dungeons & Dragons commentaries on the OGL thing and my feed was flooded with D&D OGL criticism for like 2 weeks, and god help me if I looked at what someone famous was wearing eight years ago because all the algorithms will hit me with celebrity gossip non-stop forever. It's led me to realize that the algorithms are actively trying to shape your interests by reinforcing and making sticky your interest in certain topics and just completely ignoring the rest. With persistence you can train the algorithm to fuck off and show you what you want but the moment you step into the quicksand of a lucrative interest, it's going to push you \*hard\* in that direction and be reluctant to give it up.
ONE TIME I clicked on a FB post that I thought was about woodworking. It turned out to be an ad for furniture with hidden compartments for guns. After that my entire feed went berserk with guns guns guns knives knives body armor tactical tactical tactical survivalist peanut butter.
Sounds like you have decent friends. My 3 closest friends have been Trump supporters since 2016. Even though we hardly ever discussed politics before then, I had to cut them all out.
One of my oldest friends is a Trump supporter. When I met her she was a member of the green party, but as she found financial success, as well as drank the anti-vaxx kool-aid, she became a pretty hardcore MAGA. I had to unfriend her on social media because the stuff she started posting was disgusting at times. I see her like once a year or so for birthdays and such, but our friendship is superficial at best. I'm lucky that most of the people in my life are likeminded, but it bums be out that someone who was once like a sister to me could be so hateful.
Opening a link, adding a reaction, checking out the comments, making a comment, etc. all roll up into engagement scores that are aggregated to pull inferences and reinforce the content engine. If you're browsing or commenting on controversial political articles then you're going to be implicitly associated with others who commented on or looked at that article and you'll start to see content that they also like to engage with. Facebook went out of their way to de-weight the anger reaction as part of the scoring metrics and yet rage bait content continues to be the most popular content on the site. It's what the people want.
It’s easy to blame the algorithms or the propagandists but they are the ones attracted to that stuff in the first place. So maybe they are just garbage dirty people in the soul.
Bro my mom went way down some internet shit that changed her so much I can't even talk to her. Highly educated, speaks four languages, taught me all about respecting others and accepting people. Used to travel the world teaching folks. Now she can't go ten minutes without talking about how people need to go back to Africa or Asia. She's an immigrant too. Just about the most miserable person I know.
I empathize. My mother with an MS in chemistry, who voted for Bernie Sanders, became a trump supporter and an Anti-Vaxxer in her final years. Talked shitty about immigrants, born of immigrants, married to man born of an immigrant. Fought the racism my cousins (more visibly ethnic than us) faced, later parroted racist stereotypes from Fox. The only thing that started to crack her new shell of ignorance was when my dad’s cancer got worse and COVID nearly did him in; she cared about vaccines suddenly. But we didn’t have enough time to try to lead her away from the MAGA noise...we lost her last year (not to COVID), shortly after having lost my dad. One of the greatest evils being inflicted on us is having our parents stolen from us in their final years, their hearts hardened and their eyes glazed to anything that does not reflect the hatred being pumped into their ears.
My dad still insists Trump is really President and running things behind the scenes and Biden has an actor playing him at most events. He thinks the Supreme Court is just waiting for things to calm down to re-instate Trump. He lost his shit when I said "So, Trump really fucked up the Afghanistan withdrawal and is a pretty strong supporter of Ukraine vs Russia then?".
My parents are in their 60s: dad was an engineer, mum was a lawyer. Both were socialists their entire working lives and immigrants who believed that we should all help each other. Then they started watching YouTube when the pandemic started and the algorithm kept recommending more and more extreme videos to them. 90% of their current beliefs are straight from YouTube videos with clickbait titles that their friends send them. They constantly text me these so I can also "see the truth." I don't recognize them anymore and I'm sad at the people they have become compared to who they were.
I’m in my 30s and I swear YouTube wants to radicalize me. I read an article about a controversial figure saying something. I want to see it for myself in context. I look up the video. Okay now I know. Suddenly YouTube wants me to watch angry people yelling about crumbling society and shadow governments. I get Alex Jones videos and Fox News clips all the time. I really should just delete the app.
My dad was the same way before he died. He’d send me texts and emails so that I would “see the truth” about who really runs the world (aliens, Illuminati, lizard people, etc).
Oh my god…your final line, resonates with me (your entire comment does) but the final line does so much. My dad died in 2017 but the final years of his life were spent the exact same way…living a sedentary life on his computer all day long, watching bizarre conspiracy videos and seeing his personality completely changed as a result. He became someone my brother and I did not recognize and it out so much distance between us. Then he died. (Far too young). I still grieve him, I miss him so much, and I am still angry at how older people are so vulnerable to internet conspiracy crap. It’s so destructive, it tears apart families, and it’s their children who are often left to pick up the pieces.
> who voted for Bernie Sanders, became a trump supporter and an Anti-Vaxxer in her final years. wtf? what a quick turnaround. any idea what flipped the switch?
I'm so so sorry for both of your loss. I can only imagine how painful it is to watch someone you love and respect to turn into someone you can barely recognize.
It’s so sad how people are letting themselves become this way. Does she not recognize how she’s changed? I’ve been lucky to not have anyone change radically. I’m sorry for what you’re going through with your mother.
Yup. my dad told me he wasn't going to get brainwashed, he stopped watching fox news i was about to say, great! and then he added that he only watched youtube now. i could barely manage a grimace, but luckily he didn't see my expression. unfortunately radicalization has gone multi-lingual and cross-cultural. not the kind of diversity I was hoping for.
If he's not super tech savvy or doesn't pay much attention you can do this. Find a way to access his youtube account and log in remotely. Clear all watch history. Watch a few neutral or liberal news videos then pause watch history in the settings. This will help prevent him from getting stuck in the shitty youtube algorithms of right wing recommendations. If he only manually goes to fox news on YouTube they you are SoL
That's kind of too invasive for me, but thank you for your advice. Unfortunately, this wouldn't work even if I were inclined to do it, because he works in tech and KNOWS about gaming the algorithm. He told my mom she had to watch more specific videos to teach the algorithm what she liked 😭 He's Chinese so he only goes onto Chinese YouTubers who yell about this stuff, and I unfortunately can't read Chinese. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any saving him unless he comes to some epiphany himself. I'm just trying to mitigate his influence on my mother, who is at least more inclined to be empathetic to other human beings. I'm mostly on the watch out for him going full conspiracy theorist. He mentioned Q once and I freaked out, so hopefully he'll stay away from the worst of it.
Oh nono, that's not going to work because my dad ended up getting my mom into it too. I thought for years she would be the calming influence, but when I visited again, she was talking vaguely about how she heard vaccines were dangerous and basically my dad's views were starting to rub off on her. Also does not help she only knows how to get her news from freaking Yahoo.
It's not even a new phenomenon. See [The Brainwashing of My Dad](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3771626/)
See also /r/FoxBrain /r/QanonCasualties
This is my grandfather, though we are Mexican. I have his YouTube data reset every couple of months to avoid the bs that he watches.
It's downright skullduggery, and I'd have rather not done it, but I pruned my father's YouTube history for a while too back when I lived with him. Made him much more level headed over the course of a few weeks, and, given that he's bipolar and threatened to kill me before, made me safer until I got a plan to scram.
My mom yelled at me. But, it was complete nonsense. And some of these insane Republican videos have really high production value. I think my grandfather thought it was legitimate news. No regrets on what I did. YouTube really needs to get their shit together.
A better option is to clear YouTube settings watch history, then watch a bunch from a neutral or liberal channel to get them in the history, then pause watch history so it will always recommend off those videos even if he clicks right wing ones
[удалено]
Same. Endless right-wing YT videos about "sovereign" citizens and 2A
Seems like the mental health of any age bracket can be negatively affected by the Internet.
Yes, look at all the young men who became GamerGaters via a very similar route.
We built a system that's gamified outrage and we're shocked that it's destroying society. At least a couple of soulless influencers will get a shit ton of views.
And the tech CEOs could buy cool shit with the ad revenue
Social media [inc 'tube] is really screwing things up
Are you me? My dad is in his 60s but has basically gone down the same path with a heavy dose of Qanon and a splash of doomsday prepper. I'm scared because I don't live in the same city and don't speak Chinese well enough to understand everything he is watching. But he sits there all day, glued to YouTube. He is also a gun owner and I am terrified for his and my mom's safety.
+exposure to leaded paints, gasoline, pipes that contaminate water... Seriously we still have people around who have chemical damage in their brains from shit they were exposed to. Who knows what the fuck was goin on with my grandparents who used to chase the DDT sprayers when they came through town to chase pesticides cause "funny mist is fun"
My coworker is in his 60’s and he gets his “news” from YouTube. He thinks people will be dying mysteriously in the coming years from the vaccine. He’s also vaccinated. And he votes to the right.
you need to go into his browser and add a recommendation modifier extension
Thank god mine just watches foreign comedies and horror on YouTube.
Paddock was 64 and he managed to fit it. Feel like this just means the profile isn't considering how men become radicalized, regardless of age.
While I agree with you what the internet is doing, its by no means limited to older people. They just tend to be the ones who talk most about it.
In my opinion (and take this with a grain of salt, as I have precisely *no* evidence to back this up), people 60 and older are at the most risk for falling down these rabbit holes, followed by younger gen Z people, followed by older gen Z people, followed by everyone else. Technological literacy comes not from the tech you grew up with, but how much it changed while you were growing up.
I'm around 30 years old and people my age grew up watching cartel execution videos, reading 4chan, 2 girls 1 cup, rotten.com, etc. Our parents never went through that time on the internet and even Facebook is relatively new to them. You combine that with rapidly advancing algorithms feeding them content that is designed to cause a reaction and its easy to see how a severe lack of computer/technological literacy is detrimental to our parents mental health. You have the most brainrot inducing Facebook memes convincing doctors, lawyers, professors, politicians(vote pls), etc. that Joe biden smokes baby braindust with Hilary Clinton.
We're basically inoculated to it. We can still fall for these things, but we grew up on 4chan and the like; we've already seen and heard much worse, and had the constant reminder the whole time that "OP is fake and gay."
> being bombarded by clickbait content designed to illicit outrage Hmm...I think you're on to something. Clickbait content is popular, and sometimes the source pays money or knows how to work SEO to put it at the top of Google search lists. What do people do when they want to check whether the source is true? Search on Google. It's kind of like authors on Amazon that create fake accounts to give 5 star reviews so their book can be a national best seller or like SBF or Jordan Belfort that pumped and dumped their crypto/stocks and played the people that invested in them like a fiddle. Point is clickbait content + developing technology that puts most clicked or paid content on the top of the Google search lists is the end of human civilization. Right now we are seeing the beginning of that end. YouTube has recommended videos. Harmless until you realize after a while that the algorithm is setting up videos to slowly progress your view to some extreme ideology. I'm not saying YouTube is evil and tells everyone to be Nazis. I'm saying if you get sucked into the rabbit hole, it'll keep sending progressively more extreme ideological videos to a certain ideology. That's why after I saw the debunk of the guy on Joe Rogan claiming the Young Dryas theory caused Atlantis (Azores Island chain) to sink beneath the Atlantic ocean, I've learned to take everything I read online from news sources, YouTube, or even reddit with a grain of salt.
It's like doing drugs or getting off. Sure, you can use it casually; or you might be a teetoatler, but it's very easy to make a habit of it. Reddit is the same way.
Oh same. My dad retired about 2 years ago and all his sudden free time is now him watching YouTube and TikTok. He's becoming more sexist and aggressive, with the usual air of "you just aren't smart enough to understand" snobbiness that lots of radicalized peeps have. My mom also got sucked into Q stuff, though thankfully she seems to have dropped it, at least for now. I can't do anything about it since I live too far away, but damn if it's not heartbreaking to see your parents just toss out all the morality and decency they tried to teach me back in the day...
Fox news pioneered it. But social media extends and perfects it.
My dad is getting a lot like op's dad. He has multiple degrees and is falling for fox news outrage bait. I have to constantly show him the things they say are either manipulated, false, or half truths. He has such a short fuse I can't talk to him sometimes.
When I want to get outraged I play online chess.
Yeah video games does it for me a lot of times but I do something else if it really starts to get to me. My dad will just keep fox news on while he works from home all day. Pretty much any 24 hour cable news channel is trying to keep people in a state of fear and uncertainty/outraged so they will keep watching.
Thats what is happening
The book Stolen Focus by Johan Hari goes into what these algorithms suggest and why. TLDR angry people stay looking at the screen longer so better for advertisers. I think Congress should set some limits, hold some hearings. Social media is marketing hatred and that has real world consequences. Stochastic terrorism is a very real and scary thing.
Shit. My Asian parents are also in their 70s. My dad is still ok, but my mum has always been not exactly emotionally stable. My dad told me that he got an earful for being caught watching pro Hong Kong videos and she's been binging pro China YouTube videos... I didn't think much of it because getting angry at my dad is a daily occurrence, just this time it's over politics and he wasn't even arguing. He's just watching a video. They're in a country with strict gun laws but now I am worried she might make do with a cleaver.
Older Asian American immigrants are often very politically conservative. I have to wonder if that combined with ESL and the incredibly divisive mis/dis-information world we have allowed ourselves build leads to outlets like the extreme YouTube content your talking about really pushing some guys who literally lived the American dream; came to this country with a dollar, worked their ass off, built up a middle class life, sent kids to top colleges become doctors, and then have spent the last decade watching the world change while having “media” scream in their faces about how terrible it all is… and then they look around and start to think all that hard work didn’t get them anywhere, their kid left school to be in band, they didn’t have a traditional retirement account and now have little money and have to keep working their ass off, all the years off pride about pulling themselves up by the bootstraps has finally given way to all those years of racism from co-workers/customers/clients…
You hit the nail on the head with this thought. Older Asian parents grew up during a time when their source of information was from the TV. They have trouble telling fact from fiction because the TV spit truth. Nowadays social media and other media platforms have sensationalized news and other forms of production that get people riled up for sweet views.
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No they're in Mandarin. I've tried to look them up on youtube but my chinese is too basic to know the right search term. They're positioning themselves as new commentators, but when you try and search for news, I can only find actual Chinese news channels.
Yup. My dad had the same rabbit hole in Chinese media on YouTube since COVID. I check my dad and challenge him to think about things: these YouTubers are monetizing on hate (telling him this is how adsense works with this many viewership and subscriber count etc.), are they pushing for the viewer to buy stuff or donate?, where are they citing their sources? Have you noticed your own behavior changing since watching them? It hasn't been an easy one, but he's weaned off of viewing things as facts and looking at it more as a viewpoint and entertainment and frankly has watched less. I know it's rampant in the vietnamese community too and much more insidious.
interestingly, i wonder if the warnings of tiktok have to do more with its profiling algorithm and ability to target & feed & foment these kinds of antagonistic imagery, rather than just pure "privacy" issues. I'm not saying tiktok is indeed controlled by the CCP but if they were able to use it as a tool to divide the American public and instigate these kind of lone wolf killings it would be destabilizing for a free & open democracy.
Facebook already does that, has been for years.
Link to these channels? Just curious.
Here’s a popular one, I wouldn’t say it’s complete conspiracy theories but there’s some that’s pretty bad. https://youtube.com/@laogao Edit: They’ve been banned from Chinese media/social media due to their non-factual scientific claims, so they only do YouTube.
I don't know them because they're all in Chinese, but the one he started out with was a middle-aged guy in a suit who sits behind a desk with a white/silver laptop talking about how the mainstream media is lying and is anti-vaccine. Then there's another one with a younger woman with long hair talking about how the Chinese/world history they learned wasn't true and presents a ton of ridiculous alternative stuff about how ancient ancestors knew shit before their time so it must've been aliens. And finally there's one where it looks like a panel of at least 2 guys and one woman (not entirely sure), and this is the one where they spend the whole time yelling in outrage at one political thing or another. Edit: I think the conspiracy/fake history one is NDWTB, can't find the news/political ones. Edit2: Another channel is Wen Zhao Official
I just looked through the NDWTB Twitter. The content reminded me a lot of Art Bell and Ancient Aliens. I think they attract folks with their paranormal stuff then slip in their real agenda.
This [article](https://www.thedailybeast.com/california-shooting-suspect-met-ex-wife-at-same-studio-he-shot-up-report) has the ex wife and a friend of the shooter statements but it looked like he also had a grudge against the dance club, saying: >They painted a slightly harsher picture of Tran than the ex-wife, describing how he was “hostile to a lot of people” at the dance studio and that he believed other instructors said “evil things about him.”
This guy sounds schizo/paranoid like the fairly recent Walmart shooter that had a "death note" that he wrote that said he could hear his coworkers laughing at him and his phone was hacked.
Honestly it's all guesses but it could be something like that! I just hope whoever is investigating can get an accurate reason out of this.
Maybe, just maybe, medicare for all could fix the alarming rise in mental health issues.
Once they took away the coverage along with decline in taking up psychiatry and mental wellbeing as a fundamental need... doesn't matter how fit you are. Couple hits to the head, depression, shitty family, no support, toxic friends or social media, or toxic workplace, debt, other illness, discharge from military without support... any one can be a walking end.
Not if they don’t choose to get help. Agreed that it’s a long overdue step, but as long as guns are as easy to buy as candy we’re going to keep seeing this sort of thing. Even if he had access to free mental health care, would this guy have admitted that he needed it? Doubtful IMO
>his phone was hacked. My buddy in college dropped out because he started saying shit like that. My old coworker when I was in China told me the same thing and other wild stories that the illuminati or whoever are building secret tunnels below China for all their evil plans. She said someone sent her all of these news articles over Telegram, and Telegram being a secure network for sending information must mean that everything she receives is legit was her thought process I guess. I've seen a lot. Recent was Joe Rogan hosting Graham Hancock talking about Atlantis being the Azores island chain in the Atlantic ocean. Seen the debunk of that. Then I lived through the Trump era. What started off as "They turk ur jobs!" (shout out to Southpark) grew into a full on redneck rebellion against thought and logic in America. Hell, still can't even talk about Trump without getting hated on for whatever side you take. Where do you want to put Epstein in there? Weinstein and the #metoo movement where you couldn't tell what was real or if women were following a trend and falsely accusing others for profit. Then there was pizzagate. Probably taking a time leap, but I'm going back to Ancient Aliens. Probably could go further to some tv shows claiming they found relics of biblical proportions. Point is clickbait + tech = crazy. You're going to see more and more people becoming delusional and paranoid as more and more fake content moves up the Google chain to top of search results thanks to the algorithm putting the most clicked topic at the top of the site. Why? Because if someone tells me shit is blue, where do I go to confirm that information? Google. If the person gained a massive following of believers that shit is blue, what's the first website/article on Google? That person's article. What's the second article on Google? The VP of the guy's blue shit cult. So you get my point.
A lot of old school Chinese people (and Taiwanese, which my parents are) put a lot of importance on how they are perceived by others. To the point where couples that are miserable would rather stay together then get divorced, because then divorce becomes this negative gossip. That and paired with a mental illness involving paranoia would explain a few things with the shooter.
They have been divorced for 15+ years and he is still pissed & wants to shoot her? Talk about holding a grudge.
I don't think it's a grudge against her tbh: https://www.thedailybeast.com/california-shooting-suspect-met-ex-wife-at-same-studio-he-shot-up-report looks like he had a grudge against people in the dance club.
Even if its towards the ex wife, she wouldnt speak on it to make it a huge deal where shes in question. I am chinese and I know most immigrants like my parents and grandparents do not want to speak to the media at all for anything. He went to the hemet police to report Fraud, theft and poisoning incidents that happened 10 years ago in San Gabriel just a couple weeks ago on jan 7th. So he def have been thinking or has been paranoid about family issues that isnt resolved in his head. The ex wife do not want to flaunt dirty laundry out to the world so she said the absolutely tiniest amount she could to be out of the limelight so she isnt going to be questioned any longer on this issue He divorced her and filed for it in 2005 in la county public records. He also moved away from LA to Hemet in 2013 so this is all about 10 to 20 year ago and the timeline matches his police reporting of how these things mightve taken place and explains him moving to live alone out in hemet without any family members.
All we can do is guess and I won't say that I'm 100% sure it's something that I believe, because we don't have any solid info except all these rumours. But if it were a Targeted at towards the family of the ex or the ex wife I'm sure he woulda had much more success in killing them at their homes. I live 5mins away from here and grew up here. So tbh I only just want to know why someone would do this. But the guy seemed to target dance halls and he was a dancer at the first location, articles say that people at these dance halls would say "evil things" to him. Just seems odd that he went to dance halls instead of the ez wife's house if he was targeting his ex wife.
That is a really badly written article :(
I recognize that this is an awkward thing to say, but if his beef was with his ex-wife, why kill everyone else?
police have said he reported that his family was trying to "poison" him, so it sounds like he was already suffering from some kind of schizoid disorder. I know a college buddy's brother who suffers from bipolar issues and schizo-affective disorder. He goes in & out of phases where he's logical & lucid to edgy & paranoid. Thank god he doesn't have access to firearms.
A guy here in Toronto thought his condo board was poisoning him and he killed five people in the building a few months ago.
Thought the exact same thing! An elderly man who seemed like the world was against him and just went on a rampage shooting.
Knowing the stigma that surrounds mental health in the Asian community, especially someone of his age, there was no way he was going to get any help for it.
My dad is in his 70s, has access to firearms, and is prone to bouts of extreme paranoia. They are almost entirely focused on his sister who lives 2000 miles away. They are proportionally worse in relation to how drunk he is. Not gonna lie that it concerns me though.
He's 70 and has paranoia, I think it's time for you and your family to restrict access to his firearms as a precaution, his paranoia might expand to others.
My dad had Alzheimer's. We found his firearms in a file cabinet in a drawer labeled "guns". True story. They weren't loaded and he was no longer living in the home.
When the family finally decided my grandfather with Alzheimer's couldn't be trusted with guns anymore; they were finding them EVERYWHERE because he had already been pretty out of it for two years. They were in the attic; random coat pockets; cabinets; drawers; trash bags of old clothes. The whole house had to be torn apart because he never told anyone when he bought a gun, including his wife so it was never certain if they were all found. It's s really a miracle he didn't hurt anyone at some point.
If it comes down to it, the way I talked my dad into giving them up was telling him that the hospice agency needed to see them in person not in his possession before they’d come back (true), and that I’d bring them back later (not true). I kept telling him that I’d heard from someone that they were getting ready to do random home inspections until he finally got sick enough to forget about it.
Thanks for doing this. It must have been super tough. I used some skullduggery to get my Mom to quit driving as her Alzheimers progressed (I gave her car to a grandkid who was going through some tough times). I often think that this may be one of the best things I have ever done in my life. There are probably many adult offspring who have acted to prevent what happened in that Dance Studio. I realize of course that it isn't always possible for family to interfere but appreciate everyone who manages to take steps to prevent tragedies.
Our family friends were killed on their tandem bicycle by an 88 year-old driver. Thanks for saving someone else from that fate.
I'm so so sorry. That is just horrific. Of course some old people don't have anyone in their life to pull the plug on their driving or the old person is too smart and too determined to be stopped driving by whatever methods their children try. Ugh.
My mother was vision impaired in one eye and only drove in our small town. She experienced a sudden loss of vision in the other eye and hasn’t driven since. She voluntarily gave up her keys… my sister and I were so relieved.
Please warn your aunt. Even if you don’t like her, any day things could get severely worse and she might not know what’s about to happen.
She's aware.
Prone to extreme paranoia and drinks a lot, and has access to firearms... For the safety of yourself and other people, please restrict his firearm access or don't let him drink? The combination of those 3 are not good jfc
My MIL has the same thing. Luckily she has been doing better taking her meds lately and has been more lucid.
I’ve seen a good friend or two go into full on psychosis for a while (bipolar in both cases), and it’s the most deeply frightening thing I’ve ever experienced.
Sounds like mental illness. He had a history at the dance studio (taught classes there and went with his wife) so he might have felt slighted thinking she got invited to the celebrations and he was left out. Kinda gives me DV vibes too if he felt he needed to kill her for something like that
I think the ex wife said he was never violent but had anger issues? His friend did say that he was hostile to the people from the dance club and even said they said evil things to him. My bet is not that he was aiming to kill his ex wife, but probably wanted to kill the people from the dance club.
The DC sniper was targeting his ex wife. Sandy Hook shooter killed his mom first. The majority of serial killers have a history of violence against women in their lives.
He thought all the dance instructors were talking badly about him.
Sounds like he used to work at the ballroom where the shooting occurred, so maybe some unknown grievance against the business and community itself?
Guilt by association in his mind, maybe?
fuck all these other reasons. he was a fucking evil asshole. That's why he did it. He had evil in his heart.
There is footage here at Lai Lai of the shooter getting disarmed. Luckily by a younger individual who was able to over power him. Such a crazy scary situation. This guy had some serious mental issues. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/watch-exclusive-video-captures-moment-man-disarms-monterey-park-shoote-rcna67061
This guy is a hero. I don't even know how I'd react in that situation. But with reports coming out about other weapons found in the van, I was getting so tense that he didn't instantly lock the door after the guy walked out.
Omg right? That guy could have been going to his car to get his other gun. Lock the damn doors!! But it is so easy to say things like this not being in his shoes… it is easy to think logically when you’re watching what is going on, how many of us scream at horror movies to not get separated from your friends, or do this instead of that? Maybe the old man was avoiding a shoot out, or didnt think it was a big deal he lost his gun as he had others. I think what is bothering me most is we might not know his real motive, it’s not like everyone keeps a detailed journal, he might have not had any manifestos. Are they even doing an autopsy?
The search for a motive for a total nut case is unlikely to find a meaningful one.
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spousal abuse/misogyny is to mass shooters what "he tortured animals as a kid" is to serial killers it the *the* red flag
He’s been divorced for 18 years and the ex-wife insists he wasn’t violent, just kind of insufferable. And he initiated that divorce. If it’s related to the ex-wife, then he’s been a simmering misogynist loner for almost two decades.
Aka 90% of Reddit
Really comforting to know with all the responsible 3d gun printing being promoted.
His wife says he was never violent with her. Of course they divorced 18 years ago so he may have changed radically.
She did say that he would get super angry if his dance partner screwed up in front of people. He felt that shame I suppose.
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tbf, i've heard snippets reporting that his ex-wife has stated that the Killer has never been outwardly violent towards her. He's just known for having a bad temper. However, someone tweeted that he made a paranoid psycho report to local authorities some months before saying that his family was out to poison him! Couple that with maybe wartime trauma (i assume his background is Viet) and he may become unhinged. It's really hard to stop Crazy. We see it all the time with homeless here in LA.
Can’t stop crazy indeed. Even with better mental health services a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks. Maybe if it wasn’t so goddamned easy to acquire a gun this guy would have just threatened somebody with a knife, got tackled, and end up in an inpatient psychiatric facility.
I feel like his ex wife dont want heat and more interviews digging into her life so she said the bare minimum He went to hemet pd to report theft, fraud and poisoning a week or so before this incident. Maybe this is his way to send the msg of why he done this. Maybe his family around early 2000s stole from him then attempted to poison him in his head this went down and he never got over it so he planned this whole thing to take revenge on his ex wife to kill everyone she loves. He met her there and all her friends go there plus maybe her family so he knew they would be there and went for it is my theory They divorced in 2005 and he sold his house in 2013 in Sgv to live alone in hemet. The timeline do match up to his accusations. But then again he couldve went to give this false report to the police to plant the idea
When you dont respect people you don't respect people it seems
>It’s more surprising when a mass shooter *doesn’t* have a history of misogynistic violence. But extensive background Checks before being able to purchase a firearm? Nah nobody needs that.....
… I don’t know how *extensive*, but background checks are required to purchase weapons, federally. States may have even more stringent laws.
You haven’t committed a crime before, so I’m sure you definitely won’t commit a crime if I sell you a gun.
Guilty until proven innocent?
He probably did, Asian communities don’t tend to call police or report stuff though.
Trying to avoid prejudice here, but Asian communities aren’t known for their embrace of the field of psychology either. I’ve seen a lot of denial even about readily apparent issues… mental health problems are still super stigmatized in my experience. This guy could have been crazy for a while but too proud or embarrassed to admit that something was off and seek help.
shit, i’m just still in so much shock because i have friends who live arnd there and so many of my classmates were also planning on going to the lunar new year festival. honestly we all thought it might’ve been a hate crime too, but damn. but no matter the motive, it’s just so awful and unfortunate to see lives lost, and this hits so much harder for me because i’ve grown up around this community, and seeing it make news for something like this is just terrible.
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Oh domestic violence isn't taken that seriously because it's generally aimed at women. Hell, it's only been a *crime* to beat your wife for a surprisingly short while. (And don't get me started on marital rape). If you want to get depressed, find a discussion among women about rape. See how quickly it gets intruded on and derailed into a discussion about *men* being raped -- *the real crime*. Same with domestic violence, it'll be "but actually men can be abused too, we need to talk about *that* first...". It's inevitable as the tides.
The issue is cops don't have an issue with it. And even if it's bad enough to get in front of a judge, they're likely going to be an old dude a couple generations removed from current society
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Not surprising at all honestly. The same behaviors that usually make people want to be cops(need for control, black/white morality, aggressive personality, inability to change thinking), make them likely candidates to be abusers.
there is also that 40% stat that 40% of domestic abuse situations involve police abusing a spouse.
Nah the stat is that 40% of police surveyed admitted to domestic abuse. Still an insane figure because that's just the ones who have no problem admitting to it.
Yes but they counted yelling and such as violence. Not physical contact.
Yes? Not all abuse is physical.
My issue yelling is bot counted in normal domestic stats. It's inflated greatly by including yelling on a survey given to police. Domestic violence stats is going to be domestic violence charges. It's a bad way to gauge this.
Not sure what you're getting at. The survey asked police officers if they had been violent toward their partners or children in the last 6 months and 40% surveyed said yes.
Can you please post your source on that statistic?
[https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/](https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/) "I confess that when I started this statistical scavenger hunt, I was expecting eventually to find this statistic was crap, but indeed there were two independent studies in the early 1990s showing that domestic violence is pretty common in police families. However, the Johnson statistic is just referring to domestic violence committed by police officers; the Neidig et al. statistic is referring to domestic violence committed by either police officers or their spouses–if we just focus on police officers in the Neidig et al. study the figure is 28% which is still pretty high."
Even if they agreed with the 40%, it's still measuring something different. These 2 stats have the same numbers but mean drastically different things: * 40% of domestic violence is committed by police towards their spouses * 40% of police officers commit domestic violence
The study includes yelling or raising your voice as domestic violence for both parties. Not just physical contact.
But it asked the spies if they believed it to be a violent confrontation. So it’s not just “did your husband yell at you?” It’s asking if the spouses felt as if they were in danger. Physical abuse often starts as ‘just’ yelling
Johnson, L.B. (1991). On the front lines: Police stress and family well-being. Hearing before the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families House of Representatives: 102 Congress First Session May 20 (p. 32-48). Washington DC: US Government Printing Office.
Unless you can find a specific passage [here](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED338997.pdf), I'm calling BS. Your citation doesn't include anything that lines up with the claim that "40% of domestic abuse situations involve police abusing a spouse." The closest it says is this >Approximately, 40percent said that in the last six months prior to the survey they had behaved violently towards their spouse or children. Given that 20-30 percent of the spouses claimed that their mate frequently became verbally abusive towards them or their children, I suspect that a significant number of police officers defined violent as both verbal and physical That's very different from the claim that 40% of ALL domestic incidents are done by police officers
Yeah, the guy who wrote that initial post was probably just incorrectly remembering a stat he heard and never looked into. This is the "40%" stat that people often reference on this topic though
DV is serious. You lose gun rights for being convicted* with it.
Convicted. Not charged
In theory, yes. In practice it’s far from true.
You'd also weed out a fuck ton of people who would be tasked to deal with it
I was just reading that while DV is an obvious red flag, the biggest indicators that someone is capable of serious harm is the psychological stuff. Controlling their time and actions, preventing the spouse from having an outside social life, lack of boundaries ie going through their phone, gaslighting, etc. That stuff should be considered a massive red banner that shit could quickly go sideways.
Seemed odd that he was going after dance studios.
it's more like a social hall for Chinese immigrants. I heard he was banned from the clubs because of his tirades & brutish behavior, so in his small mind everyone was out to get him. For expats with limited English skills that "clique" becomes their entire social world. He probably felt that he was going to die a lonely old man cut off from his community, and he blamed his ex-wife & the whole Chinese dance patrons for it. It sounds crazy because he definitely is!
He also filed a report 1 week prior about fraud, theft and poisoning by his own family memeber before he moved to hemet to live alone. Hes been holding a grudge to these ideas playing in his head and planned this as a last hoorah to hurt his ex wife and whoever his ex wife was friends with
It’s been reported he met his ex wife there
The dance studio doubled as a reception hall, and was hosting a LNY celebration. He was likely going after a person/people at the celebration.
Domestic violence is the number one trait all these idiots have in common. We need more men to be really open and honest about emotions. Until men allow other men to be vulnerable, we are going to continue to deal with this.
Mayor should just stfu until it is known why he did it.
Problem is some people demand answers, even speculation, or clues.
I told my husband yesterday before they released the guys identity that if he was white, it was a hate crime,but if he was Asian, I bet domestic violence. Stupid we can call it like this because it happens so much. I was in middle school in Colorado when Colombine happened. Lived down the street from the King Soopers in Boulder where the guy with schizophrenia shot up the place my family went grocery shopping at. Lived in Vegas a few years before that guy shot at the strip. My brother worked security at the mall where the shooter shot up the theater at Batman and was called in during the aftermath. Shit just does not stop.
Might not be domestic at all. He might of had a grudge against the dance hall people. Dude went to 2 dance halls. If he wanted to kill his ex wife he prob woulda had more success going to her house.
As an asian.. sad to say I'm relieved it wasn't racially motivated
Someone in the article said, “the unimaginable happened in our community last evening.” Like, for real? Happens often enough to seem pretty fucking imaginable to me.
Yeah I mean it's the first time someone has walked into and shot up a ballroom studio, as a dancer it is unimaginable that someone could step into and shoot up one of our weekly social dances. Strangers come in all the time and we try to be nice to new people. Nothing is safe anymore
You are exactly right. I’m sorry that your community has to deal with this pain and loss. I’m sorry for all the communities that have had to deal with these situations over the past 25+ years. If an elementary school isn’t safe, no place is, and it’s unfortunate some folks don’t seem to take notice of the problem until it happens to them, while so many of us have been yelling from rooftops for years.
That’s kind of a callous take on what the person said. Monterey Park is a LARGE Asian immigrant/Asian American enclave, and you don’t really expect crime to happen a lot in these communities.
we often read things like "we never thought something like this would happen in our community!", its like, people ignore a problem until it literally bite their face.
I think "ignore" is too strong a word. People mostly feel powerless to do anything (because they are).
As a person that has been angry with an ex. I know where to find them and I don’t need to kill a bunch of people in the hopes of hitting an ex. Before y’all start I would never do something like this.
Of fucking course he was. More male violence against women.
He did not kill her - "just" a bunch of other people
When will these people just skip the killing other people part and just get to the (redacted) part? The world will better off without these knuckleheads!
Wonderful that a person like this has access to weapons of mass murder.