The Weird Meme Ecosystem Behind the Highland Park Shooting

I was thinking about the Boston bombing. Oh, there we go. It's also not really in Chicago. We should know. It's like thirty right, Yeah, yeah, it's like it's it's it's it's a it's a northern suburb. Yeah, it's like it's And it's because I've heard a bunch of people say it's like a super rich neighborhood, and then I've heard other Chicago folks say that, like, no, it's like an

upper middle class neighborhood that used to be richer. And anyway, whatever, it's not like Chicago that and yeah, we'll be talking about it because it's it is an incident that fits within a pattern of behavior that very few people understand nor really prepared to think about. And it's part of why is because if you actually understand what's going on with this shooting, there is no political utility in what happened.

Um And I mean that the number of ways. There is no if you are someone who is supportive of more stringent gun control, there is not political utility in the shooting for a number of reasons, including the fact that Illinois has strict gun laws and while a lot of Illinois gun crime has to do with weapons that coming from other states, he bought his legally in the

state of Illinois. Um And even though like this guy was on police radar, he had made threats before they had confiscated all of his knives, and he's still allowed to buy guns, even though Illinois has a red flag law that very easily if you can confiscate Amand's knives they could have confiscated. Has stopped him from buying guns or whatever. Plenty of laws on the books to have stopped this, And it's useless in a left right political sense of the word, because there are this guy does

not graph onto any of that I have. I think it is there's a value and kind of putting out some of the Trump imagery he's put on only because the right has immediately left on calling him a transgender anti for shooter. And I guess in terms of a social media thing, sharing him draped in a Trump flag is the quickest way to like rebut that, but that doesn't mean he's not it's not not actually understanding what's

going on. Right, Yeah, there's very this is it's it's in a pattern of shootings that are becoming more common the past few years. We saw it at the UH. There's a school shooting last like October or November that the shooter had a very similar profile. Um, and it's a it's a part of this growing online trend using imagery related to mental illness too encourage and justify mass acts of violence in some rebellion from how our regular society is structured and how people usually think of reality.

So it's it's something that we generally people who spent a lot of time researching this, myself included trying to be very careful about how we talk about this, right because we we don't want the wrong things boosted. But also everyone just being in the dark isn't great either, right, that's that's frustrating, right, If people are curious, they want us start to look stuff up, and it's better that they have someone who knows what they're talking about explaining

to them. Then then just have them being the wild West of the Internet on site image boards or forms learning about these nonsense propaganda styles. There's there's a few things that are unique about this guy. I mean, he was not only making the propaganda, but he also did he also did a violent act that is actually more

unique than usual. Usually the people who are involved in making this type of propaganda that he was making, he made YouTube videos, music, he was he was very prolific in what he was putting out content wise into the Internet. And usually the people who put stuff out in this style of propaganda and this style of like of a very very like meme driven violent mental illness fetishization subcultures, they don't generally the people who make the stuff don't

go and do the stuff. This is what instance where this this did happen. So that's actually unique for a few reasons. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting about that is that and this is something that has not been discussed nearly as much as I think it ought to have. In the wake of the shooting, this guy basically released an A r G at the same time as he carried out his shooting,

Like basically, we're gonna get to that. I mean, because in some ways this is a really good explanation, not explanation. This is really an example of the post manifesto, like post manifesto terrorism um where there's not there's not a written manifesto. It's someone's entire online presence and their entire online documentation is is that that serves as their manifesto, the whole image of them online, everything they've put out, it represents the thing that they want spread. It's not people.

These types of people are are less likely to write, you know, like a ten page thing about how about why they hate X minority. Instead, they're gonna leave piles and piles of clues and puzzle pieces, music videos and content that lead people into what they want to project as their mental state to be. UM. So it's like everything isn't everything is part of what they want to

put out. Yeah, and I think both you can see the act itself, the shooting itself, as an attempt to spread the art that he was making and to spread this like profile that he had built. There's a reason why that logo that he had for himself, UM was all over everything. There's a reason why unique logo, very unique logo. He put out. Some of the videos, one from ten months ago showed the location he's believed to

have started shooting from. It looks like um, so he was planning this for a while and he I think this was this was meant both as almost as like an advertising campaign for this guy's EP, if you want to look at it that way, but in a broader sense, like like like it's it's it's it's more circular than that. Right.

He wasn't just trying to spread his stuff, but he was trying to spread his stuff in this this imagery and branding that he had created for himself and in order to put other people in that same mind state. It was. It was also very personal to him. Um, he's I've spent the past few hours watching watching hours of the stuff that he's put out. UM, and I mean he's there's there's videos that he's animated of him doing a suicide by cop. Um, there's there's music videos

he's made about doing a school shooting. Um, these are these are ideas and thoughts he has been grappling with for a long time and he finally did the thing. I'm I'm unsure currently if he always knew that he was going to do this or if he was actually trying to fight it. Now that's that's honestly not even worth debating because it's not useful to what's going on

because he did it, because because he didn't. But we've had you can see the types of stuff he's been putting out, like, Yes, the street that he did the shooting on, he has a long along zooming clip of that same street in videos that was posted like over a year ago. Um, so he's been he's been thinking in this way for a long time. This isn't like a fast radicalization. This is someone who has been heavily steve in very very small niche online some cultures for

a long time. I like the guy is twenty two years old, he's he's had his Twitter account since two thousand eleven. He's been online so much. Um, it's deeply online person deeply alienated, socially isolated, uh, deeply like disassociative. And this is this is by the way, consistent with what his friends have said, consistent with what people who knew him and worked with him and put music and

albums together with him have have repeatedly. A number of them at this point come out and said variations of like, yeah, man, he got like really weird, like it was it not not like and not in the way that like, oh he got super into Q or like he became a Nazi, but like he got weird in a way I didn't understand and I stopped associating with he got he got detached from parts of of like modern reality in ways

that are really hard for people to understand. Um, and I think it's it is important to emphasize just that the deeply online nature this he he had. He made a whole music video titled I Rely on the Internet, Um that you can't find anywhere, so don't even try to go. You don't need to, you don't need to. But like, but it opens, but it opens by him saying I get mad when other people are more popular

than me on the internet. And the mass shooting is in line with this, with this style of thinking, right, he's he is he is trying to reify himself into him into a memetic image to spread around the same way many mass shooters try to do this same thing. But he is doing this extremely intentionally. Um. He wants to be the thing that represents a very specific idea,

and I'm it's again. We are always trying to be carrying a careful but like, how much we get into this because you don't want to boost the wrong thing. But it's important to talk about because it's costing a lot of people in their lives and no one really

knows how to deal with this problem right now. One of the beautiful things about our current age is that if you are someone like if you are someone who researches tourism, extremism, violence, particularly in the American context, although certainly not exclusively Christchurch in the whole Germany, I don't

need to go into it. But if you are someone who focuses on this stuff, UM, you will repeatedly have the experience of encountering a new subculture online or a new trend, a new like species of meme and find yourself wondering, like when the first shooting is going to be? UM. I made a significant chunk of my career because I was paying attention to one particular group of folks online

when they did their shooting. And I am not primarily I've not been in the you know, we've talked a little bit about schizo wave, which is kind of broadly speaking, the thing that this guy most embodied. Um that is that is the propaganda style which has a bad name. Yes, it's obviously endorsing its name. This is the style that people who involved in this only community use. It's about fetishizing parts or fetish using media driven aspects of mental

illness to encourage violence. That's what it's about. Obviously illness, Yes, the aesthetics and mental illness. Right, people who are who actually you know, deal with mental illnesses are much less likely to commit violent acts. They're actually more likely to be the recipient of of of violent acts not documented.

So like this is this is like I think important to actually get people to like understand because this is one of the things that if you look at like Tucker Carlson, for example, like how Alex Jones was buond to all these shooters, the thing they pivoted one of the things they've pivoted to is, oh, it's because all these people are on antidepressants and it's like, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about So there was there was this tweet. But I hate talking about Marjorie Taylor Green.

I think it's useless to talk about her and it only gives her inflates the thing that she represents. But but but uh, she had this tweet about a picture of of him that that that that he that he posted, and she's asking is he in jail or a have center or psychiatric center in this photo that's on his bedroom? What drugs are psychiatric drugs or both? Does he use? And the image here is of an image very clearly photoshopped of this person sitting in like sitting in like

a mental institution, holding a Bible. And it's part of this thing that it's like a fetishizing the aesthetics of mental illness, right, It's like, oh look at me, I'm I am so detached from reality. I be I belong inside a mental institution now, and the aesthetics of Christian fascism, which is also a weird part of it. There's a photo one of the like images he posted in four chan.

I think it was fortunately I may be mistaken about the exact location, but it was like it was a Catholic saint with like the sacred heart like in her hands, with the head replaced by like some anime girl. I've I've I have not seen that yet. But yeah, this image that he made of of inside this this the hospital that that is that is part of the joke to him, right, the joke, Like I don't think he would actually assume that someone would think this is an

unphotoshopped image. I think he would he us like Margine Taylor Grey is just like just like unable to determine the most basic photoshop that you can see the edge marks very clearly. So but but this, but like this is part of the joke, right, And everything getting into what he actually believes about reality and stuff isn't important because everything about this is has to do with like post to ironic violence and post ironic like comedy, post

ironic like ideas of reality. It's the difference between this what is sincere and what is real and what is ironic and what is fake don't matter. They as long as they're happening, that's what's happening. So it's all as real as anything else. So getting into specific ideas about what he personally believes. Doesn't actually matter because one we don't know if that's genuine at all. He's he's putting everything out intentionally. And two it doesn't matter on the

actual material circumstances. What are producing effects inside our world right now, like these types of like acts of violence, But it's it's everything is put out, should be but it'll seem like contradictory, it will seem confusing. Right He opened a video of his that he was like doing a live stream like like I think, like over like a year ago, and he he calls everyone who's watching his live stream of like he calls them communists. He's like, hey, communists, um.

And it's not because they're actually communist. Is not because he likes communism. It's not because he's necessarily fascist either. It's that all these things are so blurred and you use them interchangeably to produce this sense of meaninglessness and the reaction to this meaningless world that he's constructed for himself and these types of online subcultures try to construct the only sensible reaction to this meaningless world is for them to do these types of acts of violence. That is,

that is the point. So the actual details of what they're saying aren't important, because it's all about constructing this world that is utter really meaningless and self contradictory and confusing and nothing makes sense and the only way to respond to that is to get out of it. And that's part of what they're they're trying to do. And there are I mean, and again, part of the frustrating thing is that there are all of these things that people try to kind of simply affix to this our

pieces of it. Yeah, American gun culture, the fetishization of violence as the way to achieve positive ends in our culture is a part of this. It's why, it's part of why the natural response to everything is meaningless and

confusing is going agalling spray exactly. Um. And likewise, the fact that politics is where it is where you have like this one party that's the Republican Party, that is almost entirely dedicated to like owning the Libs and just purely attacking people rather than trying to do anything because their policies have been unmitigated disasters for the country, and the other side just kind of blindly tells people to vote like that hopelessness that like that that kind of

nihilistic aggression on the right all feeds into this. And you can say that like a great deal of right wing media, particularly right wing ault media, is kind of firms a heavy component of like the milieu that this guy was radicalized in. But it's more like that kind of stuff provided a language for him than it is

that kind of stuff was specifically like his motivating. I mean the same thing with like Trumpism, right, like he he engaged with Trump is m only in a way that it helps kind of destabilize things, And is this like orbit of chaos, right, That's that's why it that that that's why it's into it. Right, he was deeply into stuff run conspiracy theories, paranormal deep nihilism um, getting cut off from consensus reality, getting awakened to some like

greater truth. Everything that he's actually into is all just to serve to serve those types of means. Politics aren't the core part of that, but it's a reaction to politics, and then he's going to use it as just as just another tool. It's because yeah, many of them are racist, maybe they can share racist memes, but that's not actually the the the center point of of what's going on um, and you know, in some ways to be easier if it would, because that gives you something actually easy to target.

Otherwise right now, you know, when you're trying to address this whole propaganda style that is encouraging these things to happen, it's a harder thing to climb down on because it's it's like an endless game of whack a mole trying to find out, you know, who's the big people pushing content like this right now and like these weird niche communities, how can we get them taken down? And they just always pop back up, right It's always it's it's this

end this game. So it's hard to target, and that leaves you with the feeling of like hopelessness on how this situation will be solved, which is like also part of the point of why these attacks happen is to is to get that reaction. Um. But it sucks, like it's it's it's it's always bad to just have the like the only thing you think about is like, oh wow, I don't see a way to solve this. It's just terrible.

But that's part of the intention here, and man, it's it's not good because you know, you this This isn't the first shooting that has happened from this skits awave aesthetic there there, there has another ones, but these things are norms are going to start hearing more and more about this, and that sucks. Um, It's gonna become more of a of a thing that people are going to

be aware of. Right as soon as as soon as MPR starts talking about it, you're like, Okay, this is this is fully this is this is fully escaped the box. It's it's it's one of those things when um, because I was just I was saying earlier, like what it's like when you finally when you find yourself staring at it something that is going to blow up in a violent way and just not knowing when you are one of a number of folks who I've known who are

kind of particularly dealing with this space. And it's been like two years that folks have been saying like there is there will a bit like and the thing that is most almost as frightening as like anything else is that.

And then fucking Brett Bear is gonna be talking about schizo wave on the news like we're gonna have to We're gonna have to deal with like Joe Rogan trying to parse this ship out while stoned, um, while stoned, and and well talking about the Kellyuka, and we're talking about the fucking Caliga, which does lead us into the board ap Yacht Club gas. So are we gonna are we gonna seget So we're gonna talk about one thing

dealing with Schitz. We finished talking about one thing dealing with schitzowave, and then when I enter into other thing that the only accurate way I can describe describe this is that my my dives into this, into this theory are the equivalent of what it feels like to have a psychotic episode. And that's not that's not disparaging at all. It's about the actual thing is your brain does when that happens. How you take one meaningless piece of information

and project meaning onto it to make it super important. Um, and how that kind of cascades down. Oh boy, So the board the board Apiacht Club a k A. Now, I guess the board ape Nazi Club because people online have decided that they're really good at researching Nazis. I guess somebody happened too the fucking subreddit and tell us that we needed to be all right, we needed to

be dealing with this. Yeah. So I was like, like, randomly, I like visited some of my friends in Chicago who are like normies, and like they were telling me about this video and I was like, oh, no, yeah, it's it is. It is again. It has fully escaped the box now and that's part of the problem. So there's this YouTuber who made a video in partnership with a quote unquote internet artist um about how the Board Apiacht Club friends of the pod are secretly this Nazi op

to troll everyone into spreading esoteric Nazism. That's that's the claim. Now, first, I'm gonna say that the guy who made this video was in partnership with this internet artist who at the same time launched a rival ape based n f T project, and this video served as an ad for his rival

ape n f T project. And to be clear, his Ape n f T project was taking the art that the Board Ape Yacht Club used for their apes, making no changes to it, and just selling it to people on a different platform, which is like intellectual property theft, right, right, Like, I never want to be the guy saying the board apes are legal, right, I can't believe, like, we are not defending board Ape Yacht Club and I want them

to be hit with a brick. But we're talking about this because people are appropriating the term, appropriating the almost like the aesthetics of anti fascist research started selling their own products. They are appropriating the aesthetics of anti of scholarship focused on extremism um in order to sell n f T s. That's what's happened with this, the board Ape Yacht Club or Nazis video. So it gains So all the information comes from this from this guy whose

arrival arrival n f T internet art. What's his name, hig writer Rips. I think, yeah, writer Rips, because he's being sued now by the board Apes or whatever, and like, good god, I and I mean everything, I I'm not gonna if you watch the video that we're referring to, I'm not disparaging you in case you thought it was convincing, because I mean that was part of the editing, because he was trying to make it seem convincing. But every every single thing is like cherry picked and squished together

to resemble meaning. But once you actually open it up, you're like, oh, this is actually nothing. Um. The whole thirty minute section on the cipher is about them doing cipher's badly to get a result out of the clues that they were given. They're looking for specific results to match whatever they want to see um. And everything else is the connections are so tangential um. And it's it's

like synchronicity gone bad. Right. It's people who take these things and protect meaning onto them, when in reality, that's just how everything in the world works. And it's not actually meaningful or important. It's just because you're focusing on it, so you're gonna see it everywhere. Is it the same thing we were talking about in our food factor is

conspiracy video or a podcast? Sorry? And and it's basically one of the things that has made this, I think spread so viral e is that there's a germ of not truth. But there's there's a single convincing point that it all starts from. And the single convincing point is that the board Apiat club logo was ripped from that other Nazi logo. Absolutely very is very much patterned off of like the the old s s Death's Head because

you shouldn't. Yeah, because the number of things going on there because the Nazis were really good at graphic design, and because also that's not originally a Nazi thing. It has its origins and a Prussian military unit, and there's a reason why the death's head went so far, and it is generally like, for example, when you see a death's head on in the Ukrainian soldier in like Ukraine,

that dude's probably got some pretty Nazi fucking beliefs. It's not a it's it's not a again, So the fact that you see something that looks like it may have an inspiration in that um but like is a worthwhile point to start looking at stuff. Absolutely, but once you go at it with a conclusion in mind, then find things just to back up your own conclusion. That's not

how you do good research. Because man, like one of the founders is Jewish, not saying Jewish people can't be fascist or whatever, but like half the people who started it are ethnic minorities. They're really bad writers, and they put together this thing that's complete nonsense, and people are now assuming it's this, yeah, make a conspiracy, and it's not.

It's just because it's so. And I think part of why people are so so, I think part of why a chunk of the people who hate it want there to be a conspiracy is because this thing has made so much money, and it is utterly banal and an idiotic, and it is utterly been all in idiotic and part

of the thing. A lot of this comes out of and a lot of the strength that kind of this individual, this thing has, this this video has comes out of the fact that years ago a number of folks, some of whom our present company here, started warning people about the ways in which fascists would hide things like fourteen and eighty eight and all of dog Whistles, hidden imagery, all that kind of stuff here is and and so people started to get primed to the fact that that happens,

that the Nazis hide ship, and that that that you should be on the lookout for it. But one of the things that has been forgotten, I think, in kind of the rush to do that for ship like this, is that it's not just the fact that they're hiding like and in the in the specific case of people are putting fourteens and eight eights and ship. When I was discussing that was nearly always in the context of like members of Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys and

affiliated groups who were beating people in the streets. Right, So you're not you don't just have the imagery. You have someone going out and doing things that like they are claiming I have nothing to do with fashions, but like, no, you can see like you haven't and their Yeah, if you have an eighth that's numbered one eight, which is the thing in the video, because there's like ten thous

these apes and they're all numbered in numerical order. Yeah, it's like the fact that in a group of a set of ten thousand apes, one of them is a number of four eight is not Nazi dog whistling even anymore than it would be Satanic dog whistling that there's gonna be a six six six in there. It's just like there's one that's six nine six nine, just like

there's one that's two three four seven. Whatever. Yeah, it's it's like that thing people used to do were like I don't know if people still do this, but like they were when I was a kid. People would like you get someone who'd like pull out a grid of a city and they start drawing pentagrams on it. Yeah, exactly, And it's like, well, yeah, there's a bunch of random lines if you can. Yeah. But the other thing, that's that's a really problem. That's a big problem about this.

It's not only it's passing off bad extremism research to sell their own n f T product, which is bad in of itself. It's also saying the stuff that doesn't need to be said out loudly to a huge audience, all while using the fast wave image style, and that sucks because it's talking about things like traditionalism. It's talking about types of esoteric Nazism that usually we don't want to put a giant megaphone on because when people get really into this, you get stuff like the shooting that

happened a few days ago. That's that's Those are the same Internet communities that this stuff is really fostered in. So we don't like to amplify it because the more people who are in these communities, the more their brains slowly get chipped away at by these people making this

making these types of like hypnotic propaganda. So when we have a YouTuber that has a video with millions of views talking about the Caluga, talking about Julius A. Vola talking about a whole bunch of stuff around like extremely niche occult Nazism. That's not great, especially when they're using the fast wave style of video editing to make it seem really cool and scary, and when they're doing it ultimately to make money in an n f T scheme. Right, it's it's it's more than just this is not just

somebody did research that was like bad um. This is somebody crafted a viral thing using the aesthetics of research um and dropping some really dangerous shit into the consciousness in an irresponsible way to sell the same ape drawings

they were attacking. Extremely frustrating because even the whole cipher section of the video I'll still real against because it's about people using a bad jillion cipher methodologies to get specific results out of it that they want, and all the results they get out of it also are like not problematic and are kind of explainable, Like all of them refer to something about monkeys anyway, So even if they are true, it's not it's it doesn't necessarily need

to be referencing this obscure thing in traditionalism. It's like, oh no, that's because it's the name of a fucking monkey. And I don't again, I don't. I don't have any actual opinion on whether the board a fiat club has someone working for it that is hiding in secret references because honestly, I don't care because all because what it's viewed publicly as is this supid thing. Yeah, I mean

it's not. It's not viewed publicly with people who use it as a secretnazy conspiracy because if it is, what's the impact, What's what's the impact that it's like, how how would it matter if it's a secret Nazi conspiracy theory? What's it? What's it doing? It's it's bad pictures of monkeys.

When when we talk about the first wave of this and like they need to explain, you know, the symbols that people were hiding in these like right wing street movements of a bunch of whom wound up feeding into JAM six, It's easy to say, well, what the harm was? They were going out, they were beating people, they were planning terrorist attacks, right, Like, yeah, it's doing terrorist attacks. I have I again, I fucking hate these Board eight motherfucker's.

I think this is the stupidest fucking I don't know trend I've seen in my entire goddamn life, I cannot point to anything even vaguely Nazi they have supported or done, like and among other things. If you want to know if something is a dangerous conspiracy or a stupid grift, one question you should ask your off And this isn't always relevant, but one question you should ask yourself is is Jimmy Fallon involved? Because if Jimmy Fallon is involved,

it's probably just a dumb grift. Because I mean, the whole, the whole, the watching this guy breakdown how you get secret messages out of these ciphers is it's it's the same. It's the same thing as like Q and on ship. It's people wanting to get an answer out of numbers and things and then pushing that answer as truth, even

if it's like not not based in any form of reality. Yeah, it's it's so, it's it's really frustrating to watch people basically start using Q and on style research tactics to justify their hatred of an n f T project, which is like, no, you can just dislike it from being an n f T thing. You don't need to rapid in a in this package. That is just really bad

extremism research. Part of one of the things that's scared me about this attack and about like what's going to happen kind of in the media after it is that, Um, I think kind of inevitably these aesthetics are just going to get co opted on a wider and wider basis. That's what's happening on TikTok right now, is that these these types of fast wave and schizoweve aesthetics are just becoming a core part of the zoomer online aesthetic, and

that sucks. The The other point I was I wanted to mention about the Highland Park thing is like this, this guy that did this is such a perfect profile of this type of de attached like gen Z Like almost I like like post politics terrorism, um that Like he is such a perfect example of someone who has been online since he was a very very little kid, trying to make content online. Right, everyone in gen Z needs to be performing all of the time, right, Your

whole life is a performance for the internet. Um, he was doing that same thing. He's been making the making music and video, was in ships since he was he was like younger than me. Like, he's been doing this for a long long time. Um. And the types of like you know, like nested communities that you get like that you like fall into. It's such it's such like a clear example of the very types of things that you know, me and others have been talking about and

warning about for a while. Um. And it's the whole like muddled nous of reality that we even get with this like board ape, Nazi clip video, right, they're all part of this same problem with the Internet, Like our brains weren't designed for this much information coming at us at the same time. We cannot sort it all out. Um. And it's not ideal. Um, I was, it's not it's not great. I would rather it not be like this.

I don't know how to like come at people with a solution to this, because this is an unsolved problem. It's like, come up with a solution for the fucking um the fact that emissions like are not going to be reduced, you know, because the world because the world does suck. But the very be very cognizant of video propaganda styles and anyone that uses flashing like classic or Catholic um like imagery, be very very careful, be very careful of people who fetishize the authetics of mental illness.

Be very careful about about people that that you wrap these aesthetics of of mental mental illness and like a very violent package because like that that's what we get with with with the shooter. He was like doing doing videos about about you know, these types of mental illness that end with him just like a picture like a drawing of him holding a gun. Um, you know, way before he bought a gun, he was making art about

about this. Um. I think the one that's stuck out to me most was him repeatedly referring to himself as a sleepwalker. Yeah, which which I don't know, like obviously that is very much in line with the skizawave aesthetic stuff that like you have been talking about. It also kind of makes me think, I mean it. It brought me to thinking about Barbara Tuckman, who is a historian who wrote a book called The Guns of August that's

a history of World War One. Um, that that describes kind of the machinery that got set up and marched everybody into that situation exploding like sleep sleepwalkers right, Um, Like this system has been set up and the people are kind of so unwilling to see where it's leading that, uh, everything is just kind of marching with a with a sense of inevitability towards a worse and a worse endpoint.

And that's that's what scares me most about this. I've I've listened to many of his horrible songs and there's and there's lyrics very similar to that idea, um about that kind of inevitable like fate driven nature of our current situation and how reality has become so muddled with the internet. Um and like we there's been uh an intentional, top down effort to destroy any nature of consensus reality and make everything up for debate of there's there is,

there is. Facts no longer are a thing, like they just don't exist. And this is the world that results from that happening. When there's people in power who put are pushing for this, like you know, like Steve Bandit is among you know, one of many people who are pushing for this type of world. Um, this is the result that we get, and this is the result that

they kind of want us to get. It's it's it's yeah, I mean because if everything is true, and that's fine, fundamentally, like what they're going for is this idea that like everything is true and nothingness everything. Yeah, and if every like and if you hit that state, you can do anything, right, like to steal a quote, who was that with that fucking Crowley? Um the but but like that's very much nothing is true, everything is permitted. Yeah, I mean that

goes all the way back to the assassins. They sure sure, sure, um but no, but it is like that is that is the thing, right if you mean even the even the shooter guy had numerous Discordian references in in his ship. Yeah. Yeah, it's all about the same stuff. It's all it's all

dealing with these same problems. And you're right, obviously, if if you know, if you deal with dissociation as I sometimes do, if you you know, like parts about the discording aesthetics and like like the kind of ideas they play with, that does not make you an inherently dangerous person.

That's that's not the problem here, um the right, Like you could like, I'm you know in some ways, but I think about a lot of a lot of these same topics because I look at all of this I'm I look at all of this research all the time. So it is my brains in a similar isn't a isn't a similar place? That's that's that doesn't make you

a bad person, that doesn't make you dangerous. Um. But I think it's important to be cognizant of the type of propaganda that people are pushing, the types of propaganda, trends and styles that are producing material effects in the world, like these types of shootings. Yeah, and so I don't know what else to say, honestly, because it's bad. Yeah, it's it's a problem. I would say, if anyone ever tells you about something they saw on the internet, hit

them and run away screaming. That's a good that's a good way to move forward. Um, and please don't don't start the other things like you know, we're gonna, we're gonna the right is going to have two possible reactions to stuff like this, Right, They're gonna one do a satanic panic, then be like, oh, look at these people doing a cult shit. Um, let's do another. Let's do

another satanic panic, which would suck. There, there's there's there's there's that option obviously that would tie into like transphobia, that would tie into a whole bunch of whole munch of bullshit. Um. The other option is that people start, you know, using mentally ill people as a scapegoat and start of saying we should lock up people who deal with mental illness. Also not that would suck, wouldn't solve

the problem either, wouldn't do it. Yeah, Like that's the thing I've I've actually been seeing this in the last really like probably three months, is there's been a bunch of people who have been calling for like bringing like bringing sort of old school asylums back. That's that's exactly what the people, the people who make this propaganda, That's exactly what they want. That's that they want you to have that reaction that would make things so much worse.

If you put people like this in an asylum for ten days then they get out there, they are so much more likely to to do these types of things. Not because they're actually like not because like not nothing to do with their actual whatever like mental things they have going on. It's because of the the aesthetic styling is right. They want to be a character in a story. If they feel like their life is going in a direction that they are a character in a story. They're

getting put in these situations that they've memed about. Right, this guy's pictures, he's photoshoph of himself inside mental institutions. Right, it's it's a character in a story. If you do that, you're playing right into their hands. It is that is not what that That should not be the focus of what we are doing. Um, Like carsonal problems are not the solution to these types of things, especially for people who are who are like just making music online, Like,

what are you gonna do? Fucking arrest people for the like for the music they make, like, that is not the solution. Don't let people turn this into targeting people who have actual like mental like mental things that they deal with. Don't make them the scapegoat of this um And be very careful if anyone tries to do any kind of satanic panic nonsense about secret occultists who are trying to alter your kids reality or whatever. Very careful because anyone who uses that type of framing for this

problem is not genuine. They do not actually care. They are pushing something that they want. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the reasons why the idea that these people are kind of seeing themselves as part of a narrative is important is because it presents a discontinuity with the way mass shootings have worked for most of the time that people listening to this have been alive in the United States prior to a couple of years ago. Really twenty nineteen was the big break year for this.

The vast majority of mass shooters were also committing suicide. That was part of the goal. That was what happened. Um. And if you are an individual with a gun who has just committed a series of murders, it is very easy to make sure you die in that attack. It's extremely easy. Um. That is why so many of them did it. That has that has stopped being given in the way that it used to be. The change I think was christ Church was the main inflection point for this.

But a lot of these guys go down alive. The Buffalo shooter taken alive. The last, the last schitzu Awave shooter from a few months ago, I was taken in alive. Um. Is intriguing because if I was to watch all this video propaganda beforehand, I would have assumed that this guy wanted to die within the act. A lot of the stuff was written about him doing this to kind of

end his life and escape into whatever is next. That that's the kind of feeling I get a lot of his writing, and yet he didn't of the imagery he was putting out, particularly the ship with him in in the asylum, as kind of evidence of where like part of it was part of why I suspected like he had he intended to get taken alive. That is, that is that is very possible. I mean like because in some ways, yeah, I'm not going to speculate, not necessarily

the most useful. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna speculate further. But there's a lot of a lot of possible things to to think about there, which I will do so because I have all the stuff. Don't no one else please, it's you don't don't look at this stuff because it's like forbidden, right, don't don't don't seek it out because it's like, oh, it's forbidden knowledge that they don't want you to see. It's dangerous. Oh that that's that that's not the point. The point is it's bad and that

it's also hard to find. So like, just like, don't not watching like it's not it's not even it's not worth watching. It's not like a bunch of stuff, like like in the immediate wake of it, and like, my what happened to me was I got a fucking headache. You get a headache, you feel bad. It's it waste, It wastes your time. Like like if if, if you want to get this like the experience of this without having to like do this ship like fucking eat a

bunch of like eat a ship tone of candy. Watch Watch, Watch, Watch Pink Floyd's The Wall Jesus Christ, except except if you eating a bunch of candier, watching the fucking Wall like it's actually good, whereas this is just like it's it's only the bad parts of that. But I only look at this because it's my fucking job and it sucks. Yeah, alright, well, um you know I'm gonna I'm gonna say we're probably

done here. Um, so I don't know until next time. Again, if anyone tries to tell you about something that happened on the internet, strike them and flee. Remember run hide, fight from people trying to tell you about things happening on social media. These are this is this is the

good strategy going forward. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone media For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.