The rise of “0 to 100” killers who go from watching torture, mutilation and beheading videos in their bedrooms to committing murder suggests there could be a link between extreme violence online and in real life, experts have said.

Criminal justice experts advocated a new approach, inspired by counter-terrorism, to identify an emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions, after cases such as Nicholas Prosper, who killed his mother and siblings and planned a primary school massacre.

Jonathan Hall, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said there was a “new threat cohort” combining terrorists who were radicalised online and those who had “gone down a rabbit hole and into a dark world”.

He said: “There are quite a lot of similarities: they are isolated loners, boys rather than girls; the internet is obviously central; quite a high proportion have neurodivergence.

  • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    This is based on speculation.

    Based on the observations in article itself, many people have watched horrific videos and have not gone on to commit any crimes.

    • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Wilson said that for the past five years he had asked 300 first-year criminology students to raise their hand if they had watched a beheading video online. “All of them have,” he said, adding that this prevalence was reflected in an increase in these crimes.

      Yeah, this passage in particular was a bit of a head scratcher. Like, you could pick any societal change since the adoption of the internet and say the same thing. If anything it indicates the opposite.

    • Paragone@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      the measured change-in-behavior of recruits, through the decades, is real,

      & it is the realistic-simulation-of-murder which is most-effective in creating populations who easily murder.

      https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Generation-Aggression-Psychology-Killing-ebook/dp/B01922I1U2/

      I know that that measurement of actual-behavior is in the beginning of that book, & if they’ve got the spine to stand on actual-fact, instead of ideology, then it’d be a much better place to look, than would ideology, for people with intellectual-integrity/scientific-integrity.

      “On Killing” & “Things They Cannot Say” also are on-topic, though less-directly, ttbomk.

      https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society-ebook/dp/B00J90F8W2/

      https://www.amazon.com/Things-They-Cannot-Say-Soldiers-ebook/dp/B0089LOKE4/

      Back in WW1, it was damn-near impossible to get new soldiers to actually shoot another person.

      Nowadays? Mass-shootings are a form of “sport” among some cultures.

      Yes, that is actual significant-change in psychology & behavior, & yes, it does have a cause, as the Assassination Generation book is on.

      Here are some actual-numbers:

      https://www.thetrace.org/2024/12/data-gun-violence-shooting-stats-america/

      ( only 500 mass-shootings in the US, last year! improvement! )

      _ /\ _

    • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 days ago

      I guess you missed this part … “quite a high proportion have neurodivergence”

      It’s simply pointing to the fact that many of the predominately male mass murderers are neurodivergent.

      Stop comparing those on the outer edges of the bell curve with those who make up the body of the bell.

          • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 day ago

            Ok, I took you as saying that neurodivergent was a good signal but yeah it’s 15-20% of the population.

            It’s less specific than other factors such as being an adolescent male which is a stronger signal but also not a requirement.

            It actually looks like lonliness with some disconnect from society is the strongest signal. And that’s why actual research should been done rather than some random speculative report full of personal biases.