Why are loners made out to be murderers and rapists?

[Deja Q]

Suicide-prone may be an accurate and noble assessment...


But murderers and raqpists? :wow: Why?

[Karenca]

1. No, it's not that loners are made out to be murderers

and rapists.

It's that a high percentage of murderers and rapists happen to be loners.

[supernova]

2. Maladaptive traits

they tend, for whatever reason, not to socialize well. Ted Bundy being the odd exception, I think.

Whereas, most of us in this group know how to get on with others, we just choose not to for various reasons. And yes, that includes you to, HT. :hi:

But you're right, they do give the rest of us a bad name.

[Louisiana1976]

12. And their being loners is played up in sensationalistic media like Faux Noise.

[NMMNG]

3. It's a misconception

It isn't loners that are the serial killers, rapists and "mad bombers", but failed joiners. A loner stays away from the crowds by choice, whereas the failed joiner has tried to be a part of the crowd but has been rejected. Accordingly s/he harbors a deep resentment and eventually acts out in one way or another as a form of revenge against those who rejected him/her.

You can read more about it in Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto. (This book also is a wonderful treatise on the joys of being a loner and how loners are not in any way abnormal--it is just others who are unable to comprehend them.)

[mainegreen]

4. I like that: Failed joiner

never heard that term before. Nice distiction.

[NMMNG]

5. It's even mentioned in connection to a school shooting

Beyond these particular similarities, experts on school shootings said Mr. Weise appears to fit squarely into a pattern of disaffected youth who struggle to fit in at homogenous schools in rural or suburban areas, then erupt in violence to seek attention, enact revenge and gain power over people who have taunted them. They interpret his Internet postings as an outcast's quest to belong to something larger, another common thread in school shootings. Reports of Mr. Weise drawing gory pictures in class were classic warning signs of what was to come, they say.

"It typically happens in small, remote towns because the protagonist is a boy who is socially incapable in many ways," said Katherine Newman, a sociologist at Princeton University and the editor of "Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings," published last year. "This is someone who is a failed joiner, who is repeatedly trying to gain access to peer groups that reject him."

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/03/23a.php

[LWolf]

6. There is an assumption that

loners are somehow "outcasts." That they spend time alone, not because they are made that way, but because there is something wrong with them that "normal" people can't deal with.

There is a cultural belief that there is something "wrong" with being a loner, just as there are other widespread, erroneous beliefs that those who are not of your religion or race or sexual orientation, etc. are somehow "deviant."

I just got done rereading "A Separate Peace" to make sure I could put it on the shelf in my classroom safely. I noticed that the blurb on the back of the book describes Gene as "a lonely, introverted intellectual." Whose insecurities, of course, lead to the death of his more outgoing "better" roommate/friend. Stereotyping in classical literature, written the year before I was born.

[Odin2005]

7. Our society has an anti-introvert bias.

Many people equate introversion with being anti-social or somehow else not mentally right, which is BS. Us introverts are not anti-social in the pathological sense of hating social interaction, we just are mentally drained by too much of it during a span of time (as opposed to extroverts, who are mentally drained by not getting enough social interaction). Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who invented the terms introverted and extroverted, described the two as the difference between adapting the self to the world(extroversion) and adapting the world to the self (introversion)

[lizerdbits]

8. Mentally drained

That describes me pretty well after being around people too much, I just get tired. I usually get labeled as 'weird.' I was discussing with a coworker the other day that a lot of us who work in labs because we like to just go off and do our own thing are labeled this way. That's the nice way, it's often 'anti social.'

[NYC_SKP]

10. I agree. And the social pressure to be more social makes me all the less interested.

Oh, the pressure for conformity.

[rcrush]

9. I went to a comedy club once

And I was the only one there alone and the comic guy pointed at me and said I looked like a serial killer. I just looked at him like huh?

[NYC_SKP]

11. Do you really think suicide-prone is even accurate or fail?

It might fit a theatrical, fictional prototype, but that would be the same as the murderer/rapist stereotype.

I don't know that any data support any of these, maybe it just cultural mythology, perpetuated in the arts and media?

Or maybe it's projection by those more outgoing than ourselves, like "dude, if I was a loner, I'd kill myself or commit crimes!".

[david13]

13. I wonder if that is really the case. I understand that some are

loner types, or failed joiners, or joiner rejects. Like unibomber. But a lot are not. If they are very sucessful at their murdering and raping, they have to have social skills. And one social skill they all seem to use is the cover story. Wife and kids, and a 'normal' or ordinary job.
Bundy wasn't married, but he didn't need that cover story, didn't need to pose into that cover, because he was otherwise so socially skilled.
He could chit chat with the young ladies and make them feel right at ease.
But look at btk. The usual wife and kids cover, even the church thing.
So I wonder if it really is the rule.
dc