[user104658]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

I agree with your post. This is exactly what I was saying on other threads; Crisis in Iraq & Alan Henning Beheaded. No amount of watching TV, reading, or even 'conditioning' can cause a sane, moral person to commit these types of horrific atrocities unless the evil desire to do so is already in them.

If I watched all 9 Superman/Supergirl movies 1000 times back to back, I'm not going to jump off a 20 story building with a tablecloth draped over my shoulders. It's complete B.S. that exposure to TV etc. can make someone into a psychopathic killer.

Whilst I agree that something mild like TV can't turn an otherwise normal person into a criminal... I'm afraid you're simply wrong about no amount of conditioning being able to do so. People can be (and are, every day) psychologically broken and re-programmed. But the methods of doing so are sustained and extreme - it doesn't happen because someone watched a killer on TV or (the usual old scapegoat) "played a violent video game".

People can develop unhealthy obsessions but, as you say, it's in people who are already unhinged and basically a ticking timebomb; for this boy, if it hadn't been "Dexter" that he copied it would have been something else. It didn't motivate him to kill... he was obsessed with it because he ALREADY had the desire to kill. He didn't kill because he was copying the methods he saw there... he would have done it anyway, he just got the idea about cutting up the body from there.