mokie | Let's play Armchair Profilers!

In November 2007, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker:

In the mid-nineties, the British Home Office analyzed a hundred and eighty-four crimes, to see how many times profiles led to the arrest of a criminal. The profile worked in five of those cases. That’s just 2.7 per cent... ("Real psychics: Criminal profiling and the F.B.I.")

The point Gladwell makes is that criminal profiling, despite its high profile in recent years, and maybe despite the best intentions of the profilers themselves, is nothing more than the old-fashioned cold reading practiced by psychics and televangelists: a few reasonable deductions mixed with a handful of okay assumptions and a lot of iffy guesses, couched in language so vague as to be realistically useless.

I mention this first because it's interesting, and second, because as a new friend (hi!) pointed out, the profilers have gathered around the Aurora shooting, all twitching and bitching. They're having trouble working with the reality they've got--the kind of profile they would come up with if they were looking for a suspect doesn't fit the suspect they have at all, and he's not giving them anything to work with. No blue collar job, no criminal history, no masturbatory basement lair. He doesn't even have a Facebook account! (Gasp!) Someone even brought up the tried-and-true boogeyman of video games, but the killer's game of choice was Guitar Hero.

So here's my profile on the killer:

He's an average student in a tough field of study. He wants to make a name for himself, but it's not going to be in neuroscience.
He claimed to be the Joker, but in red hair and body armor. He hasn't actually seen the recent Batman movies, but is aware of the popularity of Heath Ledger's Joker, and the controversy around the character. He wants to make a name for himself, and latching onto that image is, he thinks, a good way to start.
He may have the The Dark Knight's Joker confused with Batman Forever's Riddler. That is both sad and hilarious at the same time. If true, this suggests that he is not a nerd or a geek, as they would be aware of this difference, but that he would pretend to know such things if it got people to pay attention to him. In other words, he is a douchebag.
He allegedly asked one of his jailers how the movie ends. This has been interpreted by the media as a sign of how mentally out of touch he is. If we examine the question in the context of a screenplay, however, you see that it would play well as an action movie one-liner. From this, I suspect the killer really wants the world to think of him as a bad ass, and, based on that, it must really chafe his ass that the line did not play the way he anticipated. (Well played, media.)
Who tries to pull off action movie one-liners in real life? Douchebags.
According to his jailers, he's now claiming amnesia. I think we can look at this as, "This really didn't work out the way I wanted, I don't want to play this anymore."

In summary: I think he's just a douchebag who wants to make a name for himself. But it's just a guess.

[Related posts: We never learn. / Let's play Armchair Profilers!]

Current Mood: cynical

Profile

mokie

January 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Black Lace by nornoriel

Page generated Sunday, 15 June 2025 02:59 am

About dream/reading tags

y-* tags categorize dreams.

For types: beyond the obvious, there are dreamlets (very short dreams), stubs (fragment/outline of a partially-lost dream), gnatter (residual impression of a lost dream).

For characters: there are roles (characters fitting an archetype), symbols (characters as symbols), and sigils (recurring figures with a significance bigger than a single dream's role/symbolism).

x-* tags categorize books.

Material is categorized primarily by structure, style and setting. If searching for a particular genre, look for the defining features of that genre, e.g. x-form:nonfic:bio, x-style:horror, x-setting:dystopian.

Tags

absinthe-minded [7]
absolutely scrumtrulescent! [13]
adorable plague vectors [1]
aha! [18]
all is full of love [6]
altared slates [7]
and to your right are wing-gremlins [3]
and yet it moves [8]
anonymice and orthophants [8]
anxiety soup [7]
apocalypse wow! [13]
apropos or no [10]
archies in their bunkers [9]
argument for hermitage [13]
arse drink feck girls [10]
as you wish [5]
astronaut sniper [1]
aw hell no [13]
baa [1]
back to the sad mines [5]
behold mah belly [5]
being of sound mind and body [12]
bridge for sale [14]
bunnucular facilities [3]
but wait! [8]
can't brain today [6]
can't sleep tim curry will eat me [6]
cat jelly [1]
celluloid-based lifeforms [15]
charisma wars [5]
church of candy [4]
cleanliness is next to ocd [4]
confused? you won't be... [4]
corked fork [1]
crackerlicious! [7]
crackheads off the port bow! [1]
crappily ever after [7]
crazy like a fox news viewer [15]
creepy and kooky [21]
creme fraiche [2]
crossposted goodness [19]
cutting out the boring parts [1]
cybernetic soapbox [10]
d'oh! [11]
damn the man! [8]
das sproggins [8]
dead of the affluenza [8]
dear whomever [3]
debatable hamster wang [1]
deedubyosity [2]
delayed reaction [19]
deserves its own tag [5]
dirigible wars of 1982 [6]
do not adjust your screen [6]
does not fempute! [13]
domesticity achieved! [10]
doom! [14]
drinking instant karma [7]
eat the rich [7]
eat the rude [11]
echoes of [2]
eeevil [24]
elephants [8]
eljaeity [4]
emoriffic [11]
endangered bovine syndrome [21]
erase that mental image [8]
eta [17]
explaining heaven to bears [26]
feel trip to feeladelphia [1]
feline persuasion [4]
fellowship of the thing [12]
fine chilean sea bass [12]
fire is the cleanser [12]
firecrotch factor [1]
fist in the air and head in the sand [11]
fistful of stupid [4]
get off my lawn! [1]
glorious streisandfreude [9]
goldfish says what? [26]
gone to my unhappy place [13]
hail mall-gok! god of commerce! [15]
hail sterculius! [36]
happy happy joy joy! [13]
hark! tis the song of my people [1]
hedgehog quarterly [10]
hello snowflake! [21]
herding thoughts [1]
hey now [9]
hideous space reptiles [8]
hidey-ho [3]
holiday grab bag [10]
holler fish [22]
holy ground highlander! [16]
home of the squirrelly [11]
i must not fear [9]
i see a tall dark stranger [2]
i think i'll go for a walk [10]
i will do science to it [24]
i'll use small words [27]
i'm a social butterfly! [9]
in the unloved corner [3]
internet tour guide [20]
it becomes self-aware at 2.14am [21]
it came from the intarweb [15]
it's my therapy knife [3]
it's weatherish out there [10]
japanese moon rover [7]
john has a long moustache [21]
jumping at shadows [1]
laser tag [4]
less invasions! more equations! [6]
lesson! if you see a stranger follow him [6]
link rot ahoy [2]
listolicious [12]
little snackrifices [9]
live from my pants! [15]
live from the salt mines [14]
lolitics [8]
look what i made! [1]
love and hate and reality tv [15]
major leaflet campaign [1]
mediapocalypse [32]
mental shoebox [11]
metareader's digest [16]
moving pictures [1]
my common sense is tingling [46]
my fellow earthicans [38]
my god it's full of lol [19]
name that tune [1]
neutron star [5]
no soap radio [13]
not a morning person [4]
note to self [2]
nsfcw [1]
ohana mofo [2]
omgwtfzombiebbq [7]
one pill makes you larger [7]
orbiting the monkeysphere [3]
organic gmo-free hemlock [3]
osh kosh b'goth [10]
passive-aggressive possum [13]
perfectly cromulent [32]
person-shaped blobs of sentient misery [5]
phoebelicious [5]
plague on both your houses! [5]
practicando the parlez-vous [40]
president of the nillionaire's club [5]
projectile uterus [5]
purple monkey dishwasher [4]
rageonomics [6]
rain of shoes [2]
raised by wolves [19]
rawr! [30]
reading ridealong [7]
retrostalgic reminiscences [12]
sacrelicious! [3]
salute some shorts [27]
sappy's choice [6]
say cheese [1]
say your safeword [17]
shaking my tiny fists [20]
sharing is caring [29]
shenanigans! [25]
shiny happy people [3]
shut up and write [2]
side of fremdschamen [12]
skull full of wasps [3]
snotalicious [13]
so i was watching this thing [24]
spacemonkey mafia [10]
spoileriffic [1]
squeeful things [24]
squirrel bait! [16]
standing ovulation [8]
state of the mokie [15]
stupid questions lj asks [7]
stupid questions mokie asks [6]
summon bigger fish! [19]
sweep the leg! [18]
sweet baboon of florissant! [7]
sweet zavist zeitgeist [23]
tag me later [2]
tag me later! [7]
tag your pets! [2]
tagraggery [2]
talking to ghosts again [2]
taste the rainbow [7]
tea and blasphemy [9]
tea and crackers [6]
technically people [1]
that place where bees come from [3]
the great unhip [20]
the internet will know what to do [14]
the man is a christmas miracle [6]
the root of the problem is bigfoot [19]
themeday memeday [8]
they've gone to plaid! [6]
things i hate [28]
this hateful hiatus [2]
this is my design [21]
this is my shiny thing! [8]
this is why we can't have nice things [25]
this toads the wet sprocket! [5]
three cheers for reincarnation! [4]
till someone loses an eye [3]
to the oubliette [9]
touched by an anvil [22]
tree bad fire pretty [10]
tweetalicious [4]
twirling towards freedom [10]
two lincolns for every napoleon [25]
tyranny of the coffee machine [12]
unfairest of them all [5]
unicorn shit everywhere [19]
united states of bitch [5]
until your forehead bleeds [1]
urban jungle [1]
viva el moochismo! [6]
wandering in edom [10]
watching out for japanese well-girls [1]
we're going to need a bigger boat [2]
wet copper armour [2]
whatshisface [1]
wheel of morality turn turn turn [38]
when i grow up [7]
when i rule the world [32]
when i was a young warthog [13]
why did it have to be snakes? [25]
wild thingdom [4]
wisdom of the mokie [48]
wood=duck=witch [3]
x-audience
- adults [1]
  - women [1]
- ego [1]
x-conflict
- man v supernatural [1]
x-form
- fic
  - novella [1]
- nonfic
  - bio [1]
  - instructive [1]
- series [1]
x-place
- uk
  - england [1]
- usa
  - nj [1]
x-setting
- fantastic
  - supernatural [1]
x-style
- horror
  - cosmic [1]
- mystery
  - softboiled [1]
x-theme
- arrogance of man [1]
- behind the veil [1]
- character v author [1]
- gnostic nightmare [1]
- nature is not innocent [1]
- social examination [1]
x-time
- contemporary [1]
- victeddian [1]
xmarksthespot [3]
y-issue
- betrayal [1]
- clutter [1]
- contamination [2]
- failure [1]
- power [1]
- trust [2]
y-meta
- actors or stand-ins [2]
- bathroom [3]
- blast from the past [3]
- cycles [1]
- dorky details [5]
- lucidity [3]
  - control [1]
- macguffin [3]
- media tie-in [2]
- replay [1]
- resolutely no [1]
- resolution [1]
- scripted [2]
- word salad [1]
- work-related [1]
y-mood
- annoyance [2]
- anxiety [3]
- closure [1]
- concern [1]
- embarrassment [1]
- fear of erring [1]
- freedom [1]
- judgment [1]
- powerlessness [1]
- shame [1]
y-plot
- act
  - attack [1]
  - avoid [1]
  - converse [2]
  - exercise [1]
  - harvest [1]
  - hide [1]
  - pursue [1]
  - search [2]
  - sell [1]
  - steal [2]
  - wait [1]
  - walk [1]
- event
  - detour [2]
  - discovery [1]
  - infestation [1]
  - oversleeping [1]
  - party [1]
y-role
- dreamer [3]
- female protector [1]
- male aggressor [1]
- mediator [2]
- rival [2]
- trickster [1]
- unseen aggressor [1]
y-set
- building
  - bank [1]
  - basement [1]
  - bathroom [1]
  - hotel [1]
  - house [1]
  - restaurant [1]
  - school [2]
  - store [1]
  - theater [2]
- geo
  - europe [1]
    - ireland [1]
  - old house [1]
- space
  - exhibit [1]
  - garden [1]
  - maze [1]
  - parking lot [1]
  - passage [3]
  - tunnel [1]
- status
  - urban greening [1]
y-sigil
- two advocates [1]
y-sym
- act
  - attack [2]
  - avoid [1]
  - converse [1]
  - deceive [1]
  - pursue [1]
  - search [1]
  - steal [1]
  - test [1]
  - violence [2]
- animal
  - bird [1]
  - bug [1]
  - dinosaur [1]
  - reptile [1]
- body
  - eye [1]
  - head [1]
  - illness [1]
  - metamorphosis [1]
  - wing [1]
- object
  - blade [1]
  - camera [1]
  - clothing [1]
  - cup [1]
  - food [1]
  - game [1]
  - glasses [1]
  - image [1]
  - paperwork [1]
  - safe [1]
  - tree [1]
  - vehicle [2]
- other
  - anachronism [2]
  - business [4]
  - language [2]
  - money [1]
  - monster [1]
  - technology [1]
  - time [1]
- people
  - acquaintance [2]
  - child [2]
  - crowd [4]
  - family [2]
  - friend [1]
  - grandmother [1]
  - mother [1]
  - police [1]
  - rich bastard [1]
  - teacher [2]
  - thief [2]
  - typhoid mary [1]
  - ugh you [2]
  - unseen force [1]
  - worker bee [1]
  - zombie [1]
- sense
  - sight [1]
y-theme
- injustice [1]
- responsibility [1]
- secrets [1]
- socialization [1]
y-type
- affected [3]
- dream [3]
- dreamlet [2]
- lucid
  - semi [1]
- nightmare [3]
- stub [3]
you are my freight train [13]
ಠ_ಠ [21]

life in mokievision

always a cameron, never a ferris

Let's play Armchair Profilers!