The Crime of Fame

Why is that some folks will do anything for fame - if for only the proverbial fifteen minutes?  Recently, some poor misguided souls have taken their lives, publicly and graphically, on Facebook and other social media sites.  One, a 49-year-old man, and another, a 12-year old girl, died by their own hands on live streaming video.  One by a gunshot to the head, and one by hanging, respectively.  What can be said of a society that craves this kind of morbidity? And what can be said about someone who wishes to die - right in your face?  What kind of last word is that? 

Thankfully, those videos have since been taken down, although the girl's video stayed up nearly two weeks.

Is the need for fame - or perhaps just fleeting recognition - so strong that some require that you - and we - watch them die?  Perverse.

But even more perverse is the serial killer.  He kills for his own edification in living, not the victims' in death.  And while his motivations may be varied and many, the end result is that someone is dead, and lives are shattered. This month a killing spree has occurred in a quiet oak-canopied residential neighborhood in Tampa, Florida.  Three people have been shot and killed within a week, and law enforcement, while struggling for clues, have acknowledge that the victims knew each other, and the killings are surely related.  Meanwhile, the fear is palatable in Seminole Heights, as residences are vigilant and wary.  Many think the two 20s-somethng men and the 30s-something woman were killed as a result of a personal relationship somehow gone bad.  Others think there was only one target, and the other two were killed as a way to avert suspicion.  Still others think it is all random, and the killer seeks what he perceives to be fame and glory.  We will find out eventually.  

The dead tell no tales

But perhaps we should take a look in the mirror as a society.  What is it about this cult of death that so fascinates?  I'm the last one to blame society for a single individual's madness, but perhaps the graphic violence in movies, in video games, and in the news related to Muslim jihad have rendered our sensibilities a little hardened.  And that has defined deviancy down. Something seems to be going on that desensitizes us to graphic murder.  For instance, some unknown number of shooters just killed 50 concert-goers and wounded five hundred more in Las Vegas earlier this month.   Five hundred fifty people left with shattered lives, and all within ten minutes.  Unfathomable.

At the end of the day, we have people killing others - or themselves - solely for notoriety, either instantly or posthumously.  No matter.

That's the evil nature of the crime of fame.