General Discussion

Teenagers who allegedly planned or attempted mass shootings in Tennessee and Wisconsin — and now Indiana — shared a commonality: they were plugged into an online subculture that worships mass murderers.

The people in these communities share graphic material – death, gore, hate, and abuse – like any other form of entertainment and horrify each other on purpose. They treat violent criminals like movie stars and count corpses like high scores on an arcade game.

That’s nothing new. What makes this subculture different from the pre-social media shock sites that traded in similar material is not the content – it’s the community formed around it.

Many of the cliques in this subculture are purposefully grotesque; others hide their venom behind false fronts or in-group speak so complex its own members liken it to a schizophrenic episode. Shockley appears to have made friends in one of the many “true crime community” groups, where people who idolize mass murderers disingenuously claim to be “researching” their crimes.

https://postthroughit.substack.com/p/defeating-the-duck-test