Mass Murdering is a Way to Get Message

In the article, “Is mass murder becoming a form of protest?” by Lisa Wade. Protesting is a way for people to express how they truly feel about a issue. Whether it would be political, fairness,abortion, homosexuality and many other things that people see as issues.Harmless and peaceful ways to protest are strikes, rallys, marches and a boycott. The hashtag, the hackfirst and shutting down freeways are new ways people are protesting. A psychologist named Michael Biggs did a research on suicide as a form of protest in the 1960’s. People were killing themselves to protest and express how they feel about a certain situation. That is a bit overboard and extreme but people do go to those lengths to try and get a point across. Another form of protest was lynching during the civil rights movements. Lynching was what white people and people who did not want African Americans to be equal used communicate how they feel about African Americans having equal rights. Lynching was hanging people on trees and leaving them for their family, friends and the community to see as a warning.

Nowadays, mass killing has become a popular way for people to protest. The media informs people about the mass murders which gives the people committing the murder more reason to do it. In their mind doing this would get a lot of media attention and would get their point across. Some recent examples of people killing to get their point across, “Dylann Roof wanted to register his discontent with the place of black people in American society, abortion opponent Robert Lewis Dear stormed a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, Omar Matteen likely killed dozens to express his (internalized) disgust for homosexuality, and Gavin Long communicated his sense of rage and helplessness in the face of black deaths by killing police.” (Lisa Wade 3) These examples are just a few situations where people kill because of something they do not agree with so they want everybody to not agree with it. Their idea was that killing people would lessen their rage and get a point across on how this “issue” should be changed.

My interpretation about this article is it’s informative about protests. Lisa Wade explains different types of protest from peaceful ones to very disturbing brutal ones. Omar Matten went on to kill many people because he was disgusted with homosexuality that would be an example of violent protesting. This article confirms that society is changing dramatically to the point where people are starting not to care about human life. Many people think killing innocent humans is a way to get their points across. The reason why I think this is constantly happening is because situations were many people are being killed gains media’s attention. For the killers, I think they are happy and glad that these situations come to light and are being talked about by many people and news outlets. What I dislike about this article is it is not that informative about the mass murders, and she didn’t talk a lot about the minds of these murders. Relevance The article is relevant to sociological imagination.Sociological imagination was created by C. Wright Mills. It is a way to understand the how society and ourselves are related. Also, being able to notice the difference between your own problems and issues in society.

The actual definition of sociological imagination is a relationship between a person’s behavior and experiences and the culture that influences a person’s choice and perceptions. It is a way of seeing and understanding how society is a big influence in our success and failure. Mass murder has become a form of protest. It is now normalized in our society. Killing people to protest has become so common people are not as surprised anymore, and that is the saddest part. Back in society peaceful protesting was a big thing and got a lot of attention, but it has gotten so common that it does not get the attention it did. Our society is developing and changing but not in a good way. A way sociological imagination plays a role in this is people’s behaviors and actions are starting to become very violent. Especially with mass murdering we can already see that many people are adding to it. If you turn on the news, you will see the reporters talking about the lastest public shooting. Many people that commit this crime do not understand the difference between their personal issues and public issues. They believe their personal issues is a public issue. Theory One of the sociological theory I picked is symbolic interactionism. George Herbert Mead is the founder of symbolic interactionism and his student Herbert Blumer broke it down and described it.

Symbolic interactionism is communication through gestures, language and symbols. The perspective is people are a huge part of society and they are the ones creating how it is. Behavior is another form of communication. Observing somebody’s behavior you can understand how they truly feel and what they are thinking by the way they act. For example, a person shooting up an elementary school. That is unacceptable behavior and that shows how they have no sense of caring for human life, especially little kids. While, most of us think murdering kids is the unthinkable. Some don’t care like we do and we can see that through their behavior. The sociological theory symbolic interactionism connects to the article. Symbolic interactionism is understanding a person’s behavior through gestures, language and actions. Protesting is related to symbolic interactionism because when protesting people use language and symbols to try to communicate their message across.

For the mass murders, their way of protesting is more brutal and they are more ruthless. Their way of getting a message across is by taking human life. This could be a way they use murder as a symbolic way to communicate their frustrations with something going on in the word that they do not agree with. Protests are usually peaceful with messages written on poster that a group of people hold up and chant about. Lately, it has come to light that people are killing to get their point clear and across. Reasons for why they might be doing this is because it is a way for the new’s to get ahold of this information and present it to the society. It goes to show that this is what will happen if a change is not made. Symbolic interactionism related to this because the theory explains how one’s behavior tries to give a message out. Mass murdering is a way for them to get their message across to our society.