We Study Mass Shooters. Something Terrifying Is Happening Online

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/opinion/mass-shooters-online-radicalization.html

by herodotus • 4 months ago

21 10 4 months ago

garciasn• 4 months ago

kelseyfrog2• 4 months ago

I don't understand the authors "true crime" reference. I'd always associated true crime with middle aged white suburban moms podcast habits, not teens and young adults glorifying mass shootings. Did I miss something or did the author?

shagie• 4 months ago

That was referencing the killer in the Abundant Life Christian School shooting.

This isn't the true crime of classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_crime but rather people commenting on crimes.

https://www.wisn.com/article/madison-school-shooting-reveals...

    True Crime Community

    Researchers say these posts and her online actions fit the mold of the internet group "True Crime Community," or TCC.

    The online group often focuses on mass shootings and other crimes, researching and in some cases idolizing previous attacks.

    "TCC and other similar online forums are one location online where individuals who are seeking justification for their desire to engage in violence, to express their anger at society, to express their feeling of being a victim, and they consume content found on those forums," Cohen explained.

---

"The "true crime community" of tumblr is really fucked up" - https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/7e7v0b/the_true_cri...

thomassmith65• 4 months ago

I was similarly puzzled, but Wikipedia has a "True Crime Community" entry that matches the usage in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Crime_Community

goatlover• 4 months ago

Why would true crime be limited to that demographic? Lots of different people have an interest in certain crimes, particularly unsolved or controversial ones.

kelseyfrog2• 4 months ago

No one is saying that it's limited, just that it's the primary demographic that comes to mind when true crime is the subject.

What I learned is that true crime as a genre is different than the True Crime Community(TCC) which is a different demo and is associated with glorification of violence and one of the sources of enacted violence.

burnt-resistor• 4 months ago

Not very much substance or evidence in this op-ed article, there should be at least some support. Yes, online glorification of such needs to be shutdown and that means creative MMO platforms must be held accountable to provide effective moderation.

More broadly, I'm concerned that the civilization glue of community continues to be in retreat, lack of uniform mental healthcare and healthcare, and lack of reasonable bounds on who can/'t have firearms with similar respect as vehicular operation.

While that means I'm concerned about the same loser types Columbine that continue to be a problem (as mentioned), but I'm also concerned about organized domestic and international terrorists (including accelerationist, race-oriented, and religious groups) out to do much greater harm in ways that aren't just mass shootings.

Also, AI chatbots opens up the potential of automating sentiment manipulation through astroturfing leading towards radicalization goals.

Final qualitative observation: Functional, healthy civilizations seem to produce far fewer revenge-suicide events per capita per time interval.

Mountain_Skies• 4 months ago

Robert Putnam has plenty of research on the subject of the disappearance of community, but he was called a Nazi for doing actual research and publishing the results because the data didn't show what many people, including the vast majority of Hacker News, wishes to be true. As long as we continue to insist that our wishes trump reality, things will continue to fall apart, and everyone will continue to act confused about why it is happening. Lots of unsupported theories that conform to wishes will be bandied about while actual research continues to be ignored.

embeng4096• 4 months ago

I'd recommend Katherine Dee's Substack, Default Friend, for a more in-depth look at this type of thing. The NYT op-ed dips into the usual tropes of the attention economy, true crime, copycat behavior, viral memes and social media algorithms, calls to safeguard the algorithms and AI.

Dee's article "The Nihilism of the Mass Shooter" (written in 2022, even) (https://default.blog/p/the-nihilism-of-the-mass-shooter) provides more specifics than the generalities in this op-ed. I'm a regular reader, so it's easy for me to see, but I believe that her passion about investigating and reporting on these things is visible even to a new reader. It's clear to me that she actually spends time looking at the sources, e.g. there's a link in the article to one of her sources, a pdf of the law enforcement report on a shooter from Parkland.

9864247888754• 4 months ago

An opportunity for the NYT to publish clickbait headlines?

We Study Mass Shooters. Something Terrifying Is Happening Online

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