James Holmes had a Match.com profile and played World of Warcraft

See here. It was recently updated with his orange hair and headline "Will you visit me in prison?"

This is probably really bad publicity for Match.com.

* * *

Also, Holmes was heavily addicted to World of Warcraft or some similar game:

A former classmate from the University of Colorado told the Daily Mail: ‘James was obsessed with computer games and was always playing role-playing games.

‘I can’t remember which one but it was something like World of Warcraft, one of those where you compete against people on the internet.

‘He did not have much of a life apart from that and doing his work. James seemed like he wanted to be in the game and be one of the characters.

'It seemed that being online was more important to him than real life. He must have lost his sense of reality, how else can you shoot dozens of people you don’t know?’

It should be pointed out that there are a lot of online gaming addicts, but they don’t normally go postal (Anders Behring Brevik being an exception, of course).

Comments

[mark]

I don't know Match.com could probably attract women interested in bad boys. The thing that doesen't add up to me is his age. All this talk about frustration, it doesen't seem to me that he had fallen that far behind, he was only 24. Now his resume is much more complicated.

[TheOne]

Of course the media always creates false correlations and stigma's that's the whole point of confirmation bias and appeasing the masses by giving them stereotypes they want to believe in anyway. To justify their prejudices.

No one ever claims: Killer brushes teeth, therefore if you find a man whoever brushes his teeth be wary! Playing videogames is something pretty much all males do anyways. But of course we can't expect the media to do any serious analysis they are just there for infotainment and perception management of the plebians.

[Rain And]

In the first thumbnail on his profile do I see a girl with matching bozo-red hair snuggling on his shoulder?

Could this be the clown prince of crime's accomplice Harley Quinn?

If this guy was getting laid by skanky chicks from the Internet does this upend your theory, or are faithful, horny, and smoking-hot girlfriends the only thing that can quell homicidal nerdrage?

[HS: That appears to be a photoshop creation.]

[RAH]

Three of the victims were guys protecting their girlfriends

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/aurora-shooting-died-bullets-sweeties-article-1.1119395

I bet this will drive Holmes crazy when he finds out. He'll want to feel like he showed all those guys who were having sex, but even under the most stressful circumstances they behaved like men. He, on the other hand, didn't have the guts to even kill himself after this. Everyone will remember these guys as heroes, while he'll get tortured by his cellmates for the rest of his life, without even the prison guards feeling a touch of sympathy for him.

[RAH]

Looks like he was open to dating every race but black. Maybe he'll be condemned for his racism.

[Eugenick]

Breivik is more alpha than this guy.

[Drole Prole]

I just think he was sociopathic and aspergery. He likely had a hard time relating to people due to being socially awkward and became isolated and agitated. While living in so cal, he likely was unable to find decent employment due to the horrible economy there. Plus he probably had very few connections that could have led to a decent job. Of course, many males are in a similar situation and don't kill people, but they act in other aggressive ways. I just think most humans don't have it in them to snap and kill people en masse.

[asdf]

Drole Prole,

I don't see much difference between him an others. There are lots of frustrated people who drown themselves in videogames and porn and don't shoot up a theatre. Not because they don't necessarily want to, but because they are afraid of the consequences.

[superdestroyer]

No one who has a bachelors in Neuroscience is expecting to find a good job. Everyone who goes into that field knows that they will have to go to graduate school.

I think people are making way too much about the neighbor's statement that Holmes was working at McDonalds.

[Anonymous]

Brevik did not "go postal", he's not even remotely the same as Holmes.

Brevik was carrying out a military mission against a clearly defined enemy, with a tangible political goal in mind.

Obviously he's still the most evil person since Hitler, but he did not "just snap" and "go postal".

[HS: And Holmes spent several months planning his crime as well.]

[Camlost]

Match.com is probably about 75% male. Great odds if you're a female, not such great odds if you're a male.

There's no way that whackjob actually got laid or even a second coffee date from that site.

[ArtisteNextDoor]

"No one who has a bachelors in Neuroscience is expecting to find a good job. Everyone who goes into that field knows that they will have to go to graduate school.

I think people are making way too much about the neighbor's statement that Holmes was working at McDonalds."

Exactly. With a degree in biology, you know that you'll be going to graduate school, medical school, or maybe dental school to have a "decent" career. If you want a break from school, you might be able to work as a research assistant, but these jobs are hard to find, the pay isn't very good, and you might just end up being a glorified lab monkey. What you might do is work at some non-science job (target, mcdonald's) and volunteer at a lab doing the sort of research you're interested in.

[Lexus Liberal]

This conforms the stereotype that violent video games and pornography desensitize mentally ill people or sexually/socially frustrated chumps to dissociate and go on a psychotic episodes that lead to crime sprees.

He probably smoked marijuana or was on bath salts.

The lesson here is to avoid midnight showings, living in the South and to start requiring IQ and psychiatric examinations that are conducted by professionals before being allowed to purchase guns or getting a gun license aka stricter gun regulation.

When are people finally going to realize that more guns, mean more violent crime? The South has the highest rate of gun ownership and coincidentally have the highest rates of gun related violence.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/

[Camlost]

"When are people finally going to realize that more guns, mean more violent crime? The South has the highest rate of gun ownership and coincidentally have the highest rates of gun related violence."

When you're 15-30% black like most Southern States you will have heavy gun crime.

Both Switzerland and Finland have higher gun ownership rates than the US but very little violent crime.

[whiskey]

The guy was crazy. Is crazy. Like Breivik. General pattern: late adolescence, early adulthood, onset of schizophrenia, voice in head, urges that cannot be fought, coupled with detailed planning and methodical preperation?

Yeah that's CRAZY. Crazy with a capital C.

Son of Sam heard his neighbor's lab urge him to kill people. That's crazy. Very likely a brain chemical malfunction that can't really be addressed with current technology and drugs. Sadly. Hence the changes in brain chemistry function in late adolescence and early childhood likely being the trigger for brain failures.

That's a cost any large society will have -- a very small percentage will go utterly crazy, and a smaller percentage will be intent on killing. THAT is inescapable.

But who is killed, and why, and how, THAT is different. Like a failed immune response to an infection, who and why crazy people kill tells us about a society's robustness or failure.

[Lexus Liberal]

@Camlost

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list

Boom! You are just wrong. USA with 88.8 for 100 peoples has the world's highest rate of gun ownership. Yemen is second with 54, while Switzerland is 45.7 with Finland being 43.

I would attribute gun violence in the South to gang related acts perpetrated by Hispanics and Mexican cartels. Does't help when Obama is giving up more guns through a botched fast $ furious operation.

To prevent these lone nutters from getting guns, they should institute a psychological examination that has to be supervised by a professional. By requiring a medical exam it would provide a database and some accountability for red flags when people stockpile ammunition and guns.

[fComp]

@mark

The fact that he hadn't fallen "that far behind" isn't an anomaly, its part of why he acted.

There are plenty of people who are 10x as inept at everything then he is. I'm sure there are awkward weirdos like him who aren't even smart, and work at Mc'Donalds. I interpret his actions as driven by rage and envy, and when you fall too far behind, those emotions no longer apply. An socially awkward idiotic failure can no longer delude himself to hate the world, he can only hate himself.

But a socially awkward intelligent failure with hope and potential...that's the guy whos liable to snap, because he can still hate the world, he can still envy those who "undeservedly" accrued more success and sex then he has.

[Anonymous]

[HS: And Holmes spent several months planning his crime as well.]

It's not the time spent planning, its the fact that Brevik attacked a specific enemy with a specific political end in mind, while Holmes (so far) appears to have killed totally random people for fun or for attention.

[Camlost]

"To prevent these lone nutters from getting guns, they should institute a psychological examination that has to be supervised by a professional. By requiring a medical exam it would provide a database and some accountability for red flags when people stockpile ammunition and guns."

Yeah, even though I'm a 2nd amendment supporter I do think that we should consider the types of ideas you just proposed above.

"Boom! You are just wrong. USA with 88.8 for 100 peoples has the world's highest rate of gun ownership. Yemen is second with 54, while Switzerland is 45.7 with Finland being 43. "

LOL yeah you got me... but to-may-to to-mah-to.

Either way, even your posted numbers proved that there's not a strong correlation strictly between gun ownership rates and violent crime rates across countries.

The real correlation is between gun ownership rates and percentage of blacks in your population.

[gh]

He also had a profile on OkCupid. Google's cache still has the main page of his profile (http://i.imgur.com/MS7gU.png) as well as OkCupid's assessment of his personality based on answers to over 350 questions (http://i.imgur.com/RaPiV.png). The answers themselves, to multiple-choice questions on a number of topics and which might have been accompanied by his own comments, could have provided a lot of insight into Holmes's character which his otherwise lacking social media presence kept unknown. I'm sure OkCupid has archived the info and passed it along to the proper authorities.

From Google's cache, ten of the questions Holmes answered: http://i.imgur.com/c45Cs.png

I'm surprised he lists Hachiko as a favorite movie, but not surprised that OkCupid rates him 'less literary' and 'less political' than most. From what he writes about himself, and from what his friendships seem to have been based on (e.g., video games, movies, weekly Lost viewings, a snowboarding trip), I get the idea he's an entertainment/stimulation addict with little patience for study-like activities beyond the bare minimum. A friend from undergrad describes a guy who never took notes yet always stood at the top of the class; the bare minimum may have been enough until recently.

And maybe it would have continued to be enough if during the last few months he hadn't gotten wrapped up in his massacre, the planning for which might have offered the dopamine junkie a steady hit that rapidly overshadowed what he could get from yet another WoW raid or Arrested Development rerun.

[asdf]

gh,

You nail it. The bar in the school system for being "smart" is very low. He probably was near the top of his class without studying for most of life. Finally he ran into a wall he couldn't get past.

[asdf]

This guys profile is total loser.