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And it's also possible that the sharing of pictures and videos of wartime carnage might "brutalize" some of us. Over the last few years ISIS's infamous beheading videos have inspired their followers to decapitate, or attempt to decapitate, infidels all over the world. But then beheading turned into the psychopath equivalent of a meme (also a meme?). CNN documented how it went viral worldwide among non-jihadists ...

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The professor CNN interviewed, Arie Kruglanski, suggested that this might be evidence of the "brutalization effect". That term's traditionally used to refer to the well-documented phenomenon of the death penalty inspiring more violence in states that use it. But the last few years of social media makes it look like that same basic principle holds true with snapchats of atrocities. And we've got more than enough documentation of mass shootings to know that they work like a "contagion", inspiring copycat attacks usually within two weeks.

During his time in Iraq, one of David Kilcullen's jobs was to "debrief" captured insurgent fighters. He told me he'd find himself asking questions like, "How did you get to a point where you were cutting off kids heads?" And they'd always respond with something like, "I have no idea, it was like a form of collective madness that just overtook us all..." David didn't think that was all ass-covering, "...people will look back on their own behavior during the height of a civil war, and almost not recognize themselves, or recognize their behavior...and it turns out that's not accidental, there's an art to generating that."

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I sincerely apologize for the nightmares all of this information is going to give you for the next month. On the upside, today is National Deep Fried Clams Day! That's ... that's enough to distract the terrified screaming in your brain, right? RIGHT?!

Robert Evans wrote a book, A Brief History of Vice, that's much more lighthearted than this article has been.

For more ways the world fundamentally misunderstands the art of war check out 5 Stupid War Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks To Movies) and 6 Things Everyone Knows About War (That Are Totally Wrong).

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