this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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In 1980, John Lennon was shot by a mentally ill man who was convinced to kill Lennon by reading Catcher in the Rye. If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn't have killed John Lennon.
But it is not the fault of Catcher in the Rye. We don't ban the book, or call the author irresponsible for writing it, because we recognize that the fault lies in the mental illness of the shooter, and that anything could have set him off.
The people who kill themselves because an AI Chatbot told them to are mentally ill. It is their mental illness that killed them, not the chatbot. You can make the claim that if it wasn't for the chatbot, they wouldn't have gone through with it, but again, you can say the same thing about Catcher in the Rye. Getting rid of the trigger does not remove the mental illness.
That's a terrible argument. We dont blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn't have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That's the difference.
Berkowitz was told by his neighbors dog to kill people.
Yeah but was that just a lie?