Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Last Friday,
Speaker 2: I teamed up with Lance from the Canadian based politics
Speaker 2: show The Serfs to talk about the tragic events of
Speaker 2: last week in tumblr Ridge, British Columbia. On Tuesday, February tenth,
Speaker 2: an eighteen year old named Jesse Van Rutzler killed her
Speaker 2: mother and stepbrother in their home, then took two guns
Speaker 2: and went to tumblr Ridge Secondary School, where she killed
Speaker 2: five students, one teacher, and finally herself. Two other kids
Speaker 2: were critically injured with gunshot wounds but have survived. The
Speaker 2: shooter did attend tumblr Ridge Secondary School years ago, but
Speaker 2: dropped out for the past three to five years. It's
Speaker 2: kind of unclear. Jesse identified as a transgender girl. Tumblr
Speaker 2: Ridge is a very small town with just twenty four
Speaker 2: hundred residents in northeastern British Columbia. This was the worst
Speaker 2: school shooting in Canada since nineteen eighty nine. The sequence
Speaker 2: of events during this incident were very similar to the
Speaker 2: Lelouche shooting in Canada ten years ago, where the gunman
Speaker 2: killed two family members at home before going to a school.
Speaker 2: During our conversation, Lance and I discussed the spread of misinformation,
Speaker 2: how the online writers tried to weaponize the deaths of
Speaker 2: these people for their own political agenda, and how the
Speaker 2: shooters online activity shows a growing fascination with mass shootings
Speaker 2: this past year. Here's that conversation.
Speaker 3: I'm sure everyone knows that right now in canada's a
Speaker 3: nation in mourning. And I also did probably want to
Speaker 3: start this out by reading the names of the deceased,
Speaker 3: because it's one of the things that the families have
Speaker 3: been asking for. And so the victims from the I'merridge
Speaker 3: Secondary School shooting are Abel Wanza who was twelve, Ezekiel
Speaker 3: Schofield who was thirteen, Kylie Smith who was twelve, Soybnoit
Speaker 3: who was twelve, Takaria Lampert who was twelve, Shanda have
Speaker 3: Iguanda Duran who's thirty nine, Emitt Jacobs who was eleven,
Speaker 3: and Jennifer Jacobs who was thirty nine years old. So
Speaker 3: I guess I'll start with Garrison. How have you been
Speaker 3: processing and or tracking the story since it happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty horrifying incident that happened last Tuesday.
Speaker 4: Very soon after it.
Speaker 2: Happened, there was like right wing narratives trying to use
Speaker 2: the deaths of these children and family members for their
Speaker 2: own political agenda. And I started tracking that pretty soon,
Speaker 2: and then also trying to like verify as much information
Speaker 2: I about the actual circumstances of the shooting and who
Speaker 2: the shooter was, you know, around that same time. Things
Speaker 2: have gotten pretty clear now a few days later. But
Speaker 2: I mean, it's been a nightmare to sort through all
Speaker 2: this stuff, especially all of like the political opportunism being
Speaker 2: done by a variety of right wing influencers and you know,
Speaker 2: quote unquote news agencies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was doing the same thing. Like right after
Speaker 3: the event happened. I noticed that there was a lot
Speaker 3: of for people who don't know, right wing online operatives
Speaker 3: like the plub Reporter and Juno News and cat Canada
Speaker 3: and these are all very popular right wing social media
Speaker 3: accounts on Twitter in Canada or at least based in
Speaker 3: Canada for their origins, but then they usually get retweeted,
Speaker 3: quote tweeted and amplified eventually by the far right in
Speaker 3: the US, which has a very corrosive effect. And I
Speaker 3: think but like by the time we're talking about this
Speaker 3: right now, I saw that like Donald Trump Junior, the
Speaker 3: son of the Presidents of the United States is doing
Speaker 3: an entire I assume blowed out of his mind rumble
Speaker 3: special on the shooting, just uniquely going after trans people
Speaker 3: the entire time, Like for a small little town of
Speaker 3: what like just over twenty four hundred people, that it
Speaker 3: has to be beyond like a shell shock to first
Speaker 3: have to go through something that's horrifying and then deal
Speaker 3: with the international right wing apparatus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're going through the motions right like this
Speaker 2: is not the first time, it won't be the last
Speaker 2: time that they try to do something like this. It's
Speaker 2: not getting as much traction, I think as it used
Speaker 2: to do. There's a lot of other stuff happening in
Speaker 2: the States around the time, Like news was breaking in
Speaker 2: the States about the shooting that happened. It was Wednesday
Speaker 2: during Pam Bondi's Epstein hearing, So there's been a lot
Speaker 2: of other stuff happening. So I don't think they've gotten
Speaker 2: as much like concentrated attention on this as some of
Speaker 2: the online right has wanted to or you know, like
Speaker 2: the Matt Walsh types lips of tech talk that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. But they're definitely giving it a go. It's gross, right,
Speaker 2: it's gross to use the deaths of all these people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, not to mention the way the entire thing's
Speaker 3: been framed is abhorrent. I mean, obviously, you know, we're
Speaker 3: speaking from a perspective where we don't want to vilify
Speaker 3: an entire group based on one, like, you know, horrifying
Speaker 3: monster's actions kind of thing, right, because that doesn't happen
Speaker 3: in the other direction for SIS people. And that's what
Speaker 3: you got to be quick to point out. But I
Speaker 3: feel like the Matt Walshes and the limbs of TikTok
Speaker 3: have and it's a horrifying thing to say, but like
Speaker 3: they're perfect narrative, right, It's kind of like a twisted
Speaker 3: way something that're actually quite pleased about. It almost seems likely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they make a lot of money off this, Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: They brought it off of human suffering and they try
Speaker 2: to spread as much of it as possible.
Speaker 3: The first aspect I was trying to look at the
Speaker 3: story from was what it was, really, what are the
Speaker 3: families themselves asking for? What does the you know, town
Speaker 3: need long terms of support that kind of stuff, And
Speaker 3: you move on from that, and then immediately it was well,
Speaker 3: now there's just an overwhelming, very apparent right wing mechanism
Speaker 3: gearing up, and it's going to be kind of devastating
Speaker 3: for a country like Canada that doesn't really have maybe
Speaker 3: or isn't as used to having the eyes of the
Speaker 3: world from the transphobic turf side of the internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about Jennifer Strang,
Speaker 2: the mother of the shooter, despite being a self described
Speaker 2: conservative libertarian and Jesse's mother, publicly supported her transition, made
Speaker 2: posts in supported trans people. In July twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: she shared a LGBTQ Pride graphic reading good people don't
Speaker 2: spend their time harassing marginalized communities and wrote quote as
Speaker 2: a conservative leaning libertarian who lives in the North and
Speaker 2: loves living in a small town. I really hope the
Speaker 2: hate I see online is just bored old people and
Speaker 2: not true hatred. Do better and educate yourself before spewing
Speaker 2: bullshit online makes you look dumb, evolve. I normally don't
Speaker 2: say anything. I normally don't go on shitbook to see
Speaker 2: the keyboard warriors, and I know I can't control or
Speaker 2: shield my kids from everything, but please, for the love
Speaker 2: of fuck, can you get your shit together, so we
Speaker 2: don't have to bring our kids up in a world
Speaker 2: full of hatred. Do you have any idea how many
Speaker 2: kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate? Please
Speaker 2: stop the bullshit quote. So, pretty soon after this shooting,
Speaker 2: based on an early active shooter report describing the shooter
Speaker 2: as a quote unquote female in address with brown hair,
Speaker 2: online right wing accounts started trying to identify who this
Speaker 2: possible shooter was by looking at trans people in the
Speaker 2: area of Tumblr Ridge. They misidentified one person who is
Speaker 2: a relative of this shooter, but put out photographs of
Speaker 2: them claiming that she was the shooter. This person is
Speaker 2: now having to like lock down all of their accounts
Speaker 2: and is scared to go outside to do the horrific
Speaker 2: wave of harassment they're facing.
Speaker 3: What is wild about that aspect of the story is
Speaker 3: I've seen accounts like the Blood reporter who popularized, you know,
Speaker 3: publishing that photo, but I think Rachel Gilmore is the
Speaker 3: one who also pointed out that there was the misuse
Speaker 3: of a photo in an actual CBC radio broadcast image
Speaker 3: thumbnail as well, which it is also kind of just
Speaker 3: shocking to hear because these are again innocent people who
Speaker 3: might have targets now put on their back because they're
Speaker 3: being directly identified as some kind of a mass shooter
Speaker 3: or monster. And then in addition to that, like now,
Speaker 3: I'm wondering how much of this is going to be
Speaker 3: something that they're capable of containing, especially considering that it's
Speaker 3: been still proliferated. Like I saw an account called bricks News,
Speaker 3: which I assumed would be about bricks, you know, the
Speaker 3: economic lines between a number of different nations, and instead
Speaker 3: was publishing the false photo of again a completely innocent
Speaker 3: person and sad like I think at the time, seventeen
Speaker 3: thousand likes, you know, hundreds of thousands of impressions. It's
Speaker 3: really dangerous.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I mean that's part of the intent here.
Speaker 2: You know, places like Kubia Farms trailblaze a lot of
Speaker 2: this quote unquote early research, and the point is to
Speaker 2: cast as large of than as possible, to damage as
Speaker 2: many trans people as they can using horrific events like this.
Speaker 2: The cruelty is part of the point, and you know,
Speaker 2: blame gets laid at a you know, a combination of
Speaker 2: trends enabled mental delusion SSRIs and hormones, saying that those
Speaker 2: things are causing the shooting well before we've any evidence
Speaker 2: to determine what types of medications someone could be on
Speaker 2: who they actually are, or any possible motive. One kind
Speaker 2: of crude thing that I've seen a lot is right
Speaker 2: wing accounts like you know, end Wokeness, allegedly Jack Pisovic
Speaker 2: saying that you know, the shooter quote unquote gunned down
Speaker 2: thirty five kids to make it seem like, you know,
Speaker 2: massacre of such a such a large magnitude, right, The
Speaker 2: number of kids that that have been killed and other
Speaker 2: other people as well, obviously is like horrific. Thirty five
Speaker 2: people were not shot in this shooting, though there was
Speaker 2: twenty five people with non gunshot related injuries as a
Speaker 2: result of the incident, and that is the number that
Speaker 2: that people are framing as being, you know, total number
Speaker 2: of people shot, which just isn't true. And then they
Speaker 2: also very quickly start sharing you know, unsourced graphs. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you've seen stuff like this, right saying that you know,
Speaker 2: trans girls make up the highest demographic of mass shooters
Speaker 2: per capita. You see these things go all over the place.
Speaker 3: By the world's richest men. He's sharing that a lot
Speaker 3: online right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean and this is this has been a
Speaker 2: thing the past three years. Right, this is something they've
Speaker 2: been doing well before any any actual incident can be
Speaker 2: even used to create data. They've they've created fake graphs
Speaker 2: that show this, those factors that get people to you know,
Speaker 2: believe these sorts of things. Right, There is certainly a
Speaker 2: selection bias that determines which types of shootings gets like
Speaker 2: a lot of media attention. And the other issue that
Speaker 2: I've talked about a lot in previous shootings is there's
Speaker 2: a lot of different definitions of a mass shooting, you know,
Speaker 2: mass shooting versus a mass killing, versus like a school shooting. Right,
Speaker 2: all these are different terms. Even the term school shooting
Speaker 2: can be used to refer to a variety of very
Speaker 2: different incidents revolving around gun violence.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There can be gang related violence at a school. There
Speaker 2: can be shots fired as an escalation of a physical fight,
Speaker 2: Students bringing guns to school and accidentally firing them, which
Speaker 2: happens more often than what you would think, like as
Speaker 2: someone who just brings a gun in their backpack, not
Speaker 2: intending to do a shoot, but it accidentally fires into school.
Speaker 4: This happens multiple times a year.
Speaker 2: There's you know, shootings there dormitories, right, those get counted
Speaker 2: as mass shootings at like you know, a college dormitory.
Speaker 2: It's in our personal violence. There's you know, neighborhood shooting
Speaker 2: set effect, but aren't targeting the school like drive by
Speaker 2: shootings or even something like the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 2: which some people have categorized as a school shooting because
Speaker 2: was on a college campus. Right, But these are all
Speaker 2: very different types of violence, right. These aren't like you know,
Speaker 2: intentional you know, mass shooting violence where someone who's trying
Speaker 2: to shoot as many people as possible and then usually
Speaker 2: killed themselves.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's a different thing than a lot of
Speaker 2: these other other things that I mentioned, but they all
Speaker 2: get lumped under this one label of school shooting. And
Speaker 2: all these different you know, data collection criteria could produce
Speaker 2: very different stats. And depending whether you're measuring your injuries
Speaker 2: versus deaths, you know, specific weapons like knives versus guns,
Speaker 2: and how many years are being sampled, or if there's
Speaker 2: connections to other violent activity, there could be very very
Speaker 2: different results and how you categorize you know, mass killings
Speaker 2: or mass shootings. The Mass Killing Database has six hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty one incidents in the United States since two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, of which about one to three gets
Speaker 2: kind of unclear. One to three are done by people
Speaker 2: who have been reported as transgender, which is an underrepresented
Speaker 2: ample size. The Violence Project has one transgender mass shooter
Speaker 2: in their database of about one hundred and ninety five
Speaker 2: mass shootings, and according to the Gun Violence Archive, which
Speaker 2: also measures gunshot injuries not just deaths, fewer than one
Speaker 2: in one thousand mass shooters over the past decade have
Speaker 2: been identified as transgender according to a Gallop poll for
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, but two percent of gen Z identify
Speaker 2: as transgender, and if you also count like non binary people,
Speaker 2: it brings it up to four percent. But you can
Speaker 2: have all those stats on hand, if that doesn't really
Speaker 2: do very much. Once you're arguing about statistics and like
Speaker 2: semantics of terms, when kids have died, you're kind of
Speaker 2: already starting to lose the emotional battle, right, Like I
Speaker 2: can say all of that, but like that's not actually
Speaker 2: going to be helpful, right, Like, fact checking doesn't work
Speaker 2: to dissuade disinformation, And when you're dealing with such an
Speaker 2: emotionally charge incident like kids being murdered. Having to read
Speaker 2: off a paragraph like that just doesn't really help, right.
Speaker 2: Parents just want to know why this is happening and
Speaker 2: what can be un to stop it, And all they
Speaker 2: know is that, you know, since twenty twenty three, there
Speaker 2: has been a series of shootings done by young people
Speaker 2: who either attempted to or did transition genders. Right, That's
Speaker 2: what they know, and they want to know, you know,
Speaker 2: why this is happening and how to stop it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I've tried to push up against,
Speaker 3: because you are getting a lot of Americans who are
Speaker 3: pushing that narrative right now, is to point out because
Speaker 3: I've seen people saying like this epidemic of transmass violence
Speaker 3: is a scorge and I think they're blending Canada in
Speaker 3: the US into one nation because I was like, just
Speaker 3: to be clear, this is the first mass shooting committed
Speaker 3: by a transperson in Canadian history ever.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of trans people in British Columbia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well across the country. I mean, it's one of
Speaker 3: those things for him like this, this this is not
Speaker 3: an epidemic of which like, oh my god, you have
Speaker 3: a high probability of being hurt by a transperson in
Speaker 3: your life. It couldn't be further from the truth, right,
Speaker 3: Like the stats are still overwhelmingly in the other direction.
Speaker 3: You're more likely to be the victim of physical or
Speaker 3: sexual violence if you're a transperson, then if you're this.
Speaker 2: Person, Yeah, no, that is another problem here is Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of these you know, data collection tools aren't
Speaker 2: counting bolencing Canada.
Speaker 4: These are all stuff based into states.
Speaker 2: But for you know, the culture wars, it's not that
Speaker 2: hard to you know, move that border up five hundred
Speaker 2: miles to include things that are happening in Canada in
Speaker 2: a rhetorical sense, for you know your Matt Walsh's or
Speaker 2: end wokenesses, even you know your Fox News anchors, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this thing that people are talking about on the right
Speaker 2: about this you know, epidemic of trans violence. What this
Speaker 2: is also done is created like a counter reaction from
Speaker 2: trans influencers to whenever something horrible happens like this, to
Speaker 2: blame these other groups like you know nine A or
Speaker 2: seven six four. Right, this has become something that's also
Speaker 2: now been very consistent. You know, there is a kernel
Speaker 2: of truth in this. This is based on a real
Speaker 2: thing that has happened before, but the invocation of this
Speaker 2: has often, you know, expanded greatly beyond it's actual, Like do.
Speaker 3: You explain it for people who are completely unfamiliar because
Speaker 3: I remember, like even a year ago, I had to
Speaker 3: started reading up I like, what is what is all
Speaker 3: this satanic cult for rituals with participation requirements of self
Speaker 3: harm and all this stuff?
Speaker 2: Like Okay, yeah, you see a lot of people now
Speaker 2: when there's news coverage, you know a lot of trans
Speaker 2: people who have you know, accounts online, you know, talking
Speaker 2: about how quote unquote satanic Nazi pedophiles have groomed another
Speaker 2: vulnerable queer kid into doing a mass shooting. There's a
Speaker 2: viral tweet on semi viral tweet on Twitter right now
Speaker 2: that reads quote fuck anyone talking about trends and not
Speaker 2: to Adam Waffen. This includes the cops and the media
Speaker 2: like the CBC and BBC. So yeah, what are they
Speaker 2: talking about here? You know, Adam Waffin Satanic Nazi pedophile cults.
Speaker 2: I said, you know nine A, seven, six four, right,
Speaker 2: These are originally you know Ninea is this older group,
Speaker 2: but as as contemporary internet lore, it is seen as
Speaker 2: this neo Nazi occultic organization that grooms people into sexual
Speaker 2: exploitation or into doing violence like mass shootings. Seven six
Speaker 2: four is a extortion ring that operated mainly on telegram
Speaker 2: and discord, which tried to get kids to do self harm,
Speaker 2: produce blackmail kids. Yeah, they're active across a lot of places,
Speaker 2: but like the organizing hubs were on discord and telegram
Speaker 2: and they you know, attempted to get child sex abuse
Speaker 2: material out of these kids and then use that to
Speaker 2: blackmail them to get even more material than also encouraging
Speaker 2: self harm and acts of violence.
Speaker 4: These have been real groups historically.
Speaker 2: They are getting cracked down upon pretty heavily, at least
Speaker 2: in seven six four's case. Oh nine, it's not really
Speaker 2: a real group anymore, arguably, but it exists as like lore.
Speaker 2: And there has been no instances of a seven six
Speaker 2: four affiliated people doing public acts of violence. So in
Speaker 2: this case, there's been people who have you know, trans
Speaker 2: people online or you know allies who have have said
Speaker 2: that this shooting is another one of these instances where
Speaker 2: these online groups of you know, Nazis and pedophiles have
Speaker 2: you know, groomed someone into doing violence, and they have
Speaker 2: produced some evidence for this. There was a Twitter account
Speaker 2: that allegedly belonged to the shooter that had a profile
Speaker 2: picture of a son andrad on top of a trans flag,
Speaker 2: as well as.
Speaker 4: The face of the christ Church shooter.
Speaker 2: This account had posts glorifying white supremacist mass killers and
Speaker 2: promoting the idea of creating a white homeland in the
Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest. This was a Canada based account, but in reality,
Speaker 2: this was actually just another Nazis account who changed their
Speaker 2: user name to match that of the Tumblr Ridge shooter.
Speaker 2: And this was an attempt to troll people and just
Speaker 2: to spread disinformation. And this even fooled the ADL, whose
Speaker 2: research standards have dropped dramatically the past three years. But
Speaker 2: a few days ago, the ADL put out an article
Speaker 2: where they credited posts made by this Twitter account to
Speaker 2: the Tumblr Ridge shooter and claimed that a quote unquote,
Speaker 2: preliminary investigation showed that the shooter had showed interest in
Speaker 2: white supremacy. But this was this was not their real account.
Speaker 2: This was just someone who also is a fan of
Speaker 2: mass shootings like the shooter was, as we'll soon discuss,
Speaker 2: But this was someone who was just trying to troll
Speaker 2: other other you know, researchers on Twitter and see how
Speaker 2: far their disinformation can spread. This is the consequence of
Speaker 2: an organization like the ADL doing preliminary research based on
Speaker 2: Kiwi of arms posts and not actually verifying the information.
Speaker 3: I mean, the fact that I think they're actively pursuing
Speaker 3: Hassan Piker more than Elon Musk is pretty much all
Speaker 3: I need to know in terms of work where they're prioritizing,
Speaker 3: you know, the search for racism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can get into the actual like online footprint
Speaker 2: of the shooter, which we we do have a decent
Speaker 2: idea of.
Speaker 3: Actually, well before you get to that, because I think
Speaker 3: that's what everyone is kind of interested in. I just
Speaker 3: want to wrap up that last part. So just to
Speaker 3: be clear, when you were mentioning those groups, you know,
Speaker 3: seven six four, et cetera, there is no actual history
Speaker 3: of the shooter having been into the Nazi the occults
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Based on their presence, they have not been active in
Speaker 2: like specific seven six four communities or have showed interest
Speaker 2: in like you know, white supremacy, neo Nazism, or you know,
Speaker 2: the the occult pedophile Nazism of nine A. This is
Speaker 2: not observable in the online for print that they have left,
Speaker 2: which is which is not to say the online foot
Speaker 2: print they have left is you know, normal and good.
Speaker 2: If anything, it does point towards, you know, significant factors
Speaker 2: that are causing kids to do shooting is like this,
Speaker 2: and we can trace it to a number of shootings
Speaker 2: that have happened. But the nine eight seven six four
Speaker 2: thing is more so like a meme at this point
Speaker 2: that people similarly deploy the same way that you know,
Speaker 2: the right deploys the know this epidemic of trans violence.
Speaker 2: This has to become like a counter meme to say
Speaker 2: that every time a trans person does something bad, it's
Speaker 2: actually the fault of nine eight and seven six.
Speaker 3: Four, right, because there has been incidences in the past
Speaker 3: that could point towards that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there could be there could be suggestions in the past,
Speaker 2: and certainly when seven six four was more active years ago,
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of the kids they were grooming
Speaker 2: for child sexual abuse material were a lot of queer kids,
Speaker 2: because those kids are uniquely vulnerable and are looking for community.
Speaker 2: But I mean that is the majority of kids affected
Speaker 2: by seven six four are people who have been groomed
Speaker 2: into self harm or producing a child sexual beies material
Speaker 2: to circulate among like the organizers of these of these groups.
Speaker 3: So it turns out that there isn't really a connection
Speaker 3: in those two directions, correct and putting out there, there's
Speaker 3: a counter push like I did the same thing with
Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk, right, Like I remember when the first image
Speaker 3: of the Charliekirk shooter being in the krouperhitba the frog
Speaker 3: style jumper. I was like, oh, this has to be
Speaker 3: a krouper, right, Like this immediately where my brain went
Speaker 3: because they do have a history of targeting that community.
Speaker 3: So you know, you can understand why there's a pushback.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think people feel like they understand ideological
Speaker 2: violence easier, like like violence caused by political ideology, and
Speaker 2: are uncomfortable with the increasing amount of horrific public violence
Speaker 2: that is seemingly linked to no political ideology. It's much
Speaker 2: more like like nihilistic and scattershot, and that's like uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: It's harder to understand like the causal forces producing that
Speaker 2: rather than just saying, you know, oh, it's another Nazi. Right,
Speaker 2: that's easy and at this point sad like easy thing
Speaker 2: for people to understand because of you know, a very
Speaker 2: high number of neo Nazi mass shootings that happened in
Speaker 2: the past ten years, but it is not twenty seventeen anymore.
Speaker 2: And there's the circumstances that are inducing shootings like this
Speaker 2: have have changed.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about that, because, like you said, it's
Speaker 3: a conversation that people don't want to have. Is it
Speaker 3: because we are uncomfortable with the conversation itself, or because
Speaker 3: there's not enough information available yet to truly understand what
Speaker 3: is leading these super online shooter slash nihilistic you know,
Speaker 3: deep in the memes style stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think a mix of both.
Speaker 2: It is both an emerging phenomenon so that people have
Speaker 2: to observe it for a certain amount of time to
Speaker 2: see the pattern. And then also it's it's uncomfortable and
Speaker 2: it sucks. It sucks to be in these places and
Speaker 2: like and like, look at all this stuff, right, Like
Speaker 2: I've been the past few days. I've been looking at
Speaker 2: you know, these horrible forum posts and reading about all
Speaker 2: kinds of like you know, bad stuff, and it sucks,
Speaker 2: and no one wants to do that. So I think
Speaker 2: it's a mix of factors. But uh, yeah, I do
Speaker 2: want to talk about that. That's the kind of the
Speaker 2: I've kind of like two sections that get into that,
Speaker 2: the first one based on her actual online footprint, the
Speaker 2: second one on more like, you know, basic societal forces.
Speaker 2: I think is getting people to go so far to
Speaker 2: the social margins that pushes them to places like where
Speaker 2: the shooter hung out online. So in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Jesse's mom shared a link to her kids YouTube channel
Speaker 2: where quote he posts about hunting, self reliance, guns and.
Speaker 4: Stuff he likes to do.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: This YouTube account shared the user name as Jesse's Reddit account.
Speaker 2: The earliest posts from twenty nineteen were about like roadblocks gaming.
Speaker 2: Then in twenty twenty one, Jesse started posting about firearms
Speaker 2: and shared a photo of her Chinese SKS, which is
Speaker 2: kind of like an a case forty seven style gun,
Speaker 2: which she used for hunting. Around twenty twenty three, she
Speaker 2: started posting about quote unquote starting MTF transitions soon and
Speaker 2: as well as her phobia of needles. The police say
Speaker 2: that she started transitioning before this, but the earliest indication
Speaker 2: we have from her online activity pusts this around twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. On other posts on arsash trans asked for
Speaker 2: advice on girl's clothing what to expect from HRT and
Speaker 2: talked about body dysmorphia. Her very last gender related post
Speaker 2: on Reddit still refers to herself as pre HRT. Jesse
Speaker 2: made a single post on r slash trans Guns in
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty three, sharing a video of her firing
Speaker 2: a Desert Eagle handgun at a shooting range. At this point,
Speaker 2: surround like the end of twenty twenty three, almost all
Speaker 2: of her posts switch to being about psychedelic drug abuse,
Speaker 2: asking how to vape or smoke weed without leaving a
Speaker 2: smell in the house, being scammed by an online psychedelic
Speaker 2: seller in Canada, and asking if you can get high
Speaker 2: off drinking the urine from a drug addict, and asked
Speaker 2: on Reddit if it's safe to do five moo dmt alone.
Speaker 2: After she returned from the quote unquote psych ward, she
Speaker 2: was admitted to a psychiatric facility after attempting to burn
Speaker 2: down her home with account of aerosol while on three
Speaker 2: grams of mushrooms. Jesse also said that she was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with ADHD, autism, major depressive disorder, and OCD, and was
Speaker 2: prescribed a mix of different SSRIs as well as an
Speaker 2: antipsychotic for sleep. In one comment on one of her
Speaker 2: multiple Reddit posts asking about trying five meodmt after being
Speaker 2: arrested for arson, she wrote, quote, it is a wonder
Speaker 2: I'm still alive yet I am speaks volumes, But how
Speaker 2: much I've been trying to keep breathing when all my
Speaker 2: effort goes towards keeping alive quote. Her Reddit activity drops
Speaker 2: off in April twenty twenty four. This could mean that
Speaker 2: she just stop using Reddit around then, or that she
Speaker 2: has deleted a whole bunch of posts. She did scrub
Speaker 2: some of her online activity prior to the shooting. Now,
Speaker 2: in the aftermath of the shooting, the police have said
Speaker 2: that they made multiple mental health related visits to the
Speaker 2: shooter's home the past two years, and had previously confiscated
Speaker 2: guns from the home, but the owner of the guns
Speaker 2: it's unclear who exactly successfully petitioned for their return, and
Speaker 2: Jesse did have a miner's firearms license, but that expired
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four. It's unclear if the guns that
Speaker 2: were confiscated with the same ones used in the shooting.
Speaker 2: Jesse has posted a number of different photos of guns,
Speaker 2: and we still don't know which exact ones were used.
Speaker 2: We just know that there was a long gun and
Speaker 2: a handgun recovered. So though the shooters like Reddit activity
Speaker 2: ceases in early twenty twenty four, her online presence moved
Speaker 2: to darker corners of the Internet, which demonstrate a declining
Speaker 2: mental well being and a growing fascination with mass shootings.
Speaker 2: The past year, Jesse was active on an Internet forum
Speaker 2: called Watch People Die, which is pretty much what it
Speaker 2: sounds like. It's the website to host footage of refe gore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, is that what it sounds like?
Speaker 2: It is okay, right, you know, like snuff like real
Speaker 2: gore is hosted there and shared, as well as a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, like edits of mass shooter footage
Speaker 2: of people filming themselves doing mass shootings that then circulates.
Speaker 2: This forum is way more of like a social orbit
Speaker 2: around this recent wave of mass shootings than seven six
Speaker 2: four is. And you know, there is there is some crossover.
Speaker 2: You know, there is some seven six for people who
Speaker 2: are also you know, active on this form, people who
Speaker 2: used to be seven six four, because that group is
Speaker 2: also you know, not really what it used to be,
Speaker 2: but this form is its own thing rather than being
Speaker 2: linked to you know, explicit Nazi groups you know the
Speaker 2: occultic OH nine A or the child's exploitation rings six
Speaker 2: seven six four.
Speaker 4: That the shooter is verifiable.
Speaker 2: Online footprint suggests much more of a nexus of involvement
Speaker 2: with what I've been calling the school shooter fandom. They
Speaker 2: call it TCC or the True crime community, And in
Speaker 2: the past two years we've seen an increase in shootings
Speaker 2: based on this, like Neo Columnbiner variety Right people doing
Speaker 2: copycats of other school shootings, the Abundant Life Christian School
Speaker 2: shooting and December twenty twenty four by Columbine cause player
Speaker 2: Natalie Simith Ruppnow, who the Right falsely labeled as trans.
Speaker 2: There was also the Catholic school shooting in August twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five by Robin Westman, who did at one point
Speaker 2: attempt gender transition but later regretted it and originally planned
Speaker 2: to attack an LGBTQ music venue. Westman was similarly obsessed
Speaker 2: with mass killers and wrote the name of Repnow on
Speaker 2: one of their rifles. Last April, a twenty two year
Speaker 2: old man in Florida was arrested for threatening to commit
Speaker 2: a mass shooting on discord. The FBI believes that he
Speaker 2: was in communication with Samantha Repnow prior to her shooting,
Speaker 2: and they both discussed with each other plans for their
Speaker 2: mass killing attacks. In September twenty twenty five, a sixteen
Speaker 2: year old named Desmond Holly shot two kids before killing
Speaker 2: himself at Evergreen High School in Colorado. He also idolized
Speaker 2: Samantha Rupdown, replicated her selfies, and was active on the
Speaker 2: same forum Watch People Die that Repnow herself was active on,
Speaker 2: so Jesse was on this forum, but Jesse also displayed
Speaker 2: other traits similar of.
Speaker 4: The TCC group.
Speaker 2: Jesse created a mass shooting simulator game on Roadblocks, which
Speaker 2: was set in a mall where you, you know, act
Speaker 2: out a shooting and killing people in the mall. I'll
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about this this forum specifically now
Speaker 2: Right like this forum essentially exists to desensitize people to
Speaker 2: extremely violent content that glorifies mass killings. Jesse's very first
Speaker 2: comment on Watch People Die was on a compilation video
Speaker 2: of mass shooter footage, and she wrote, quote, I appreciate
Speaker 2: this post. She also commented on another thread of mass
Speaker 2: shooting footage quote I love these first person perspective type
Speaker 2: videos when a shooter records his or her own actions.
Speaker 2: It's always heat.
Speaker 4: Unquote.
Speaker 2: The most worrying comment is something that you know, if
Speaker 2: police were aware of, should have should have been cause
Speaker 2: to prevent this from happening. Came about five months ago.
Speaker 2: In a thread on Watch People Die about the psychology
Speaker 2: of watching Gore, she wrote, quote, I find it addictive.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to watch violent content. I'm just drawn
Speaker 2: to it. I don't think much of it, though to
Speaker 2: say it doesn't affect me is likely naive. I'm sure
Speaker 2: maybe subconsciously it does. It just doesn't feel like a
Speaker 2: big deal. I'm drawn to substances too. It's easy to
Speaker 2: get high and just to zone out into videos of
Speaker 2: this stuff. Does it impact my mental health, eh, mine's
Speaker 2: probably already fucked. I tried to stay away from watching
Speaker 2: this type of thing before because it really sucks me
Speaker 2: in and it's a massive useless time dump. But I
Speaker 2: never really saw any benefit. I think the r words
Speaker 2: in the comment section are more bothersome mentally than the videos,
Speaker 2: so I try just not interact with dorks x D.
Speaker 2: And these types of sentiments are not like uncommon among
Speaker 2: people who regularly engage with this type of content.
Speaker 3: I think it's an individual thing to ask you. But
Speaker 3: at this point it almost seems as if like the
Speaker 3: two biggest things that are often blame for mass shooting
Speaker 3: that I have to push up against and I have
Speaker 3: been doing to my whole life drugs and in the
Speaker 3: other case, hyper online radicalization. Right, the history that you're
Speaker 3: painting here kind of seems like someone who needed a
Speaker 3: variety of help.
Speaker 2: I'll reiterate that in like a sec Okay, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: as I was reading this, this reminded me a little bit.
Speaker 2: There was a shooting a few years ago at a
Speaker 2: Fourth of July parade, the Highland Park mass shooting. The
Speaker 2: sort of like writing that Jesse did in his post,
Speaker 2: it reminds me of a bit of the writing done
Speaker 2: by this this this other mass shooter to talk about
Speaker 2: like getting like sucked into like like violent content or
Speaker 2: this like this like idea of like it like beckons
Speaker 2: you further into the concept. It's like almost like hypnotic,
Speaker 2: very similar writing done by this other other shooter.
Speaker 4: So one other post.
Speaker 2: I'll reference that she made on this forum was a
Speaker 2: video of a father hanging himself in front of his children,
Speaker 2: and she claimed that her stepdad attempted the same thing
Speaker 2: trying to kill himself in front of her when you know,
Speaker 2: she was just a little kid, and she wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: I wish his bitch ass would have died on the noose.
Speaker 2: Then in they're probably better than beating your kids unquote.
Speaker 2: So obviously, you know this person had like long standing
Speaker 2: issues that at certain points seemed like better, right, Like
Speaker 2: around twenty twenty one, they seemed to be doing better, right.
Speaker 2: They were they were making you know, YouTube content about
Speaker 2: about guns and hunting, and felt like they had some
Speaker 2: more of like a had more of a stable social outlet.
Speaker 4: And then around twenty twenty three with you know.
Speaker 2: This, this like abuse of psychedelic drugs leading to this
Speaker 2: mass shooter obsession. It's like a pretty a pretty clear
Speaker 2: picture of like a mental spiral. Two months before Jesse's
Speaker 2: own shooting, she did visit the Watch People Die profile
Speaker 2: for Samantha ruppn Now, and if we're not talking about
Speaker 2: like a causal factors, right, and especially like in reference
Speaker 2: to you know this, this this idea that you know
Speaker 2: parents have where you know they're there has been a
Speaker 2: sequence of trans people doing shootings. You can argue about
Speaker 2: you know, the per capita percent rates or like stats again,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't go so far. But at a certain point,
Speaker 2: I mean, we have to all be comfortable, or maybe
Speaker 2: comfortable is the wrong worry, but we have to, like
Speaker 2: you know, realize that like as more people you know,
Speaker 2: transition right genders, is not this like immutable thing. As
Speaker 2: more people attempt transitioning, there's gonna be some trans people
Speaker 2: who do bad things. This happens with every social group
Speaker 2: of people. To borrow from sociologist Mark Worrel, who wrote
Speaker 2: about the social phenomenon of mass shootings, like destruction of
Speaker 2: others is the means towards another end, the desire for
Speaker 2: self destruction that the self was incapable of inflicting in
Speaker 2: isolation a lot of the mass shootings and with suicide
Speaker 2: or trying to get the police to kill you through
Speaker 2: through suicide, like like the public shootings like this have
Speaker 2: a very strong suicidal component, and some people might not
Speaker 2: be able to do that themselves. They need to create
Speaker 2: a social context in which they feel like they can,
Speaker 2: and at least in terms of the States and to
Speaker 2: a smaller degree in Canada, like these shootings like exist
Speaker 2: as like this like cultural ritual, this like ritual of
Speaker 2: destruction of this self and destruction of the self can
Speaker 2: include the social apparatus that makes up the self. And
Speaker 2: for like a young person, that's what that's that's their
Speaker 2: family in school, the two things that were targeted in
Speaker 2: this shooting.
Speaker 4: Right, this this.
Speaker 2: Network that makes up like my sense of self as
Speaker 2: a seventeen year old, eighteen year old, it's gonna be
Speaker 2: my family, which is you know, uh for Jesse, that's
Speaker 2: that's her mom. She's been separated from her father for
Speaker 2: for a while, as well as her stepbrother. And then
Speaker 2: also this school that she used to used to go to. Right,
Speaker 2: That's that's the sort of that's the network that makes
Speaker 2: up your idea of this social And like I said before,
Speaker 2: like as the trans community grows, there's gonna be some
Speaker 2: overlap between anti social you know, mentally unwell individuals who
Speaker 2: act out a mass killing as a suit aside and
Speaker 2: disintegrated and socially underregulated people who try transitioning as a
Speaker 2: way to ease tensions both internally and externally. And if anything,
Speaker 2: I think transitioning can often be maybe one of the
Speaker 2: healthiest ways to attempt to relieve some of these tensions.
Speaker 2: But like being trans is like a marginal position in society, right,
Speaker 2: And the people who commit school shootings and suicide through
Speaker 2: mass shootings are at like the very very extreme end
Speaker 2: of social dysregulation and like marginal isolation, and some people
Speaker 2: in those latter categories will also try transitioning as a
Speaker 2: method of social regulation. And in Jesse's case, like considering
Speaker 2: all their posts about like mental health and drugs, never
Speaker 2: once is being trans cited as like a point of
Speaker 2: their distress, Like that's the thing that's causing them the
Speaker 2: distress is it is a method of relief, at least
Speaker 2: according to their own writing on Reddit, like the cause
Speaker 2: of the distress or all these are these other things,
Speaker 2: and like people can blame mass shootings or mass killings
Speaker 2: on like any number of specific factors, right, such as
Speaker 2: access to weapons, whether that's knives, firearms, bullying, substance abuse,
Speaker 2: mental health and lacking mental health services and like mental
Speaker 2: health oversight. But like the common base factor across you know,
Speaker 2: most of those things is that there's like social disintegration
Speaker 2: and deregulation happening. That that's like a failure to balance
Speaker 2: like egoism and altruism, right, a healthy individual sense of
Speaker 2: self as well as a place of belonging within a
Speaker 2: larger social group, like we need a mix of freedom
Speaker 2: and available structured paths for social life. Ritualistic outbursts of
Speaker 2: suicidal violence against society happen when these things are extremely
Speaker 2: unregulated and someone falls out of the social fabric. And
Speaker 2: like marginal classes like trans people can be particularly affected
Speaker 2: by social disintegration and deregulation. And like it's important to
Speaker 2: note here, like this isn't caused by some like vague
Speaker 2: medical condition like gender dysphoria like that, that's that's not
Speaker 2: causing the violence, right prescribed estrogen, it's not a causal force.
Speaker 2: Inness we don't even know if Robin Westman or or
Speaker 2: Jesse was even on estrogen.
Speaker 4: We don't know. But these things aren't aren't causal.
Speaker 2: But you know, these are social positions that include, you know,
Speaker 2: these larger social factors that affect large populations. One of
Speaker 2: those populations can be trans people. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: social disintegration that affects the sist men currently, they do
Speaker 2: a lot of shootings, and yeah, the overwhelming majority. You
Speaker 2: can also graft these things on class lines. Lots of
Speaker 2: people who go and do public shootings, either themselves or
Speaker 2: their families are suffering from economic instability or or people
Speaker 2: in like the middle class as well, which has this
Speaker 2: this this other problem in like Durkheim's med methodology of suicide,
Speaker 2: which I'm kind of pulling from a little bit here,
Speaker 2: it's like this thiss, this sense of like overregulation can
Speaker 2: also produce in unhealthy balance. So it's either you know,
Speaker 2: very overregulating people, you know, like like Elon Musk has
Speaker 2: too much freedom, has too much too much like access
Speaker 2: to like money and possibilities, that he's then a very
Speaker 2: dysfunctional person. This can happen with some probably like you know,
Speaker 2: like middle class kids as well, that can produce violent outbursts.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the time it's you know, lower
Speaker 2: middle class or lower class conditions that can lead to violence.
Speaker 2: And sometimes sometimes it does not go to the extreme
Speaker 2: of doing you know, a mass killing. It can often
Speaker 2: just result in like petty crime, which is do you
Speaker 2: arguably a more healthy method of regulation compared to something
Speaker 2: like a mass shooting, which is like you know, the
Speaker 2: most desperate, the most marginal, like active suicide that we
Speaker 2: could like envision as a society.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to specifically say when it came to factors.
Speaker 3: You're you're distinctly not saying that video games where we're
Speaker 3: in any way responsible, and then I know you're not,
Speaker 3: but I just like I people should note that when
Speaker 3: you mentioned Roadblocks, people like I had I think my
Speaker 3: mom and someone else asked like, oh, well, what's the
Speaker 3: storyline for Roadblocks? And I was like, it's like asking
Speaker 3: what's the story for Minecraft? Right, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was like, these these are world building. It's it's
Speaker 3: it's similar to seeing someone basically trying journal out their thoughts. Right.
Speaker 3: I think in that she was building these these mass
Speaker 3: shooting simulators, that wasn't her being influenced I say, by
Speaker 3: some kind of like template that Roblocks had. That was
Speaker 3: her showing, yeah, creating something to express something else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and that sort of like like cause player
Speaker 2: replication very common among this you know, growing community of
Speaker 2: the true crime community, the school shooter fandom, which which
Speaker 2: attracts a lot of people in marginal populations, right, Like
Speaker 2: the fact that Samantha Rupp now is like one of
Speaker 2: the first like you know, assists female school shooters, like
Speaker 2: is notable here and like a lot of like the
Speaker 2: early like Columbine fandom on Tumblr was was young girls.
Speaker 2: The fact that TCC is attracting like a wider net
Speaker 2: than just CIS males, I think is in interesting, but
Speaker 2: it points to these other social forces. I think condensing
Speaker 2: it down to being like a certain mixture of SSRIs
Speaker 2: and HRT is what's causing this, Like there's more psychedelics, No,
Speaker 2: true for that, yeah, or psycholyst right, I mean, like anything,
Speaker 2: these things can exist within a healthy equilibrium, right, Psychedelics
Speaker 2: can be a very healthy tool for people to deal with,
Speaker 2: like mortality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely right.
Speaker 2: You know, whether that's you know, MDMA, ketamine or like mushrooms,
Speaker 2: Like mushrooms are being used to treat people who have cancer, right,
Speaker 2: to help them get comfortable with the idea of their
Speaker 2: own mortality. These things can exist within a healthy equilibrium
Speaker 2: of the social but they can also exist in an
Speaker 2: unhealthy non equilibrium, right, And I think the types of
Speaker 2: ways that Jesse was writing about psychedelics online, I think
Speaker 2: demonstrates a very unhealthy use of these drugs, especially as
Speaker 2: like you know, like a sixteen year old, right.
Speaker 3: Like it's well, it sounds like self medication. It sounds
Speaker 3: like unsupervised medication, and it also sounds like something that
Speaker 3: was most likely acting as an accelerant, right, Like, if
Speaker 3: you already have a host of other problems, if you
Speaker 3: are introducing a very large amount of incredibly powerful like
Speaker 3: you know, psychostimulants into you know what you're in ingestine
Speaker 3: every day, then it's going to have potentially very very
Speaker 3: dangerous outcomes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, these are largely correlating factor. It's not cause, not
Speaker 2: causal forces. Right. The causal forces is this like social
Speaker 2: disintegration and deregulation of which you know, abuse of psychedelics
Speaker 2: can do a lot of damage to your sense of
Speaker 2: self and your sense of self within like a larger
Speaker 2: a larger community. And the fact that I think, like specifically,
Speaker 2: you know, the lacking mental health services, lacking like oversight
Speaker 2: of these things in terms like a palsy outlook like,
Speaker 2: these are things that we as a society should be
Speaker 2: putting more work into. If you actually want to start
Speaker 2: solving this problem, you can get into you know, larger,
Speaker 2: larger things about you know, like the alienation of like
Speaker 2: quote unquote late stage capitalism, which you know also can
Speaker 2: be a factor.
Speaker 3: In another accelerant, right, Like, I think a lot of
Speaker 3: these are accelerants, right where every other thing that you've
Speaker 3: been listening, and then it seems to me like, you know,
Speaker 3: this compounded upon this, which compounded upon this and eventually
Speaker 3: led you know, someone to looking up more and more
Speaker 3: extreme content. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing that I do want to mention, which
Speaker 2: i've i've kind of seen seen discussed, is like that
Speaker 2: this term like radicalization saying that you know, she was
Speaker 2: like radicalized into this like violent content. This is more
Speaker 2: of like a like a semantic note. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how useful like the term radicalization is in this case,
Speaker 2: if anything. I think she was like desensitized to horrific
Speaker 2: acts of violence through repeated viewing and was in within
Speaker 2: communities that encouraged this sort of thing. I think that's
Speaker 2: the way that I'm framing it as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 2: radicalization makes makes you think of like politics and like ideology.
Speaker 3: Right right or not Nazism or white supremacy or something
Speaker 3: like that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like it's not that they're getting like
Speaker 2: politically radical, it's that they're they're dropping out of the
Speaker 2: social fabric and desensitizing themselves to this concept of like
Speaker 2: you know, horrific like societally targeted violence.
Speaker 3: I know now that, like obviously, the right wing is
Speaker 3: is decided that they're uniquely going to be attacking trans people.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if you're aware of the shooter's father's
Speaker 3: statements that were just made recently. The father intentionally uses
Speaker 3: terms like I am the biological father, refers to her
Speaker 3: with him pronouns, says that he was allowed to raise her,
Speaker 3: that she was taken from him. Part of me is
Speaker 3: also really fearful that this is going to be maybe
Speaker 3: the future of the Matt Walsh lips at TikTok circuit.
Speaker 3: Right here we have the case like the number one
Speaker 3: horror story that every right wing you know personality always
Speaker 3: talks about, right or that the myth that Elon Musk perpetuates, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: that this is somehow negatively impacting their children.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, that is a good thing to keep an
Speaker 4: eye on. I have not seen that.
Speaker 3: In terms of, like, you know, your analysis, and I
Speaker 3: appreciate it, by the way a lot. I hadn't thought
Speaker 3: of it that in those terms, in terms of like
Speaker 3: disconnecting from the social fabric itself, Is there things that
Speaker 3: can be done? Is the recommendations beyond like obviously, you
Speaker 3: know late stage capitalism, mass alienation. I'm not solving that tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Sure, so yeah, I mean I'm not sure if I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be able to solve that on a stream.
Speaker 3: No, you have to. Isn't it called that could happen here?
Speaker 3: Let's let it happen.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, Like there's a lot of things that
Speaker 2: we can do, like even just like increasing like social services, right,
Speaker 2: like the like fund funding social services can be a thing,
Speaker 2: like what what can we do to strengthen the social fabric?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Give people available paths for their life.
Speaker 2: You know, that's through you know, education, free college, make
Speaker 2: make life actually feel like you have a way to
Speaker 2: exist within a social matrix. Canada already has, you know,
Speaker 2: compared to the States fairly restrictive gun laws. There's are
Speaker 2: a factor, but there's even mass killings like this that
Speaker 2: happen you know in Europe where people find other means
Speaker 2: of enacting them besides guns.
Speaker 3: Japan that sits swords and knives oftentimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, so like these things have some like
Speaker 2: based social social aspects that are going to be the
Speaker 2: things that you're solving. Is is kind of more challenging
Speaker 2: rather than just you know, taking away guns, making drugs
Speaker 2: that are already illegal harder.
Speaker 4: To get right.
Speaker 2: These things aren't aren't going to actually eliminate this problem.
Speaker 2: But I mean, funding social services can be an aspect
Speaker 2: of this. Having more comprehensive mental health care, free healthcare
Speaker 2: check ins, you know, if that's a big thing in
Speaker 2: the States. Canada has that to some degree, but still
Speaker 2: there's obviously room for improvement. But I mean, now solving
Speaker 2: these larger social problems, like that's the question of the
Speaker 2: twenty first century.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean, you know, based on the story
Speaker 3: that you're telling and the research you did, it does
Speaker 3: really seem like this is one of those cases where
Speaker 3: this doesn't happen often, but when you see it get
Speaker 3: to that end state, this is pretty much right. The
Speaker 3: patterns become a lot more evident. The obsession with prior shootings,
Speaker 3: the mental health episodes, and now the combining that with
Speaker 3: you know, a very very prolific psychedelic drug use, and
Speaker 3: then here we are.
Speaker 2: I mean, this person should not have had guns, right
Speaker 2: at a certain point, their guns were taken away, our
Speaker 2: guns and has taken away. If police knew about their
Speaker 2: activity on these forums, I'm sure this wouldn't have been returned.
Speaker 2: So there's there's there's certain things like you know, parents
Speaker 2: being more aware of these sorts of like online spaces,
Speaker 2: the school shooter fandom, you know, picking up signs of
Speaker 2: you know, social isolation, how much how much time your
Speaker 2: kid is just spending alone on the internet and you
Speaker 2: might not be knowing what they're doing. So solving that's
Speaker 2: you know hard because because the solution for a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of you know states is just like
Speaker 2: increased surveillance on platforms like you know, discord age verification.
Speaker 2: But those types of you know, guardrails don't exist on
Speaker 2: a forum site like Watch People Die, right, you can
Speaker 2: you can have a very you know, safe regulated discord
Speaker 2: which just pushes people to you know, even more niche
Speaker 2: even more dangerous parts of the Internet. You know, Watch
Speaker 2: People Die started as a Reddit page that was you
Speaker 2: know taken down like seven years ago. Now it's you
Speaker 2: know a far a far less regulated, you know thing
Speaker 2: that that kids are spending a decent amount of time on.
Speaker 2: But you know, being aware of, you know, the risks
Speaker 2: of this type of like social isolation, you know, is
Speaker 2: also also a star. Ideally we do not have a
Speaker 2: forum site, you know, dedicated to glorifying mass killings. But
Speaker 2: banning a website is not so simple. It's easier to
Speaker 2: than done, you know, figuring out a way to take
Speaker 2: that down, right, I same problem with you know, like
Speaker 2: eight kun or like you know eight chan back in
Speaker 2: the day four and eventually keeping fire.
Speaker 3: But this one seems blatant to the point of illegality,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to I know, you don't have
Speaker 3: time for me to start a topic.
Speaker 2: But like, I mean, like eight quin's also illegal, right,
Speaker 2: they host a lot of illegal content there. Finding a
Speaker 2: way to take it down is still tricky. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of websites host illegal stuff. Just because it's
Speaker 2: you know, illegal does does does not mean it's gonna
Speaker 2: it's going to be solved. Like the legal pathway there
Speaker 2: is is tricky.
Speaker 3: But isn't the rule of something typically that if a
Speaker 3: lot of those companies that provide them with the necessary
Speaker 3: like d doos security, they're like through line seems to
Speaker 3: be as long as it's not illegal, right, Like if
Speaker 3: you're not running a child poor or sorry child sexual
Speaker 3: abuse material website, if you're not running like an assassination
Speaker 3: or cryptocurrency like excite, you're fine. Like but that just
Speaker 3: does in practice doesn't work.
Speaker 2: I'm unsure of the current hosting situation of Watch People Die,
Speaker 2: but I wouldn't be surprised if they went through the
Speaker 2: same kind of loopholes by registering at like a certain
Speaker 2: foreign country with has that had that that's very loose guidelines,
Speaker 2: like you know, that was the thing with like ait
Speaker 2: Kun for a while. But yeah, I'm I'm actually unsure
Speaker 2: if the current the current like setup.
Speaker 4: That Watch people that has.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been talking about you know, TCC and this
Speaker 2: the school shooter fandom increasingly the past two years, and
Speaker 2: it's really tragic that it is something that i've that
Speaker 2: is you know, a pattern that is that is continuing, right,
Speaker 2: This is like the really the main the main force
Speaker 2: across these shootings, whether you're you know, assist girls, this boy,
Speaker 2: a trans girl, trans guy, whatever, whatever demographic you know, racial.
Speaker 2: You know, there was the the Antioch school shooting in
Speaker 2: January twenty twenty five that was done by this like
Speaker 2: black ironic neo Nazi, similarly linked to TCC as well,
Speaker 2: like whatever the demographic is. The through line that we're
Speaker 2: seeing is this is this just like nihilistic obsession with
Speaker 2: like the act of school shooting and this like fandom
Speaker 2: that has developed around it.
Speaker 3: Do you find the media picks up on that at all,
Speaker 3: Like you've done a lot of research into do they
Speaker 3: reach out to you? Like do they ever say.
Speaker 2: Every every once in a while. But it takes them time.
Speaker 2: It took them about three years after like the peak
Speaker 2: of seven and six four to start reporting on seven
Speaker 2: six four, And now there's seven six four articles all
Speaker 2: the time, but it took them about three years to
Speaker 2: like kept up to it. I would not be surprised
Speaker 2: if in a year and a half we get tons
Speaker 2: of articles about TCC, but a lot of legacy media
Speaker 2: is very slow to this sort of thing. My own
Speaker 2: Internet presence also exists kind of in the margins. My
Speaker 2: monitoring is in the margins, but those margins can have
Speaker 2: you know, very very u destabilizing social effects.
Speaker 4: But it does take a while.
Speaker 2: I mean, same thing with the FBI, right, it took
Speaker 2: them years to get on top of seven six four,
Speaker 2: even though people were like reporting this stuff in like
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, but before seven six four, even
Speaker 2: that organization there was previous iterations called the CVLT. But
Speaker 2: like you know that that that style of thing was
Speaker 2: was was a problem for years, and the FBI did
Speaker 2: not really get on it until much later, and the
Speaker 2: media then followed suit.
Speaker 3: Right I do.
Speaker 2: I just don't have trust in you know, the current
Speaker 2: current American law enforcement threat to really be on it
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 4: You know, I can't.
Speaker 2: I'm unsure of how that works in Canada at this point,
Speaker 2: but certainly, certainly I don't think Cash Hotel's FBI is
Speaker 2: going to be you know, on this one super super well,
Speaker 2: even though they been trying been trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: push some stuff like the nihilist Bilin extremist label, which
Speaker 2: does cover stuff like this.
Speaker 3: But I know this is controversial, but in my opinion,
Speaker 3: it almost feels as if Cash matel is actively trying
Speaker 3: to push narratives that will benefit this entire story that
Speaker 3: we're talking about in the opposite direction, right Like if
Speaker 3: you're trying to push a narrative that Charlie Kirk's shooter
Speaker 3: and we're not going to change topics, but I'm just
Speaker 3: you know, bring this up because you mentioned cash Hotel,
Speaker 3: you're trying to push narrative that he was in fact
Speaker 3: trans or inspired by trans ideology or inspired by furries
Speaker 3: or furry culture, et cetera. They've tried everything, and now
Speaker 3: now we're at the point where it's like the loosest
Speaker 3: of connections. It's like, well, there may have been a
Speaker 3: lover who is or is not may or may not
Speaker 3: be trends or non binary. We're not sure, but that's enough.
Speaker 3: We got it. Cash Hotel will push the story.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, this is this administration comes out of
Speaker 2: the same kind of network of influencers who try to
Speaker 2: grossly use horrific events to their own ideological advantage, including
Speaker 2: too you know, attack groups of people that they find
Speaker 2: to be bad as.
Speaker 3: Wow, because it turns out they're all pedophiles. They're all
Speaker 3: part of an elite group of insiders. And so let's
Speaker 3: start talking about the Epstein files for next time. My
Speaker 3: brain is I know, I'm just joking. I'm just joking.
Speaker 3: Where can everyone find you and your incredible work outside
Speaker 3: of listening to the amazing It Could Happen Here podcast? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I I occasionally post about Yawi on
Speaker 2: on X the everything app at by shown in type
Speaker 2: I'm trying to post more about Yaowi on Blue Sky.
Speaker 2: There's just just not as much of it. But you know,
Speaker 2: maybe I should be the change I want to see?
Speaker 3: Is it not friendly the environment?
Speaker 2: It's more so that there's just not as many Yawi
Speaker 2: artists on Blue Sky. A lot of Yawi artists are
Speaker 2: shockingly Japanese, and this Japan has a very large presence
Speaker 2: on nextually everything app at least at the moment. I
Speaker 2: know some of their like AI image stuff is pushing,
Speaker 2: is pushing people to other platforms, but it's slow. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm on, I'm on, I'm on those two places. I
Speaker 2: also occasionally post photography at Instagram also by shown in type.
Speaker 3: And I suppose if you enjoyed listening to me getting
Speaker 3: informed by the only information you heard here today, you
Speaker 3: should check out YouTube dot com slash at the Surf Times,
Speaker 3: where I post videos and this one too will be there.
Speaker 2: Hey you can look at uh yeah, me in a
Speaker 2: black turtleneck talk about sad things.
Speaker 3: There you go. If you enjoyed the audio version and
Speaker 3: you want to see the visual version of it, head
Speaker 3: on down to YouTube dot com slash at the Surf Times.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us today. Okay, I
Speaker 3: appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It was it was a ton of fun. Well, Actually
Speaker 3: it was sad, but it was it was very informative.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the that's the needle. I'd try to threat.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it could happen Here is a production of cool
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Speaker 4: You listen to podcasts.
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