Why do some respond to depraved/criminal behavior with violent fantasies?

Gleeful anticipations of prison rape, a desire to see hunters get shot, the ever-popular "wish I had five minutes alone with that guy" bravado--what drives this sort of reaction? What drives it amongst otherwise non-violent, pacifistic people in particular?

Is it a sort of hyperbolic way to express how evil you think the depraved/criminal act is? "Only terrible evil such as this could inspire violent fantasy x?" Is it more honest? Would the people who have these fantasies really enjoy seeing them come to fruition? Do people think causing trauma to those they consider depraved is helpful or just?

It just seems like completely weird behavior to me. Anyone who has this reaction care to explain where they're coming from?

When you get pissed at somebody, your body is inclined to take action.

When you see Rush Limbaugh, you just want to smash it with a comically large mallet.

No, I don't think so. But I'd worry about any who really would.

Still, I think it's not such a weird reaction. It's "hitting back"--it's a fairly natural instinct to want to defend yourself, and sometimes, certain stories of certain violent crimes make us feel defensive and make us want to react violently, I think.

I feel that way, sometimes, when I hear about children being victimized. I think it's something a bit primal.

I may have a disorder.

:P

I don't want anybody to be raped or shot, but sometimes I see something or hear something so vile that I wouldn't mind getting a punch in etc on that person because they would deserve something. To me, it's just a way of saying you hope somebody gets the justice they have coming to them.. Like I know if I hear that some guy raped and killed a little kid, that no way would I ever be allowed in a room with them or anything, I doubt I would even really do it if I had the chance. It's a way of expressing anger in that instance, almost like saying a few good cuss words. It makes little sense but it makes you feel a little better in some way.

They're very insecure people, and talking tough makes them feel better.

Plus, the internet is often a catalyst for dumbasses talking trash.

:rofl:

having somebody actually be violent.

that they could never do in real life but can pretend for all on the net. they dont realize how foolish, stupid, ignorant they sound.

At least that is my take on it.

And I'm not saying that I'm particularly non-violent or pacifistic either.

Violence is an outlet of anger.

When some cause an emotion of anger that is of remarkable levels, it is natural to want to cause violence to that person.

And yes, when I speak such 'fantasies' I'd love to see them come to fruition.

Horrible analogy. Try again. :hi:

er... Sorry, I was just having a dream about the Olive Garden!!!

Talk - Action = Shit.

Great song.

I see it as an outlet for anger.
Throw in a touch of 'I wanna play god and bring down my wrath upon these horrible sinners'

It seems to be a old phenomenon in humans.Just about every ancient holy text or spiritual teachings have some version of 'Vengeance is mine,sayeth the lord...'.

Somebody had a natural emotional reaction that led to a fantasy of commiting violence against someone that they decided to carry to fruition.

Man is an animal, animals are violent We mask it with civility, but remove that thin veneer and what we as humans are comes pouring out.

to the point we are all animals with no control..... that being the case, why would we point a finger at a man raping a 3 yr old

Is a means to control the behavior of people in such a way as to ensure the greatest benefit to the maximum number of people, counterbalanced with the amount of personal liberty you are willing to extend to each individual.Look at the great track record of "civilization" Germany in 1928 was the most liberal society on earth.Less than a decade later they were mass murders. Cambodia, France during the revolution, etc. That is the entire point of Jekyll and Hyde.It is the antisocial animal (Id) living in every man. We punish that man because his actions are totally reprehensible. But why did he commit such an act in the first place? We have control, top the extent that the heavy hand of society has taught us that. Raise a group of people in the wild , absent civilization, see what you get. They will be peaceful about as long as it takes them to find another group of people to enslave or kill.Mark Twain best observed that of all the animals on the earth, only the wolverine and man killed for pleasure, and not only out of need.

actually, I find their exhibitionist sanctimony to be the more annoying

who turned out to be self righteous assholes.

I find it hard to read the OP and the thread to its PENULTIMATE climax.

Testosterone poisoning?

Somehow, the fantasy is to lacerate someone's body somewhere to create a new anus, presumably for some kind of forcible, painful and degrading sodomy. Quite a charming image, isn't it? Still, it's pronounced all the time, and with great delight, just as is the delight of how Obama's deliberately lying to and misleading the Republicans with his supergenius chess moves to hang them from the rafters of ages soon to be past.

So much of this is people parroting the spew of others without even thinking what they're talking about. With a language so rich in literal imagery, it's amazing how many people don't even stop to think about what the fuck the catch phrase they're perpetuating even IS.

Here's a pet peeve: bailing out. I'm firmly convinced that virtually everyone using this now-tired metaphor have it completely wrong: they think it's parachuting from a plane. To bail out of an airplane is to abandon something to save one's own skin. The corporate version of a bail out is the ORIGINAL metaphor for bailing out: to use a bailing bucket or bailing sponge to expel water that's been taken on by a troubled vessel IN AN EFFORT TO SAVE THE SHIP, PASSENGERS, CREW AND CARGO. It's not an escape to save one's own ass, it's an attempt to rescue the venture from failure. Perhaps it's a fruitless endeavor, but it's

Back to the bizarre, vicious, flesh-rending, symbolic anal-rape glee of weaklings reveling in seeing people humiliated in public. This is a very nasty downside to the downtrodden: reckless revenge. We've always seen far too many bits of desired retaliation within leftism, and it's seen by the attacks on mortgage interest deductions and other rages against some of us of the responsible, working middle class. The responsibility of being a member of a pluralist society, especially at a time of great upheaval, is to be understanding, charitable and not on a selfish bender of rage borne of frustration at one's own misfortune.

One's worth as a person isn't shown at one's lavish surprise birthday party, but at times like these. Mercifully, many are being rather level-headed, but enough have succumbed to the traditional self-indulgence of selfish retaliation that it's hard sometimes to see the overall good in humanity.

One last rant: the sheer ugliness of personal, physical attacks. Insulting someone's physical appearance, especially for things over which one has no control, basically erases any credibility of the speaker/poster, and it simply increases the white noise and drowns out the heart and soul.

Nice thread, old chum; nice to see you back here after so long.

I'm thinking...

25% are merely visceral releases (simple venting)

25% are engaging in self-validating posturing (keyboard commandos)

25% are projecting the aggressors crime onto their own families ("if he did that to my daughter...)

25% are simple and vulgar ('nuff said)

Why you ask do I post these thoughts or have these feelings? I put myself in the situation, and think what would I want to happen to that man if it were my child.

My question is opposite, how could anyone advocate on behalf of these animals? The true animals are these men, and like rabid dogs should be put down. They are a detriment to our society, and it has been proven over and over again that no matter how much therapy they receive they can not be fixed.

It is a visceral feeling at the pit of my stomach when I hear a 3 yr old was raped and the man video taped it. No shadow of a doubt he did it. I don't want him raped, or maimed , I want him gone so that he can never do this to another child again.

Is this right? I don't know, but it is my gut reaction. I think of the pain this helpless child suffered. I think of how trusting and little they are and how destroyed physically, and mentally they must be after such an encounter. I also think that if there is a possibility this person could do it to another why take that chance. Maybe a civilized community can not subscribe to such actions, however, a parent can individually think of their worst fear played out on some other child and wish for the criminal to die.

"My question is opposite, how could anyone advocate on behalf of these animals? "

Well, we act like grown, detached adults. We recognize that we aren't the victims of the crime. Any more than any of the other dozens of times a day this happens and doesn't get reported on the news. And that there's this thing called "due process" and that it's pretty much a good thing. And that vigilante justice and cruel and unusual punishments are bad things. Same reason we didn't support torture, murder and child rape at Abu Ghraib for revenge for doin' the 9-11.

"Put 'em on an island! Blow up the island!"

-Early Kyler.

is already so detached that is why so many children continue to get beaten and raped with no reports. Even when people around the child heard their cries, many will walk by a scene and deem it better not to get involved.

I never said my feelings or reactions were right, in fact I clearly said they were not. I am glad that you are in possession of a superior command of your emotions, but I am not when it comes to children being raped.

I just think you enjoy being outraged.

Or you think that your violent fantasies somehow help children.

I know that he broke into a home, stole a 3-year-old, took her out in the woods, raped her, and dumped her by the side of the road to die. Fortunately, she was found wandering naked in freezing weather along the side of the road by strangers who took her to the nearest policeman.

But honestly, that is about the worst possible crime I can imagine. :cry:

That man videotaped his rape of a two year old.
The jury had to watch that video. :puke:

Humans seem to be hardwired for vengeance, and it's a fascinating thing to study. This cuts across just about every culture, and in what are considered, fairly or not, more "advanced" societies, this bloodlust has evolved into substitutios for violence, such as our criminal justice system--more "civilized" forms of blood vengeance.

If you really want to get your head around it (and you'll realize there's nothing "weird" about it--not good behavior, certainly, but apparently very much human nature), I highly recommend Rene Girard's book Violence and the Sacred. It's an anthopological treatise that's also been co-opted by psychologists, historians and literature scholars. It's a fascinating read.

Stuff like that just pops into our heads and we have many, many ways of expressing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUaAx0Duqg

I react more strongly emotionally to the vile hateful fantasies than I do to the actual crime. I don't know - my husband tells me that I don't think like normal humans do and honestly I don't feel very attached to this species or like I'm really a member of it and mostly when people go on about human nature or how ALL humans are it doesn't fit me. I'm a mutant.

I actually brought this up in a serial killer thread in the Lounge recently. Serial killers don't bother me. It's the people who cheer when the state kills them that send iced terror running through my veins.

I don't know - I read all the Holocaust books in the local library when I was nine and so the evil that sane normal people are capable of, which is generally evil on a much grander scale and with a much higher body count than your run of the mill serial killer, was deeply impressed on me while my brain was still fairly new and still forming.

hard.

I mean, I can accept that there are people so fucked up by either genetics or envirornment that they do these horrible crimes. It's fucking horrible, but it makes some sort of sense. But the fact that there are the human beings around me are capable of thinking up these violent tortures really fucking chills me.

I've accepted the darkness within me. I know what I'm capable of, and I know that there are circumstances in which I could be pretty fucking scary. Put me into a corner, and I'm capable of murder. I know this. But I'm no torturer, I hate fighting, and I don't enjoy thinking up elaborate tortures for people who have wronged me or society. What I can not get my head around is that, like that child killer, or serial killer, or murderer, every day people are really almost as scary. A trigger is all that is needed.

If you ever get the chance, read the Lucifer Effect. You don't think everyday people can become unhinged and represent the worst of humanity? The book will change your mind.

Stanford Prison Experiment

and the Milgram experiment

These people are lunatics.

and harboring murderous thoughts

But I've always been righteous in my violence. I've never kicked a person who didn't deserve it. And yes causing harm to those who do harm is just and can be quite helpful as an object lesson. Some people are bullies and some people take on the bullies. Most bullies are gutless punks who only victimize those who cannot defend themselves. A good ass kicking is the only thing they understand.

I'm not kidding or using hyperbole when I say I'd happily pull the switch on murderers, rapists and pedophiles. I'm dead serious.

minds and spirits.

What?! You thought I was going elsewhere?

Nope. Small minds. Limited thoughts. Binary thinking. Small "worlds."

And an intense need to prove that all of the above do not apply to them; that they are the "exception."

It's bizarre.

It's very ugly.

It's becoming more common. Yeah, that bothers me.

I don't care to belong to a warrior cult regardless of its nationality.

for any reason whatsoever at any time ever. Never.

I feel nothing but the strongest pity for all of the poor, sad, neanderthals you all are, who cannot help your pathetic animalism, and who think bad thoughts.

You really should try to be more perfect, more Jesus-like - like me in fact. In case I didn't mention it, I don't ever wish any ill upon anybody, no matter what they've done, or to whom. I should be sainted. In fact, I WAS sainted just the other day. But it's really not sufficient recognition of my godliness, since the sainting was performed by animals who can scarcely be termed "human".

It makes me want to kill myself, living with such primitive creatures as you all. Well, it would, except that would be to wish ill upon myself, which I never do. Because I am so highly evolved and perfect.

Petty theft, meh; stealing bread from a child's mouth, not cool; beating up someone weaker than yourself, alarming; murder while in a violent rage, intolerable; child rape, grossly intolerable to the point where the urge to kill the offender is nearly overwhelming.

If it was YOUR 3-year-old daughter who was kidnapped and raped this week, would you not want to kill the guy responsible? :shrug:

That pretty much sums up the evolution of outrage regarding crimes here.

Honestly, this story about the raped and left for dead three year old is so shocking, it's difficult to process. And thinking about a poor baby being subjected to that pain and terror is sickening. I can't help but hope that the perp is punished. And my gut instinct is that he will feel the fear and pain he caused, but I am happy (intellectually) that we have a legal system taht will take care of the punishment.

I don't feel an uncontrollable urge to see violence done to criminals/deviants; that said I can't imagine how I'd feel if the victim were close to me, and wouldn't judge anyone in that situation. What I have trouble understanding is the need to proclaim one's sadistic wishes (real or otherwise) toward a deviant stranger, particularly in a public forum. I'm not clear as to who (if anyone) gets something out of it, let alone what that something would be.

I also am a bit confused by the idea that if you -don't- respond with violent fantasies, somehow you are defending/sympathizing with the criminal/deviant, or support the behavior.

(note that by "criminal/deviant" throughout this thread I'm trying to focus on the really bad shit; the stuff DUers would see as most likely to elicit this behavior)

That is what anonymity does, making one not accountable or responsible for their actions.

I think the expression of violent fantasies is really an expression of anger and disgust. When feelings are that strong, there is a tendency to see it as all-or-nothing.

Unfortunately, there are many other topics that are not as black-and-white as the rape of a three-year old, yet receive equally harsh judgments, with little grey area, throughout DU.

"...fantasies, somehow you are defending/sympathizing with the criminal/deviant, or support the behavior.", etc, its been my experience IRL that some lead charmed lives; they step right off pristine, well balanced birch bark canoes and onto firm dry land, take very few steps by all accounts into a dell filled with four leaf clover lay down in it close their eyes, smile, and start dreaming of slow moving clouds made of cotton candy tracking their lighter than air, breezy blue sky...

For others life can be understood/experienced as more imperative requiring, and I will give you this; timely, morally/ethically balanced, proactive resolutions, but some facets remain in a world where too many have little cares for where their food comes from or why so that...

To see a bag of seeds spread on a cookie sheet is one thing

To see a bag of seeds spread on a cookie sheet and have no wonders about them is another

To see a bag of seeds spread on a cookie sheet is one thing and not understand there are good ones & bad ones could be excused on some grounds of ignorance/unknowing however it is imo that...

To see a bag of seeds spread on a cookie sheet, and know there are good ones & bad ones, yet make no efforts to set aside the good from the bad in the name of what is a presumptive "amongst otherwise non-violent, pacifistic people in particular" is not in my further opinion Lib/Pro by definition it is apathy personified.

Back on jump street it took 8 shrieking years to flush apathy, our apathy; out of the WH. I have no interest in going shit bonkers and taking everyone down who disagrees with me especially violently when some parts society remain self regulatory; but neither am I interested in going back to what is apathy framed within a cotton candy clouds denied innocent little girls by way pernicious violence unanswered

Given my experience of anger, its fantasies, and the destructive impact thereof, I'm not seeing things that way. To hijack your analogy, it's more akin to furiously flinging the bad seeds across the room for being bad. Or shooting your TV, or punching a hole in the wall, or cursing a traffic light. There's no appreciable gain in mixing anger with judgment, except for the personal emotional payoff. The irony is that the anger fantasies of the deviant criminal are sought precisely for the same sort of personal emotional payoff--the difference being only that his acts which bring such about are almost universally reviled by society. Anger directed at those almost universally reviled by society, of course, is accepted and even celebrated by society, but I'm not sure how that makes the behavior any more desirable.

What does anger teach us about justice? Morality? Nothing, as anger is far more subjective than judgment. If I get angrier than you about some given atrocity, am I necessarily more just, wise, or moral? Are you apathetic because you are not angry enough? Will I need to see some display of rage from you to be satisfied you appreciate the severity of an atrocity?

You, yourself, could have sent the Jews back out to sea...but they were still being killed

I can only assume your heart's not really in this debate, or you don't understand the grave impact of internet disagreements. :D What's the point of discussing justice unless our egos are constantly at stake? Nothing is more hateful to such discussions than the unemotional Dukakis in us, right?

disassociated from the larger picture :thumbsup:

:D

Either I'm not making sense, or making distinctions about expressing anger where nobody else believes they exist. I can at least say I have no argument with feeling anger. Did I mention I lapsed as a Catholic when I was ten? :P

Therefore, the harshest punishment that can realistically be given out here within my ideals and understanding of the justice system is a long (perhaps lifelong) stay in prison.

Sending this creep to the same prison as the dude who stole my computer, or some guy who was busted with a trunk full of drugs, or any other number of crimes that people get long prison stays for seems to me to be a grossly ineffective response to the magnitude of the crime. Especially since I feel like we're a society that doesn't care about children, and doesn't punish child molesters harshly enough. If every person who raped a child was guaranteed life in prison with no possibility of parole, that would be just to me.

My urge to do violence to these people is controllable, but it's there.

When I posted my other thread, I had just heard about what that monster did to that little girl, and I was enraged. Instead of driving up to Yreka and trying to break into the jail to beat the crap out of him, I expressed my anger on the internet. Other people joined me in feeling angry about it, and no real-world violence was done.

Vindictiveness or revenge is not my thing, but I will do whatever it takes to stop someone from victimizing the defenseless and have no guilt doing so. No matter who they are.

People have the right and even the duty to prevent crimes like this when possible (evidently we are talking about the rape/kidnap of the 3-year-old) and can use whatever force is necessary to prevent harm to the child. Doing so would be heroic, like the detective that shot the guy attacking the judge. Justifiable homicide. But that isn't what we are talking about here. We are talking the lynching of the guy based on reports from the same media that convinced so many Iraq was responsible for 9/11. What is amazing is that so many recognize the fear mongering there but in many ways do not recognize it here in the states. The http://www.innocenceproject.org/">Innocence Project finds too many wrongful convictions, after all the due process afforded, for me to trust the media enough to pre-convict before ANY due process.

That's the difference.

Public exultation in anger leaves me pretty cold, so I'm interested what others see in it.

This is true for most people. Violence, real or fantasy, is a preprogrammed outlet, and likely evolved for social reasons.

Hopefully it doesn't happen. But to sum up what such a person's point would be: I feel that anger is hardly the only or most effective outlet for one's emotional reaction to an overwhelming calamity. That said, anger honestly felt is not my problem--my problem is with the strange violent fantasies, publicly expressed, that seem to follow these emotional cases. That is what I have trouble understanding.

It is, however, an outlet, and so I confess I'm not entirely certain what the point of the question is. To state that people do not act rationally, even with regard to their own emotional state, when they think emotionally?

"I feel that anger is hardly the only or most effective outlet for one's emotional reaction to an overwhelming calamity. "

Coming from you that is totally absurd.

There are also always people who do a very good job of instilling mental blocks against certain behaviors, which is sometimes admirable (such as pacifists) and sometimes pathetic (such as "ex-gays"), but should not be taken as representative of the human condition.

It's a very human impulse to want to see dissenters and criminals punished. It enhances our own security when someone else is being expelled from the tribe. More egregious crimes merely lessen any guilt we might feel over our schadenfreude, and if it happens to strangers we never met and never will, it's free, so to speak.

It's also cathartic (c.f. Two-Minute Hate). Every once in a while we need to vilify someone.

The Amber Alert probably saved this child's life. Here are the charges as filed at County of Siskiyou County Superior Court.

They include 3 counts of http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/288.7.html">288.7(a). Each carries 25 years to life.

Even the charges are difficult to read. Imagining the acts is horrendous.

The anger and rage is justified but I'll wait for more facts to substantiate the allegations.

.... and rage at one's own helplessness.

If a person does not feel even a fleeting visceral emotional response upon hearing of a particularly brutal/heinous crime, then I would honestly question whether that person has the ability to fully empathize with others. To hear of rape, abuse, murder, etc. and not imagine for a moment the pain and terror the victim must have felt removes one from the human condition. I would be exceedingly alarmed if someone said that they did not feel such a response. But your question is not about the response so much as about the need to post about it online, so hence the public affirmation of the brutality of the crime. It is a bonding ritual, in a way; a social confirmation that we - ie, "normal people" - are horrified and shocked by this act of depraved evil. Because such crimes inspire such strong feelings of revulsion (towards the perpetrator) and empathy (for the victim), there will be a variety of base responses, ranging from sorrow to anger to shock.

A third component of this response is rage. I think very few people are satisfied with the state of society. Justice is rarely, if ever, effectively served; criminals both large (the Bush administration) and small (rapists, pedophiles, murderers) often evade true punishment for their crimes or manage to eke out a slap on the wrist far disproportionate to the magnitude of their crime. Meanwhile, most people find themselves, in the scope of things, helpless and at the mercy of the whims of those whose reckless disregard for others has created the mess we are in. Now imagine the helplessness of a parent whose child has been abducted, raped, and murdered. To know that your child, whose welfare and safety is entirely your charge, has been desecrated horribly by forces beyond your control - and to realize further then that the punishment for the monster that hurt your baby is *also* out of your control, subject to the whims of an often capricious and corrupt judicial system. Something precious has just been stolen violently from you, and you are literally powerless - powerless to stop it and powerless to do anything about it, ever. Empathy enables us to put ourselves in those parents' shoes, even if we do not know the victim - hell, even if we don't have children of our own. If you can imagine the pain of the parent whose child has been raped, it is not such a stretch, then, to feel the anger, the rage, at the utter helplessness and injustice of the situation.

I don't know if that answers your question. I honestly don't think such responses are "weird" at all - they are perfectly human. And I find them far, far less offensive than the sanctimonious pacifist nazis who swarm such threads to impress upon all their intellectual and evolutionary superiority at harboring no anger or hatred towards the offender, as if apathy in the face of evil were a virtue.

"To hear of rape, abuse, murder, etc. and not imagine for a moment the pain and terror the victim must have felt removes one from the human condition."

That is precisely what some feel when they read the comments of further brutalization of rape and murder for MORAL reasons. The logic is also faulty because it assumes those who object did not feel the same anguish as you do, but perhaps they simply reacted to it differently.

"A third component of this response is rage. I think very few people are satisfied with the state of society."

Americans have never been safer than they are today but the http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=2898636&page=1"> 'Fear Industrial Complex' would convince us otherwise. Far from perfect, granted, but "the state of society" will never be perfect. Do we do away with due process nonetheless? Do we do "trials by media" and vote innocent or guilty by on-line poll and have live executions online immediately after if guilty? There may be far less crime in a Saddam Hussein "state of society" but is that what we want, to become an axis of evil?

"Now imagine the helplessness of a parent whose child has been abducted, raped, and murdered. To know that your child, whose welfare and safety is entirely your charge, has been desecrated horribly by forces beyond your control - and to realize further then that the punishment for the monster that hurt your baby is *also* out of your control, subject to the whims of an often capricious and corrupt judicial system."

The "capricious and corrupt judicial system" that convicted John Couey? The bizarre implication is that the "capricious and corrupt judicial system" will enrage every "parent whose child has been abducted, raped, and murdered" because the culprit will be set free, which is of course false.

Empathy does not have to be an either/or emotion. One can have empathy for the crime victim and have enough empathy left over to wish due process and the rule of law still prevails. And then there is the http://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/death-penalty/dpstudy.html"> brutalization effect (homicides spike after executions). Trial by media is "weird."

EDIT: The media is overall one giant troll that loves the flame war nation. It loves to incite riots and instill fear but rarely offers any real solutions.

Many crimes are horrifying. Even to the extent it's possible to put oneself in the victim's shoes, the terror, trauma and grief would be unimaginable. But what does this have to do with anger? What does empathy have to do with anger? I find the idea of anger being the only "honest" avenue to justice or sociopolitical activism to be completely offensive. The idea that anyone who is not angry is by definition apathetic I find equally offensive. I won't judge the subjective reactions of people, but I am confused by the phenomenon of sharing violent fantasies publicly, embellishing them, sustaining them, and glorying in them. That's the behavior that weirds me out, not the fact that someone simply feels anger.

Moreover, these contradictorily sustained and exhibited violent fantasies are completely useless in and of themselves--what truly serves the causes you mention isn't public exultation in anger and visceral emotion; the true changes come by calm judgment and years of hard work. The sanctimony you mention is an epidemic amongst those with anger fantasies--they would sooner see themselves engaged in violent protest, manning the barricades, dying for a cause, than they would imagine themselves working in boring fashion for six or seven years in order to actually make a discernible difference.

Anger honestly felt I have no problem with, but I don't see what's gained by publicly exulting in it. I certainly don't see it as the only alternative to apathy.

But it IS an honest reaction, which is what you seemed puzzled over in your OP. It comes down to personality type, I suppose - some people, upon hearing of such crimes, would be inclined to feel despair or sorrow or an almost painfully felt compassion for the victim. Others might instinctively feel fury at the evil of the offender. I don't think it's right to say that one reaction is more "human" or more acceptable than the other.

As to your general point about "public exultation," I find most orgiastic expressions of internet bravado to be distasteful and dishonestly self-promoting, so I am certainly not in disagreement with you. I just don't particularly think the bloodthirsty revenge swarm is any more or less offensive than the sanctimonious pacifist swarm, just as I don't particularly see a distinction between rabid ideological left-wing internet warriors and rabid ideological right-wing internet warriors. Bombastic anonymous blowhards of any stripe are tiresome.

When I hear about someone doing that, I just want to crush their windpipe with my bare ahdns and watch their eyes bug out.

meanwhile, one of your post below:

"What I have trouble understanding is the need to proclaim one's sadistic wishes (real or otherwise) toward a deviant stranger, particularly in a public forum."

is odd b/c you have established a reputation as one who does this yourself.