Full disclosure:

1. I am not a psychologist, psychology is merely a hobby.
2. I am from the US, but I will try to stick to my understanding of human emotions as a whole.

One thing I have observed about violence that seems random is that they are often performed by people who have been proverbially "beaten down" by life. When this is the cause, they may feel the need to lash out, but their "beating" was so severe that they become apathetic. They just need some outlet for their pain, rather than a specific individual or group.

Some people will take it out on themselves and it becomes self-harm or suicide. Others will take it out on those who are vulnerable in their immediate vicinity.

Basically, when a person is in a lot of pain, it becomes harder to think about others, because they are already struggling with their own issues. At least from where I stand, random acts of violence is what happens when that idea is taken to an extreme.

As for articles and videos: I'm not sure if you will be able to view the video on this page easily, but there is a transcription on the page: it was shared by a man who claimed he almost became a school shooter. He described what he was going through and feeling leading up to the moment where he almost did it. I think it provides a window into how suffering makes a person volatile:

https://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_stark_i_was_almost_a_school_shooter?subtitle=en

In a similar vein, depression tends to cause a person to focus heavily on their own thoughts and emotions and less on their social connections, not because the person is selfish, but as a means of self-preservation, as described in these articles:

https://neurolaunch.com/is-depression-selfish/

https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/copingwithdepression/2020/12/when-depression-makes-you-appear-selfish

This is just one possible explanation, but it's the one I am most familiar with personally. I hope this helps.

I'm genuinely curious what exactly is "wrong"?

It's a theme website. GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and even Cinnamon has one...why is this bad?

I wish I could up-vote more than once...

In a similar vein, Evelyn Wang from Everything Everywhere All At Once... She may not start out badass, but oh boy does that change

They are. Which is why these people go for FWB...if they can even get that

You know, I had never noticed this correlation until you brought it up, but it's kind of sad how accurate it is...

So something I just thought of, and I'm surprised nobody brought up (well, I guess some did indirectly, it just wasn't obvious to me): A major benefit of basing off of Ubuntu is more up-to-date hardware support. While it's true that Debian now supports non-free firmware by default, that doesn't mean that it will be recent.

Debian support for hardware is truly impressive, but it ultimately lags behind because Debian prioritizes stability over new features. This is why routine Debian updates only cover severe bugs and security issues, and from what I can tell that also is the case for hardware support and the kernel.

Ubuntu tries to keep in step with new hardware releases, which makes much more sense for power users like engineers, developers and gamers, all of which seem to be key consumers of System76 hardware. Basing off of Ubuntu makes it easier to satisfy that clientele. I imagine it also makes submitting upstream fixes for hardware-related packages easier.

Interesting two cents! Your line of reasoning is pretty thorough, and I think your educated guesses are fairly sounds! Thanks for contributing! I agree, while switching to Debian as a base would certainly be a lot of work, System76 has definitely gone above and beyond in far more complex ways, particularly with their COSMIC DE effort.

See, this was my thought as well. Canonical seems to be going the way of RedHat, and I understand that they need to turn a profit, but my understanding is also that most of their money comes from server support. Not really sure how much they can squeeze out of Desktop users, but I guess that's what snaps are for...

So I kind of get this, but from what I can understand it's more tedious from a DevOps perspective to switch package management systems than to just switch to repositories that target older software versions. Hence why I'm curious as to whether simply basing off of Debian-testing like Ubuntu does is the most likely outcome.

As for NVIDIA support, I was playing around with the latest Debian release and almost immediately noticed that the NVIDIA proprietary packages were available by default. In other words, Debian seems to be just as inclined to support an NVIDIA setup as Ubuntu does out of the box now.

I see, thank you kind stranger! Much appreciated. Admittedly would not have expected Windex. Reminds me of how the father used it to treat a zit in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

As someone who really only went on Reddit for memes and techie discussions, I think I can say this: for my use-case, there was nothing special about Reddit itself. In fact, one thing I have realized is just how little the nature of the host matters beyond ease of use. Sure, certain formats lend themselves better to certain use-cases, but ultimately humans are social creatures, and even in the most inconvenient of circumstances, we find a way to make it work.

And once you realize that, it becomes less about the medium, and more about the people who lead the discourse. From what I can gather, Reddit lost that discourse a long time ago. And as such, their downfall was only a matter of time.