Adam's writing as a sign of his deterioration

Lanza's posts in 2010 and 2011 had very few spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. In 2012, though...

July 2012
"My interest in mass murdered"

11 December 2012
"It seem too mediated"
"Domestic or forging"
"If their existence is every divulged"
"It's not like its 1984"

I know these aren't major, but his previous writing was nearly impeccable.

SaucyJimmy wrote:

Lanza's posts in 2010 and 2011 had very few spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. In 2012, though...

July 2012
"My interest in mass murdered"

11 December 2012
"It seem too mediated"
"Domestic or forging"
"If their existence is every divulged"
"It's not like its 1984"

I know these aren't major, but his previous writing was nearly impeccable.

How many of Lanza's prior posts even survived the mass deletions and self-redactions compared to his 2012 posts? Seems to me like even if this wasn't a reach we'd need more information to make this determination.

I noticed the odd typos, but it didn't click that they were a sign of deterioration. It's a fair point that we might not have enough of his earlier posts to tell what he baseline was, but even his documents on his computer he never shared with anyone didn't have such mistakes.

The fact that these aren't just one letter slip ups or close to each other on the keyboard, but words transmuted into entirely different words, is interesting as well. If it was a phone autocorrecting I would understand, but I don't think laptops usually do that, especially in 2012. If I wanted to play devils advocate, though, I could say that he had to get a new hard drive following one of his "virtual suicides" and the new one had autocorrect, causing the sudden changes in his posts, but it's somewhat of a stretch.

I don't know if it's making a mountain out of a molehill or an actual sign, given his former perfectionism. I'll sign off with a few similarly garbled quotes from other mass killers with deteriorating thought processes.
Dylan Klebold: "Sadness seems infinite, & the shell of happiness shines around. Yet the true despair overcomes in this lifetime. How tragic for my dumass shithead I HATE SHIT motherfuckin goddamn piece of death thought and nothin FUCK FUCK FUCK" (Similar to Adam, Dylan was also good at English, so his mistakes are all the more unusual.)
Dylan Klebold: "The everything, the halcyon, the happiness is ours, there will be no notes from me. Let the humans suffer without my knowledge of the everything."
Michael Carneal: "Michael's Mom's birthday was the next day so he decided to get a present from the "Your Mom Has a Birthday Only When There's a Riot" store."

.

SaucyJimmy wrote:

11 December 2012
"It seem too mediated"
"Domestic or forging"
"If their existence is every divulged"
"It's not like its 1984"

These are from the e-mail to his Internet friend which was sent 3 days prior the massacre, typing properly was the last thing he was thinking about at that moment.

SaucyJimmy wrote:

Lanza's posts in 2010 and 2011 had very few spelling, punctuation and grammar errors.

his previous writing was nearly impeccable.

In the Me document Adam makes it clear that he believes that communication is the key to making a relationship work in his mind. By that he talks about how he likes people who type properly as he finds that talking to people who do not type properly is like. "Feeling as if i was dealing with a mentally handicapped Duck".  

I'm unsure if his mind was truly deteriorating in the run up to Sandy Hook or if he had just lost all interest in Being as thorough with his grammar as he usually was by the end of his life.

SaucyJimmy wrote:

Lanza's posts in 2010 and 2011 had very few spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. In 2012, though...

July 2012
"My interest in mass murdered"

11 December 2012
"It seem too mediated"
"Domestic or forging"
"If their existence is every divulged"
"It's not like its 1984"

I know these aren't major, but his previous writing was nearly impeccable.

My memory is fuzzy, but I remember from back in the day that he did make spelling errors and typos. Not as many as I did, but at the time I had wondered if English wasn't his 2nd language.

Also, if you assume that the youtube "fuckcomments" account was Lanza, then fuckcomments made a lot of typos.

My own interpretation is that Lanza was "on his best behavior" on the forums. He wanted people to interact with him and to that end he tried to appear as knowledgeable, mature and focused as he could be.

dyonqqr wrote:

I noticed the odd typos, but it didn't click that they were a sign of deterioration. It's a fair point that we might not have enough of his earlier posts to tell what he baseline was, but even his documents on his computer he never shared with anyone didn't have such mistakes.

The fact that these aren't just one letter slip ups or close to each other on the keyboard, but words transmuted into entirely different words, is interesting as well. If it was a phone autocorrecting I would understand, but I don't think laptops usually do that, especially in 2012. If I wanted to play devils advocate, though, I could say that he had to get a new hard drive following one of his "virtual suicides" and the new one had autocorrect, causing the sudden changes in his posts, but it's somewhat of a stretch.

I don't know if it's making a mountain out of a molehill or an actual sign, given his former perfectionism. I'll sign off with a few similarly garbled quotes from other mass killers with deteriorating thought processes.
Dylan Klebold: "Sadness seems infinite, & the shell of happiness shines around. Yet the true despair overcomes in this lifetime. How tragic for my dumass shithead I HATE SHIT motherfuckin goddamn piece of death thought and nothin FUCK FUCK FUCK" (Similar to Adam, Dylan was also good at English, so his mistakes are all the more unusual.)
Dylan Klebold: "The everything, the halcyon, the happiness is ours, there will be no notes from me. Let the humans suffer without my knowledge of the everything."
Michael Carneal: "Michael's Mom's birthday was the next day so he decided to get a present from the "Your Mom Has a Birthday Only When There's a Riot" store."

Dylan was probs drunk when he wrote that stuff

I can recall at one stage he went on a rant about people being sloppy writers, dislike for online slang and I think some dialects, etc, but later on went on to describe a dislike for enforcement of language 'rules' as Cultural Philistine.

Among other things his decrease of attentiveness might've coincided with the shift from prescriptivist to descriptivist and being less anal about informal writing as a result.