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Emailed Threats Less Crazy Than Snail Mail
SoyChemist writes "Psychologists at the University of Nebraska have read 300 threatening letters and 99 angry emails to members of Congress. They concluded that the authors of the electronic messages show less signs of serious mental illness, but they are more profane and disorganized. The report was published in the September issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences."
Opening and using an e-mail account requires some amount of sanity, but very little social skills.
do you insists on being such a bunch of pigshit-eating donkey wanking bastards? oh look - ponies!
Oh come on, the explanation is simple. You've got to be crazy to write a message to someone with postal mail. Welcome to the 21st century people, we have e-mail now!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
It makes perfect sense; it's a lot easier to send an e-mail than it is to put a pen to paper, then send the letter -- you have to be really pissed off to go through that kind of trouble. I'd say it's highly likely that angry phonecalls aren't quite as "crazy" as angry letters, too -- in general.
I once had this PC that a mate of mine built for me running Windows Millennium Edition. I had to install RealPlayer so I could watch BBC news videos, and I got my internet connection from AOL. Did it work? Did it ***k!
I spent ******ing hours on a premium rate number support line to get through to some Indian bloke who couldn't even speak proper English.
Did he help? No.
In the end I had to reformat the whole hard drive, install Ubuntu, configure the Wifi driver, find out where the DVD player codecs were hidden, read Kernighan and Ritchie, Donald Knuth AND fight off a legal battle with SCO.
Just so I could send a ******ing email.
You know what you IT blokes ought to do?
You ought to stop playing World of Warcraft and w***ing over porn all day and learn how to do your jobs.
C***s!
If someone would take it's two minutes in order to check out the article, then it would be quickly realised that the _abstract_ of the actual paper is more detailed than the whole article linked in the summary and it is also free of the stupid sensationalization.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
First, to clarify the summary, psychologists were not reading letters to congress (like a bedtime story for politicians), they were analyzing letters that had been sent to members of congress.
The results were that postal threats were more extreme than email threats. This is hardly surprising. The barrier to writing a snail mail letter is higher, so this inherently selects for the more passionate people (whether truly concerned about an issue, or incredibly angry, or truly dangerously threatening). Writing an email is so easy that just about anyone will do it if they are slightly bothered by something. As such, I would expect email to, statistically, have fewer of the "fringe cases" of people who are being truly mentally ill, and more "normal people" just venting (in a profane and disorganized way, apparently).
I do wonder a bit about the sample size, mind you. I would have thought that there would be far more emails than postal letters sent to members of congress (and far more 'threatening' ones, too), but instead they analyzed more conventional letters than email. I wonder if this is a result of the relative frequency of the two types of threats, or if the researchers had some other reason to focus on postal mail.
You suck.
Love,
The Associate
Someone hates these cans.
Many really crazy people can't hold down a job. Can they really afford internet fees?
The truly paranoid probably don't trust computers.
The functional-but-unstable ones probably heard that snail-mail and faxes are taken more seriously than email. That was true back in the late '90s. I don't know if it's still true now.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wonder why they read 300 letters and only 99 emails? I can't imagine the total amount of emails was smaller than the total amount of letters...
People who send angry emails are often acting on impulse without taking time to calm down. It's the long distance communication equivalent of road rage. We are insulated by distance and the transitory nature of the medium, just as when we drive, we are insulated by the fact that the other driver will not know us for more than a few minutes, and we are separated by glass and steel. As the incident happens, we are already moving on from it.
Letters require more forethought and more steps (finding envelope and stamp, going to mailbox, etc.). They require premeditation. Snail mail letters are also harder to trace and thus less likely to result in a visit from the FBI.
Someone with a real mental delusion, making real threats is obviously more likely to use snail mail when compared with the average angry constituent who just wants to let out their frustration.
I still take time to write snail mail letters to all those I care about, be it people or causes. It adds a display of thought and caring that email lacks.
And on another note; only with snail mail can you take the time and loving effort to compose it entirely from words and letters clipped from a selection of gun magazines, to give it that little extra something....
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I believe I could predict the results. :)
Yes. The article is typical blogodreck, and links to a blog.
The research itself has serious problems. These weren't samples from incoming mail. They were samples from Capitol Police files, which means they'd already been considered potential threats by at least three people.
Consider what happens to incoming e-mail at a congressional office. First, it's spam-filtered automatically, so any bulk threat e-mailed to every member of Congress probably was dumped at the filters. Then some junior person reads it and sorts it. (The people who do that job for the White House are unpaid interns.) The basic sort is "opinion", which is just tallied; "casework", constituents of that Congressman who want some specific help; "office matters", something that the office staff actually needs to deal with, and "threats". The threats may get a quick look by a more senior staffer, who decides whether they need to go to the Capitol Police. Then, at the Capitol Police end, someone has to decide if it's worth opening a case file for the letter.
So a study based on Capitol Police files reflects what gets through the automatic and manual filtering. The study may say more about staff thinking than the incoming content.
The abstract of their publication says they in fact read 301 letters, not 300.
The same could be said for mailing a letter. I suspect the cause may lean more towards simplicity and availability.
To sit down, find an envelope, and actually put 35 cents on the thing requires more forethought and commitment than firing off an email. It also takes at least several minutes to do, so there will be a bit more composition of thought than in an email.
Email can be a much more heat of the moment thing, as evidenced frequently by this forum. I guarantee that if replying to this thread, or even this forum required me to mail an envelope it would not have happened.
*Fewer* signs. Not less. If they could be counted individually, you use 'fewer'. (Pet peeve.) BTW I certainly wouldn't have bothered to write a snail mail about this...
Snail mail is much much harder to trace than email. Therefore, the most extreme nutjobs are smarter: they realize that it's easier to be anonymous with snail mail than email.
We all know here that tracing an IP and then bullying an ISP for an identity is quite easy and becoming easier everyday.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
With snail mail it would require someone to sustain their craziness for the long process of writing and posting a letter. Someone who is able to do that is more likely to actually be crazy. With email a sudden bout of crazy anger is all that is required and even the average person is capable of that, especially after a drink or two.
Our tax dollars at magnificent work again! Yes you too can spend 8 years+ in college, come out with $100,000+ in school debt and do studies with results you could have concluded without all that time and money.
Probably something we all know in our hearts. When we write emails (including non-threatening ones) they tend to be more impulsive - stream of conciousness stuff. Whereas when people write proper letters they think about what they want to say. Even if they are crazy.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"Mental illness" is sometimes very clear - schizophrenia, for example, might involve protracted interactions with some non-existent entity in the mirror.
However, the history of psychology has a much darker side: the classification of the deviant as mentally ill. Whether that means putting someone who is unhappy with his lot on anti-depressants (i.e. a good proportion of America, and an increasing proportion of Europe), or classifying him as dangerously uncontrollable when he is making a rational but heated response, psychology has been used by governments to reclassify the threat as subhuman, and "treat" him. Not a Party member? We've got a cure for that. Atheist? You need exorcising! Homosexual? We've got some therapy we insist you might be interested in.
There are humans who are knowledgeable, and humans who are ignorant. There are humans who are quick to reason, and humans who are slow. There are humans who express themselves calmly, and humans who are prone to shouting. But every human is a few well-engineered whispers away, backed up by some carefully selected events, from being classed as a basket case.
Not to mention that if you're sending a threat it would be best to do it in a way that cannot be so easily traced back to you.
Dropping off a letter in a different city is an easier method than anon proxies for most people.
To sit down, find an envelope, and actually put 35 cents on the thing requires more forethought and commitment than firing off an email. And the more sane ones know to use a 41 cent stamp.
Because all of the people who are technically savvy enough to use e-mail and are seriously disturbed are busy posting on /.
Have gnu, will travel.
I've known this ever since my cat started receiving anonymous death threats. Crazy neighbors.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
I'm sure glad my Nebraska tax dollars are being spent wisely. Clearly, with the huge financial crisis the state is in, it is a priority that we research the sanity of people trolling across two different mediums.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You've gotta be crazy to use snail mail for anything but shipping packages (like anthrax or explosives). And everyone on the Internet is crazy, therefore relatively well adjusted.
This study is a tautology.
--
make install -not war
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
To some degree, everyone at some point in their lives experiences mental illness. Most don't recognize it. Once you learn to recognize it, you can see it everywhere you go. Also, there is an enormous amount of apprehension against this nebulous undefined minority of "the mentally ill." The more ignorant associate mental illness with sex offenses and violent crime... only crazy people commit these crimes, so all crazies are criminals, I suppose their argument goes. Even intelligent unbiggoted people have beliefs, and once they believe something, have formed attitudes based on their belief, its extremely difficult to correct it if its wrong, even if they recognize it as wrong by facts presented in contrary to their incorrect beliefs. Regardless of the selected reports we see and our own biases, most crazy people aren't violent; most violent people aren't crazy. And in my experience, angry people are stupid, not crazy.
The Admin and the Engineer
There have been a lot of comments to the effect that it takes more effort to send a letter than an email, so there's a selection process that means only the more die-hard loonies actually bother to get letters in the mail. I agree with this, but I think there's another selection process in place that also makes the mail more scary: age.
Of the people I've known who rant on with horrifying opinions from within their own delusional, disconnected world, there's a sharp tendency that the more loony ones were older. Not always, but there's a trend that way. I don't know if it's due to too many years of witnessing and magnifying perceived falsehoods, early onset dementia, a build-up of heavy metals in their systems, or what causes their buildup of paranoid ramblings to burst forth, but I think there's a strong age factor at work here, and that the snail mails are much more likely to come from older, and therefore more hard-core lunatics than the email, which more often originates from young lunatics-in-training who are not yet as comfortable and confident in their insanity.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
You have to be far more focussed to sit down, write out a letter, fold it, put it in an envelope and post it than you do to just bang out an email in a few minutes and fire it off. This leads to the obvious conclusion that most threatening emails received will be profane, angry missives from pissed-off but otherwise perfectly sane people, while most threatening letters will be written by people who are more mentally unbalanced, because they're the ones more likely to write such things with a level head, and not in a rush of blood.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Authors of Slashdot stories have mastered fewer grammar skills than the average.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
authors of the electronic messages show less signs of serious mental illness, but they are more profane and disorganized
If you are disorganized how do you expect to effectively express your serious mental illness?
...Explain to us how you escaped prison, Ted.
or I would hit you with a barge pole, you insensitive clod!
How many of these letters to Congress were directly from the Senate?
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
It's amazing how people can cling to an idea, despite that idea having been discounted and found to be a lie.
Blar.
The letters and emails might have been reported by people who were more easily frightened by email than letters, i.e. the readers would report any threatening email but only very threatening letters. The authors assume that the media makes no difference in which communications are reported.
From the abstract: "[letters and emails] were randomly selected from the United States Capitol Police investigative case files and compared." [Emphasis mine]
Thought I don't think the article goes into the breakdown within the snail mail set, I would think that handwriting would add a big variable to the perceived sanity of the sender. While the snail mail set seemed less insane to the researchers, I'd be interested to know what percentage was handwritten.
Of course, the criteria used to determine relative sanity (or other factors) in these letters is largely subjective anyway. What qualifies as profanity, for example? So while the study is not invalid because of this, it's clearly based on subjective assessments of the letters and therefore things like handwriting (which is subject to interpretation) are going to increase your chances of seeming nuts.
In other words, with even the best handwriting out there, I'd think you'll seem at best no MORE nuts than someone who types a letter.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
And it's obvious: the glue on envelopes causes mental illness.
Excuse me, I have to put on an eyepatch and commandeer a freighter now. I'm trying to slow down global warming.
Avast!
They might want to keep an eye on e-mails flowing in to the athletic department for awhile. If you think e-mail threats aren't as crazy, wait'll you see the hordes of e-mails from angry internet fans after the recent loss in football.
Enlarge your manhood. She will love you more. You will die in 7 days if you don't.
Soft tabs cheap, buy in bulk. We will make your penis explode.
Hi, my name is Courtney. I live in Ukraine. Marry me or the bitch dies.
Seriously, email threats creep me out.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Perhaps the reason the emails were more profane is that the people who sent them were really pissed. They went to the trouble and actually looked up to see what their representative/senator/whatever voted for/against and got pissed. It would take what, a whole 3 days via snail mail for the letter to get there, whereas with email, it can get there almost instantly. With an email, you get a form letter 3 days earlier than with a letter sent through snail mail.
...but seeing as Adolf Hitler's name already comes pre-Romanized for you (thanks to the remarkable nature of the alphabets of German and English), why do so many people write Adolph?
I could understand it if it were a non-Romanized name (Mao Zedong? Mao Tse-tung?). But come ON. Adolph? Why not just make it Adolphus of the House of Schicklgruber?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
Perhaps serious threats are sent thru snail mail because email is easier to trace.