Source: Oregon gunman rants in manifesto that he had no girlfriend

He wrote something to the effect of: "Other people think I'm crazy, but I'm not. I'm the sane one," the official said.

On reddit, we think of "red pill" philosophy as being related to gender and masculinity in a specific way.

But the "red pill" phenomenon is larger than that: it is the illusion of omniscience people of a wide range of philosophies experience in thinking they see an objective reality lying beneath the surface of mass hallucination. They believe themselves to be a sort of intellectual aristocracy with a special purchase on reality that the deluded mass are not privy to.

Accompanying it are categorical pronouncements on the whole of billions of human beings, their motivations, and how they think.

This consensus functions as a collaborative reality tunnel in which contradictions, exceptions, and imperfections are walled off from anything that taints the simplistic bullet point rules for how everything supposedly works.

It is reinforced through feedback loops and a new group consensus: there is no point of view -- no ideology, religious belief, or social theory so outlandish that you cannot find a group of people to confirm just how smart you are and how dumb everyone else is.

And next to actual chemical balance/biological mental illness, is and will continue to be a factor in all manner of violence in years to come.

There is no need to be a lone nut anymore. You can find a nice insular group of people who will tell you how perceptive your insanity is, because they share it.

No matter what your politics or religion, if you find yourself ruminating excessively on under what circumstances you should theoretically be allowed to snuff someone, you've joined a cult.

/r/news Thread Link - chicagotribune.com