Ryan Broderick writes:

Most American men under 30 at this point have had a 4chan phase — or at least spent time on an equivalent toxic internet community. Even if the ICE shooter did decide to dedicate himself to antifascism at the last minute — like Robinson may have done — he’s still going to talk like a 4channer and filter those ideas through the prism of ironic edgy internet speak. As I’ve written before, this is the water young men swim in now and that water is very muddy.

And these edgelord shooters are a beast of the Trump administration’s own making, in a way. Trump and his supporters infiltrated online spaces like 4chan and Reddit in the 2010s and flooded them with far-right ideology. They were content with their little cyber army of aggrieved men harassing women journalists and people of color, concocting sprawling fantasies about human trafficking and Democrat sex cults, storming the Capitol, and going on incel shooting sprees. The violence and intimidation was perfect for pushing regressive social politics — or supporting the billion-dollar school shooting prevention industry. But these angry young men have switched from the redpill to the blackpill, and are reacting to the chaos and paranoia of the second Trump presidency, as well as the changing landscape of the online attention economy. An attention economy shaped by right-wing influencers and reactionary tech CEOs, mind you. They’ve clearly realized that targeting high-visibility figures within Trump World is a more effective way of getting attention, or causing chaos, or because they think it’s funny, or because Trump back in power hasn’t been the glorious revolution they were promised. They’re covering their bullets in memes, taunting law enforcement and the media in their manifestos, and going after the biggest targets they can. And now that we live in Trump World, there’s no bigger target.

Which may explain why Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet told Fox News this week that the organization’s “tech partners” were tracking nearly 300,000 devices “in and around” State Farm Stadium at Kirk’s memorial. Surveillance technology that ICE is now promising to make illegal when used on them. [Continue reading…]