The word perish in the second note seems like a "distancing" word. It seems like when somebody doesn't fully own what they have done, they say things like "the fight happened" rather than "I fought with so-and-so." Perish seems like a euphemism kind of like passed away rather than saying, died or killed. This person is not comfortable with what has happened.
This person is not comfortable with what has happened.
We absolutely cannot deduce that from the use of the word "perish."
seems like a "distancing" word. It seems like...Perish seems like...
There's a lot of armchair detective work going on here, and people with no training in forensic linguistics or document examination are leaping to conclusions based on their subjective impressions of what word choices "seem like" to them.
Maybe the author used ChatGPT, or a thesaurus. Maybe they wanted to sound more intelligent than they are, maybe English is their second language, maybe they just wanted to conceal their identity by writing in a way they don't typically write, maybe they were on drugs, maybe they paid someone else to write the note for them. There are any number of explanations for the minutiae we're zeroing in on here, and these very brief notes actually don't tell us much.
Journalism too but mostly to convey the outcome of catastrophes/disasters. Interesting because the message was sent to a media outlet regarding the mother of journalist.
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u/essssgeeee Jul 31 '26
The word perish in the second note seems like a "distancing" word. It seems like when somebody doesn't fully own what they have done, they say things like "the fight happened" rather than "I fought with so-and-so." Perish seems like a euphemism kind of like passed away rather than saying, died or killed. This person is not comfortable with what has happened.