I’ve been watching the Evo tournament on twitch all weekend. I got way more into fighting games these last few years in large part because of how entertaining Evo is.
And now the Tekken 7 Top 8 is going on. If you don’t know, Tekken 7 is probably the most entertaining game to watch in the world. Fuck your Fortnite. Fuck fucking whatever. Tekken is incredible when the people playing actually know what they’re doing.
Simply incredible.
I mean, Tekken 7 is fun enough to play even if you don’t put that much effort into it, but then you kind of have to go into it prepared for the fact that the cool shit will be happening directly upon your ass.
The tournament is more like proper sports, where I can yell “What the fuck are you doing?” to players who might be the only ones in the world who actually know what the fuck they’re doing.
But I can only half focus on this tournament right now because people keep fucking saying shit about the recent shooting. Sure, whichever one you’re thinking of. I’m talking about that one.
Like a lot of people, I read about these shootings and I’m a little disturbed by how numb I am to it at this point. It’s because the frequency of them that I think the outcry has gotten louder as of late, but as far as our day-to-day lives, we’ve just accepted this constant fear under the surface of everything that there is now one more “out of nowhere” evil way we can get the curtain drawn on us on any given day at any given place.
We’ve basically accepted that fear a long time ago. I mean, we had to. Our political leaders aren’t gonna do shit about it. Psycho dipshits can get guns, and worse yet, they throw themselves into completely fucking idiotic ideologies that tell them that they should. Meanwhile, the rest of us still have to go out and live, even if it means dying.
We gotta work. And if we gotta work, we damn sure are gonna enjoy the time we’re not working.
But it does make our world just a little bit scarier while we do all that. And that sucks shit.
(Meanwhile in Tekken 7, American player Anakin just lost a tough match against Korean player Knee. Knee moves on to Grand Finals to face Pakistan’s Arslan Ash, who looks damn near unbeatable in this game.)
Somebody on twitter—the place where everyone has good ideas—was talking about how despite it being a clear republican deflection when it comes to these shootings, mental health is a clear factor in them. That it’s honest and sincere to say there’s something mentally wrong with these murderers.
Which is like…yeah. Yeah, we would all agree with that. Sure.
(Holy shit, Knee had Ash on the ropes in game 1, and Ash just rallied hard to take it. But Knee fired back with a massive demon combo to take game 2 and…just go fucking watch this tournament! Jesus christ!)
There is no doubt a huge mental health issue in this country and the world at large. And there’s certainly no doubt that somebody willing to murder a ton of innocent strangers has more than one thing wrong in their fucking brain.
The problem with saying we need to address this with the same effort we need to address gun control or hateful, violent ideologies is that mental illness is such a broad umbrella term that it’s basically useless in this context.
It’s almost impossible to come up with a thorough diagnosis for these people because they’re usually dead in a shootout by the time anybody realizes there was something actually wrong with them. And you can’t really get an idea for their illness from a “I’m gonna make myself a monster and get on the news” facebook post.
So specifically in the context of preventing shootings, how the fuck do you combat these through the lens of mental health? You can’t. Not really in any direct way, at least. You could find plenty of people with the same issues as these shooters who don’t go on fucking rampages, so trying to solve the problem through mental health is maybe the least constructive and—for those who live under the umbrella term of mentally ill—probably the most offensive. People don’t want to be lumped in with these fucking guys, and they especially don’t when there’s a very real chance that instead of “helping” the mentally ill, people may decide the proper course of action is to call the cops to fuck the mentally ill up.
As somebody else pointed out in the same twitter conversation massive amounts of women and people of color struggle with mental illnesses, but it’s constantly young white men falling in with shitty ideas and acting on them. Not a main point, but just also something we have to consider when people parade the “mental health issue” argument.
Yes, we absolutely need a more understanding, knowledgeable society when it comes to mental health. We absolutely need easier access to resources to help ourselves and others deal with the problems that come about when human nature and modern society just don’t fucking work together.
But the reality is that until you find that one, common needle in the fucked up haystack that is the minds of these fuckers, bringing up mental health will always ultimately be a deflection from the factors we can directly address.
Whatever issues affected these shooters certainly put them on the path to discovering the fucked-up, intolerant ideologies that they chose to give multiple innocent lives for. And through better mental healthcare and awareness you might even be able to catch some of these people before they throw their lot in with these truly heinous fucking terrorist groups.
But nobody would bet on that chance alone to prevent these things. As I said before, there’s no doubt that there’s some mental issues at play if you’re willing to kill a fuck ton of strangers and ultimately yourself. But there’s also hateful ideologies taking these troubled people in. Feeding their fear and anger, until it erupts into tragedy. And there are guns, that open the door and turn those violent ideas and plans on message boards into actual devastation.
Sure, a mental health issue probably connects to the hateful ideology. But again, if you don’t have a common thread in mind, you’re throwing darts at a spinning board. Who the fuck knows what specifically sets somebody down that path? It’s probably different degrees of many factors for every incident. And by choosing to fixate on that, you’re biting on the deflection tactic that can’t realistically relieve the ultimate issue of mass shootings, and has no actual citizen’s best interest at heart.
That’s why people dismiss it so harshly, even if we reasonably understand its place as a factor.
So mental health can connect to the ideology. But the evil ideology DIRECTLY connects to the fucking violent ideas and plannings of these incidences. And the guns themselves DIRECTLY connect to the tragic outcome.
So that’s why people fixate on those other factors. Because if you’re bringing up mental health as your response to these events, you’re actually not saying anything at all. And worse, you’re giving the fuckers with the power to change things an escape route. They don’t have to answer for their collective failure towards humanity because it’s a problem wrapped up in broad term that can’t actually be addressed in a way that will clearly and directly result in less shootings.
Or worse, they think it can be addressed. And cops are going to start killing even more innocent people because they seemed “dangerous”.
Ash won the Tekken 7 Evo tournament. Hell of a match. Great weekend for fighting games. Kind of sucked shit for everything else.
Bye.