You are what you think about.
Thank you for the correction of the term. Yours does make more sense.
I understand your reasoning about correlation and causation with regard to persons who are mentally well balanced. The kid from Omaha had a history of depression and mental instabiliity. I don’t know that the games “caused” him to do what he did, but I think they could have played into his decision to end his life in that manner.
Focusing his full concentration on the games may have provided the means to desensitize him, give him the ability to dehumanize the victims, and blunt the reality of what he was doing to innocent people.
Worse, he may have had a full realization of exactly what he was doing, and just didn’t care...for whatever reason. He wanted fame, and to - as he described it - “go out in style”. 24/7 news coverage followed similar senseless incidents, such as Columbine, etc. He wouldn’t be the first young guy who thought that was “cool”. It must have been enough for him to know that the coverage would happen in his case, even if he didn’t live to see it.