Watching the Charlie Kirk video felt good.
I'm not sorry. Seeing someone who spread so much hate and bigotry and weaponized disinformation get his clock cleaned was absolutely fine by me.
I have empathy for lots of people even if we don't always agree, but not for people like Charlie Kirk.
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I've seen this sentiment around a bit, and while I'm not going to tell people their feelings are wrong (I did not like the guy and while I would have preferred something else happen to him over murder, he did help support the set of circumstances that made his assassination possible), I find it confusing enough that it makes me question if either my brain works differently around this or if I'm misunderstanding what feeling empathy actually refers to, because to me, it doesn't seem "voluntary" like that.
Like, for me, if something unpleasant happens to someone, I can't really help but to start imagining it and going over what it might be like to be in or around that position and getting emotionally worked up, pretty much automatically. It doesn't really even matter if I'm glad the guy is gone at some level or hated them, my brain gets the immediate gut twist of "damn, that seems like a horrible experience" all the same. Like, it could be someone as heinous as literal Hitler, and even then if some documentary gets into the details of his end my first gut reaction is likely to be a sense of discomfort and something like "it would really suck to wake up one day as someone that's done all that and brought themselves to such a position, imagine what would be going through your head in that situation".
I haven't watched the video as I don't handle blood and gore and such well, and I don't mean this as some kind of judgement or assertion of virtue, it's just a bit confusing to me when people say things like "I have no empathy for guys like that" or "you shouldn't feel empathy for fascists because they don't deserve it" and I'm like, okay, but how? Does your brain just let you decide not do that? Mine seems to just do it automatically regardless of if it feels appropriate or not.
Feel your feelings. Do what's right for you. Nobody else makes that decision for you.
I've spent the last eight years infiltrating white supremacists on social media. I have seen people like Charlie and what their conversation is like when they're among their own and the masks are off. That's why I don't feel bad for him, I have seen their true faces.
You dont need to feel bad for him. You dont need to mourn and you can be happy that he is dead. But if that video of him dying didnt make you feel awful, because you just watched somebody die, then dont you think you might need to take a look at yourself? How much snuff content have you watched to get to a point where somebody gushing blood from their neck doesnt feel bad, you actually feel good watching it? Dont you see how thats a little bit disturbing?
Because of justice (or perceived justice). Just like if you see an old man knocked out by a angry 30 year old, you'd feel badly for the man, except if that 30 year old just caught the old guy molesting your kid, then your sympathy ends.
That's what empathy is, it's automatic, reason doesn't factor in. There is nothing wrong with you.
Reasoning how to feel afterwards is something different.
You described it pretty perfectly as I experience it. Charlie Kirk was an awful piece of shit, and also violence is bad. I watched the video but shouldn't have. I truly cannot understand how people are so gleeful. I certainly get being glad that he's dead. He didn't deserve life. But as you said, empathy isn't voluntary. People are either devoid of it or overriding it. America fucking sucks and probably will never get better.
Same! I think curiosity and sleep depravity got the better of me when i sought out the video.
Then i instantly and continuously regretted watching it as it was fucking foul! I cant get the image of the neck snap and blood exploding from his neck our of my head.
I absolutely despised this guy, but watching anybody die should have a natural effect on anyone.
I cant get behind this sentiment of wanting to watch him die for pleasure. That makes me think there are a lot more sick people on this platform than i had previously believed.
That makes me think there are a lot more sick people on this platform than i had previously believed.
I absolutely agree. And the smug self righteousness here is even worse than reddit. People really disappoint me sometimes. This feeling I have right now is similar to the two times trump won. I always thought people were better than this.
Then just when you cannot think more badly of people, some dick will come along and tell you that you support fascism. Because that's clearly what being disgusted by watching a murder means, right? The lack of empathy for even the living is palpable.
So, I don't think it's entirely voluntary either way, it's just a matter of where your perspective defaults to. I consider myself a fairly empathetic person and I happen to sit on the opposite side of this. As much as I try, I cannot feel empathy for him.
When I try, the empathy I feel is for everyone he advocated to subjugate and kill. I cannot fathom being in the shoes of someone so pointlessly, shamelessly hateful. When I put myself in his shoes, there is no connection that makes it in any way feel like a real person's understandable perspective. If he had changed at some point? That would be understandable. Imagining that makes me feel empathy for the person he could have been, but that person doesn't exist, never existed and may never have. I feel more empathy for that hypothetical person than I do the actual Charlie Kirk, someone who himself felt that feeling empathy was a sickness and wanted to eradicate me from society.
I struggle to find anything to empathize with there.
With that said, I watched the video. It made me feel sick to my stomach. But that didn't change the immense relief I felt knowing there was one less person in the world that thought I should be stoned in the street. I don't think you're wrong for feeling unsettled by someone taking glee in it though. It's hard to imagine the kind of pain someone has to go through to get to the point where someone's death is something to celebrate as a relief.
The justifications are just ways of shutting down empathy. You can stop feeling those things automatically if you work at closing them off. It's a great first step at becoming a psychopath, if you want.