Fox News Shrink Keith Ablow Suggests Guy Texting At Movie Needed To Be Shot, Maybe, Why Not

Fox News professional psychiatrist-like person Keith Ablow is just full of fascinating insights about human behavior, such as how America elected Newt Gingrich President because he's a virile adulterer and Barack Obama hates guns because of his daddy issues. And in fact, people with guns are almost never fully responsible for their actions, because there are other factors like abortion and facebook causing the murdering. He is especially worried about the pernicious effects of the Facebook and the Texting, and just last week was telling Bill O'Reilly all about how the smart phones are every bit as addictive as marijuana, and maybe even worse.

So it's hardly surprising that Ablow would also proclaim that, in order to truly understand Monday's awful movie-theater shooting in Florida, we have to consider the possibility that it was motivated by "Data Rage," which is a very real thing and not just something that Keith Ablow pulled out of his shiny metal ass:

We have to look at something I’ll call “data rage,” just like “road rage.” We know that when people interact with machines, that sometimes they feel emboldened to do things that they never would; that it could be tremendously frustrating; and that people who could be vulnerable -- by the way, they may impulsive to begin with, they may be explosive -- add in technology or a machine and things could go over-the-top and become very violent.

We suppose it's not impossible that the telegraph or radio were blamed for driving people into a killing rage, too, so sure, why not. As we all know from Aristotle, things started going downhill once we developed literacy anyway and we no longer had to develop the mental discipline to memorize heroic epics. And so sometimes people like Chad Oulson who use the new information technology will just pay the price, like getting shot to death while texting their daughter's daycare.

Now, do not worry, Dr. Ablow is very definitely not blaming the victim here! He knows full well that ex-cop Curtis Reeves pulled the trigger. But was he the only one responsible? Keith Ablow is now John Connor, and he simply wants America to understand the very complex dehumanizing influence of the Machines so that we will not allow Skynet to become self-aware and destroy us all:

In understanding it, we’ve got to say, “Wow, there was a machine involved.” Now, we also know that in road rage, there’s a car involved. People seem to be dehumanized by the presence of this car, and the fact that they can’t then connect to the individual.

This only makes sense, since people in crowds, with plenty of human contact, never ever act out violently. This is the most elementary human psychology. You see, what happens is that sometimes, when a man loves his smart phone too much and uses it during the previews of the movie, it can have very serious effects on those around them:

So if what’s happening here… where because someone’s interacting with the machine and, therefore, removed from any interpersonal moment here where there are other people around, and you want to be sensitive, somebody else becomes unhinged. In interacting with these machines, people do things they would never do. And not necessarily the guy pressing the button. It could be the guy two rows back who thinks of you as not human.

So you see, it's really quite simple: the very use of a communications medium that lacks human contact can make you insentitive to the human needs of other humans sitting behind you in a movie theater, and your insensitivity can make you seem less fully human to the retired cop with a gun back there. Who, it turns out, reeaaally has a problem with people using their telecommunications devices in his vicinity -- Reeves also confronted a woman who was texting during a movie three weeks ago, and followed her out of the theater to the restroom so he could tell her all about it, in human-to human terms, no doubt.

But this is not a case of a guy who liked to police others' behavior, lethally, if necessary. This is about the pernicious effects of our machines. Chances are, Curtis Reeves really just wanted to "kill" the machine, but transferred his rage to the father of a preschooler who was holding it, because data rage, and if we would all just get rid of our telecoms machines and our automobiles and other dehumanizing influences, we will be free to be human again, like God wanted. Hell, Ablow didn't even begin to explore how the projection of flickering images on a screen may have already dehumanized both the shooter and the victim. Movies are lies, nothing but lies made of artificial light, not the sunshine that makes men MEN.

Now that we think about it, maybe Keith Ablow is not John Connor. Maybe he is John Book. 

[ Mediaite / CNN ]

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