How Violent Extremists Exploit Social Detachment To Reach Your Kids on Apps

In the ensuing days since law enforcement apprehended “person of interest” — Robert E. “Bobby” Crimo III, 21— the alleged shooter in the Highland Park massacre — we’ve learned lots of inchoate details about him and virtually none of it makes sense to most people which is why it’s been so easy  for politicians like Marjorie Taylor Green to obfuscate his history.

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But Crimo and others going forward will not be easy to identify by a guiding ideology and that is by design. In fact they engage in what’s known as schizoposting on social media. And it’s not social media like Twitter or Facebook where it might be easily siloed and understood in a moderated format but rather in the unmoderated and chaotic milieu of encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, Discord, and Twitch.

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Dirty South Right Watch was the first outlet to identify and explicate some of the signature features of the Highland Park Massacre that has given more mainstream platforms the visibility needed to connect the dots and articulate a narrative that both accounted for his behavior without glamorizing him.

Dirty South Right Watch:

While much has been made of the alleged Highland Park shooter’s attendance of Trump rallies, more alarming is his presence in online subcultures detached from reality. The shooter inhabited communities focused on conspiracy theories, the paranormal, and deep nihilism. These communities cut off their participants from consensus reality at large and serve to lower the inhibitions of their participants towards violence.

These subcultures are distinct from the usual QAnon conspiracy theories associated with Trump followers and stand apart from the larger paranormal community, although those distances are continually growing smaller in the increasingly connected online world. We will specifically not be going into depth on where these communities are or what they share so as not to expose them to a larger audience.

The alleged shooter’s obsession with violence, school shootings, conspiracies, and Trumpism (as a way to destabilize the system/create chaos) echoes interests of similar online communities like the online incel community and the incelcore music community. At this time, there is no evidence the shooter was a member of these specific communities. However, the online communities the shooter inhabited exist in close connection to the incelcore online community. It should be noted that these communities are overflowing with racism, misogyny, transphobia, and more forms of hate and bigotry.

“Schizoposting” (an affected style fetishizing mental illness to appear dangerous and win subcultural credibility) and 4chan brain rot abound in these communities, and serve as important radicalization points for youth today. Unfortunately, the establishment is unprepared to examine situations such as these with nuance and to make sense of the online communities and subcultures that more and more mass shooters emerge from.

Above: Robert E. “Bobby” Crimo III, 22. Highland Park Police Department

Alex Newhouse, a researcher with the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, described the activities of those involved in “schizoposting”:

“People in these communities create and post content that is purposefully designed to be incoherent, cobbled together from a mishmash of influences, and often with an overwhelming focus on graphic violence and aggressive visuals. This content is meant to be spread, and it is meant to transform a person’s mind into a state where it is more amenable to actually carrying out real-world attacks. It is designed to make violence the only possible solution to a world without distinction between fiction and reality.”

The dude didn’t leave behind a 90 page manifesto talking about why he did what he did, so we have to look more deeply at what he was communicating with the action. That’s what they are trying to say with this.

— Dirty South Right Watch (@DSRWnews) July 7, 2022

This statement is an initial thought on an online community that deserves closer attention. As is likely the case with the alleged shooter, much of the online presence/jokes/irony within these communities are an intentional obfuscation of what is actually believed. When one obfuscates belief until nothing is clear, reality seems out of reach, and undertaking a mass shooting is akin to one final massive post. Similarly, we know the alleged shooter was active on online gore communities, which had the effect of lowering the shooter’s inhibitions towards violence.

“Schizowave” (the online aesthetic, we are not implying anybody is schizophrenic or not and we don’t like this phrase) has broken into the mainstream. It’s a large part of Zoomer online culture now. And its way of unmooring people from reality has and will continue to lead to violence when combined with the right mix of other factors. Of course, there is no “Chemical X” that makes a mass shooter, but all these elements are gasoline on the fire and must be addressed.

Know Your Meme: “Schizowave refers to a series of music videos based on imagery associated with various beliefs, conspiracy theories and mental disorders such as schizophrenia, gang-stalking, paganism, Hyperborea, Hollow Earth and Nordic aliens, often intermingled with various memes, and set to various remixes and mashups. A relative of Fashwave, the trend gained online popularity in 2020, with a video known as Gotye Wokeuplikethis Hyperborea gaining popularity as a meme format.”

Fandom: “Schizowave is a derivative aesthetic of Fashwave that is associated with beliefs into higher races and deities. Schizowave is amalgamation of various conspiracy “theories” ranging from Nordic aliens to hollow earth civilizations. Glorification of philosophers such as Jonathan Bowden. special shoutout to my niggas Waes (@watchingspirals) and Rinne (@StoneSupremacy) 4 being cool guys.”

Similarly, the alleged shooter’s extensive online presence should be viewed the same way as other shooters’ manifestos, with extreme caution and with the knowledge that it likely includes red herrings. These acts are often done to spread that very message, and carelessly sharing content from shooters helps them achieve their goals.

And that’s where we find clues as VICE points out:

For the last year, a central haunt of the alleged shooter was an online gore forum where he posted frequently in the days leading up to the shooting. None of the posts indicate a clear political ideology as a central force in his life. He aggregated gore videos of people being maimed and killed in a variety of ways for the website, but he also posted about his day-to-day activities and discussed his favorite murderer. Some of the posts were intentional gibberish, similar to what’s in some of his music videos.

“You scare the shit out of me, ya fucking weird freak of nature,” one person wrote in response to one post.

Other posts and behavior clearly indicate he likely held racist beliefs. Highland Park is a predominantly Jewish area, and in April he went to and was kicked out of a synagogue for an unknown reason. Users on this forum baste themselves in a similar racist edgy and ironic humor as sites such as 4Chan and, while it wasn’t the main thing he did on the forum, the account tied to the shooter actively took part. He wrote such things as “I say we just get rid of the blacks all together” in threads about how black people were “a problem.” He participated in threads that questioned the reality of the Holocaust. On July 1 he made a meme showing him “lynching” another member of the site. However, he seemingly did not actively tie this part of his life to the shooting.

And this is where something can be done. As Shan Martinez points out: “ideology’ is too narrow of a term for an entire ecosystemic cesspool of overlapping networks of everything that is dehumanizing & desensitizing to violence in order to increase the likelihood that someone will commit mass attacks.”

I think a lot of people don’t understand that “ideology” is too narrow of a term for an entire ecosystemic cesspool of overlapping networks of everything that is dehumanizing & desensitizing to violence in order to increase the likelihood that someone will commit mass attacks.

— Parasocial Momma (@_Shan_Martinez_) July 7, 2022

Martinez has also written a handbook with successful tactics to battle this “cesspool.” Her Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to To Be Nazis is clear concise and reasonable. She identifies that White nationalists, accelerationists, and other extremists will always exploit these confusing times.

Since my pinned thread is getting some traction, here are some other pieces relevant of writing.

There is NEVER a paywall.

Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to To Be Nazis https://t.co/sX9rcXjwjq

— Parasocial Momma (@_Shan_Martinez_) May 22, 2022

A helpful checklist:

• PARENTS: GET TO KNOW YOUR KIDS’ ONLINE SPACES. What games are they playing? Who do they interact with? What support platforms do they use? Steam, Twitch, Discord, Gab, Telegram, Signal, Wire, WhatsApp? (9/25)
• What videos are they watching? Which YouTubers do they follow? Why? Do they comment or interact with comments? What are their current favorite TikTok videos? Do they create content? Do they have a Bitchute account? (10/25)
• Parents with younger kids: ask if anyone has ever contacted them inside games like Roblox, Minecraft,or Fortnite. Reportedly members affiliated with the hate group Atomwaffen, whose members traffic in child pornography, have reached out to kids as young as 8 years old. (11/25)
• What can we do? IDENTIFY MESSAGING.  Empower kids to identify the messages used to market products and ideas. Work together to learn better how to identify disinformation campaigns. This impacts permanent behavior change far more than just info and guidelines. (12/25)
• Hate group themes to watch for: stoking fear, scapegoating (Jews, the rich, the poor,  Asians, etc.), talk of inevitable societal collapse, calls to hasten the collapse or destruction of society/government/families/institutions; life being essentially meaningless… (13/25)
• Watch for anything framed as “us vs. them,” the idea that nothing we do matters, desensitization to harming others (violent & child pornography, kill videos, harming animals), any idealization of mass shooters or famous killers, normalizing violence as a solution. (14/25)
• TALK. The world is in upheaval right now. They know things are not normal. Develop daily check ins (conversation or via text) about how they are feeling. If they don’t seem to want to talk, find new ways to try. (15/25)
• LISTEN. Hear them, and don’t try to have all the answers. Share your feelings. It’s okay to let your kids know that you are afraid and uncertain. You are making it okay for them to feel this way, too. (16/25)
• PLAY. Now is a great time to share your kids’ worlds. Play outside. Play board games. Play video games with them.  Even if you aren’t any good at video games, let them teach you.  Be willing to meet them where they are: it demonstrates that you value them. (17/25)
• Share videos with one another.  Talk about them. Watch movies and shows together.  Let them pick one, and then you pick one. Talk about them.  Read together: novels, non-fiction, graphic novels, anything. Talk about them. (18/25)
• Building and fortifying connection is deeply important. Injecting complexity and broadening the content of what they are consuming is a powerful antidote to the dark rabbit holes of the online world. (19/25)
• PLAN. Talk about the dangers of group phone calls or video chats with people they do not know in person. Develop an action plan for what to do when children encounter problematic comments, content, or interactions online. (20/25)
• Screenshot. Block & report. Follow up with your own report to the platform where this occurred. Report to law enforcement any direct and actionable threat. (21/25)
• Ask your kid if there’s any other follow up they’d like from you. Don’t cut off their access; reward them for their honesty. Let your kid know they rock for being vigilant! (22/25)

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These ideas echo American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab  (PERILS)’ Cynthia Miller-Idriss “prevention and intervention work take a victim-centered approach.”

As Miller-Idriss says:

A lot of work on extremism and terrorism focuses primarily or exclusively on the actors who perpetrate violence and spread hate without sufficiently rooting that work in the experience of victims. A victim-centered lens is critical to ensuring that an approach focused on understanding perpetrators’ histories of trauma through a lens of empathy, for example, stays at least equally focused on those who have suffered (or would suffer) at their hands.

Such an approach requires that antiracist practice be a foundational part of work to combat white supremacist extremism. By understanding the experiences of women, the LGBTQ+ community, and nonbinary victims specifically, it calls on us to recognize the role that misogynist views and gender-based violence play in all extremist movements. Those are just two examples, but overall, a victim-based approach is essential to developing interventions that don’t just direct resources to communities that already hold more privilege and power, but work instead to ensure healing and support for the most marginalized among us.

And Telegram is important for everyone to understand. As Logically explains: “Telegram offers features that straddle the line between social media and messenger. Users can create “channels,” which function as one-way message channels that allow someone to send a feed of messages available to all their subscribers. Groups can host up to 200,000 members, the size of a small city. Public channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group. Telegram also allows for a robust number of bots.”

Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram. When a message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel or group, it links back to the original group, creating a chain between different channels and groups. Another common feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups in other channels and groups, with some users creating “directories” of channels and groups with extremist content.

Telegram’s user-friendly interface paired with the infrequent moderation across the app makes it easy for individuals to interact and say just about anything without fear of being banned.

To be clear: belonging to these communities is not in and itself an indictment. Point in fact it’s in these virtual spaces where we see vast crossover with traditional geek and nerd culture which is why especially as LGBT members of that community we can act as first responders.

And we can guard and police our own virtual communities.

In fact its incumbent on us to do so and also helps prevent context collapse which plays a role in sowing confusion.

Ultimately, our conversations around mass shootings, radicalization, and online communities demand nuance and vigilance.

You can download the Parents & Caregivers Guide here and here.

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR on Unsplash