This will most likely be the beginning of another new and unfortunate trend.

Yesterday, we had the tragic shooting of a 24 year old television reporter and her 27 year old camera man, one of whom was engaged and the other of whom had just moved in with her boyfriend. The assailant, another former reporter, filmed himself shooting the two victims, and then posted the results on Facebook and Twitter. Both Facebook and Twitter took the posts down almost immediately, but not before a few people managed to download them.

I could comment on the gun violence aspect of this story, but what would be the point?*

This, by the way, was not an act of domestic terrorism. This was an old-fashioned revenge killing. The perpetrator, who had been fired from the TV Station, claimed that he had been discriminated against for being a black man.

Maybe. Who knows. He filed a discrimination complaint with Virginia’s anti-discrimination agency and they had not validated the complaint.

We do know this guy had a screw loose. Maybe a lot of screws.

He left a 23 page manifesto, of course.

[Yawn]

This would just be another extremely unfortunate episode of workplace violence but for his filing himself and posting on social media.

Those tactics are straight out of ISIS.

How long will it be before we have some copycat asshole using the same tactics to film himself in some awful act of violence?

Not long, I predict.

This is what our world is coming to. A world populated by unreconstructed narcissists with access to social media and who understand no proportionality to their petty grievances, whatever they are.

Have you noticed that the grievances of these self-appointed assassins are always petty. They’re always something like:

Someone didn’t pay enough attention to me.
Someone didn’t make friends with me.
Someone didn’t want to date me.
Someone made fun of me.
Someone didn’t employ me.
Someone didn’t attend to my every need.

Grow up, narcissists! Your every need is not at the center of the Universe.

But that’s not going to happen.

They’re not going to grow up.

They’re just going to keep buying guns, keep arming themselves, keep justifying their childish rage, keep wreaking havoc in a world they don’t really deserve to live in.

One bad person can do so much more damage than 100 good people.

And so it goes.

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*If I did comment on the gun situation, I would just quote John Oliver, who said this: “One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.”