Maybe it’s ok to just let this keep happening

Ok so before anything I just have to say that I’m obviously not an expert, I have no academic qualifications because I’m a dropout piece of shit. What I do have is way too much free time (if I’m not working I’m at home almost guaranteed) and an interest in this kind of thing. It’s hard to find the best place to start when it comes to this subject, I’ve thought about it so much for years now and I keep getting thrown off every time I think I’m getting somewhere writing this up. I’m just going too have to accept that I won’t cover everything I have to say in this post. It’s like when people say “I could write a book on X subject”, I keep getting sidetracked by other aspects of the issue. Basically, my idea is that mass shootings are a form of performance art and I’ll try to explain how and why I got to this perspective. I’m not going to talk about the gun debate, the mental health of these shooters, the very particular time and place of this modern phenomenon (the US in the last 30 years or so), how overblown the whole thing actually is and the disproportionate media coverage it gets when compared to literally any other fucking violent crime except maybe sandmonkeys blowing shit up, etc. outside of when it directly relates to what I’m trying to talk about.

So quickly some background information, there are two definitions of mass shooting and it’s important to be aware of each. Not just for helping to understand what I’m saying either, but also because all the major media institutions are aware of the difference and abuse that knowledge. There’s the official/ legal definition which I’ve posted a screenshot of above, and there’s what I suppose you can call the cultural definition. The cultural definition is much more limited, it’s really a kind of story that follows a similar pattern and has the same theme every time. For each beat there’s at least one exception but this is a general rule. The shooter is male, which is why in the only instance I can recall of a mass shooting orchestrated by a woman everyone was pointing it out constantly. I’m pretty sure she didn’t actually kill anyone though and she wounded only three people so that’s another example of her not fitting the official definition despite fitting reasonably well into the cultural one. Truly showing how women can do anything men can there. Second, the shooter is a loser or social outcast and probably a virgin or at least kind of unsuccessful with girls. Again, you can find counter examples but the fact alone that this isn’t a shocking statement is enough to prove my point about the cultural definition. The school shooter as a loser/ nerd is something firmly in the public zeitgeist. Third, the shooter is taking revenge. The story of the shooting is ultimately a revenge fantasy. The shooter is going after people who bullied him, or who shunned him or stood by and did nothing to help him in his time of need. Which is why the terms “school shooting” and “mass shooting” are so closely linked. All these kind of resentments centre around school, a place where the social hierarchy is much more overt than anywhere else in life other than maybe the military. You have Chads/Jocks/Alphas and Nerds/Losers/etc. and everything in between. Of course on closer inspection usually it isn’t actually that cut and dried but then if you look at a rainbow close enough the colours blur together you’re not gonna tell me green and red don’t exist. What I’m saying is that your average normalfag has this very specific idea in their head when you mention the term mass shooting. They think of the story as mentioned above and also usually the shooter is white or east asian in this mental image and there’s probably more but you get what I’m saying now I’m sure. The mass shooting has a second definition that we kind of all agree on but isn’t really written down or laid out anywhere in whole (other than above kinda…) and you can see it made reference to all across the western/ americanised world. People jokingly talking about “that white kid everyone thought was gonna shoot up the school” or even nerdy/ loser kids themselves daydreaming about shooting their classmates. The killer is a villain, an anti-hero or a protagonist depending on who you ask, but they all agree on the narrative structure.

Most actual mass shootings are gang related events, nig on nog crime which gets hushed up until the statistics are useful to create a false perception in the minds of the public. Because when someone says mass shooting you think of the two or three big news stories of the last few years, and now you’re being told that that is happening way more than once or twice a year. The second unofficial definition is something that has been deliberately placed into the public consciousness, or more accurately the seeds have been placed so it appears like people came to this shared view naturally. Really think about it, every time one of these specific shootings happens that fits the standard setup it’s a huge news story. Nasim, funny how we keep coming back to her, didn’t even kill anyone. Elliot killed six people, Chris Harper-Mercer (some of you guys are alright) killed 8. There was a shooting a few days ago in California where six people died, yes it got news coverage but it’s not still going now. These numbers are not that unusual in the grand scheme of things. Just go back and look at the aftermath of the Elliot Rodger shooting where the same amount of people died. They were interviewing people related to the story including his scumbag dad weeks after the thing happened. You can say it’s because we’re desensitised to these shootings but think about it. Before Elliot you had Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and a bunch more very deadly shootings but they weren’t enough? I’m having a really hard time staying on focus here, fuck. I made a mistake thinking I was up to this I really did. I’ve written so much and deleted almost everything to restart twice now. I’m not doing that a third time so everything from here on is staying. It’s fucking impossible to do this the way my mind works, because I get completely distracted and then get convinced that this tangent I’m on is crucial to my main point. No more preliminary bullshit it’s just bogging me down. I want to talk about my ideas, but I’m just not able to lay them out for people the usual way. Rambling aimlessly the way I did in the last posts and being a miserable git is easier and more enjoyable and actually quite cathartic, plus the few of you who have been here since the beginning seem to like it so far because you’ve come back for more. This is new ground, and I feel like one of the dorks who writes articles for Return of Kings when I read back this and my previous attempts to make this post.

Here’s the point, and if it has a ton of holes fine. I’m not writing a paper for an academic journal here I’m just trying to share the stupid shit that goes through someone’s head when they’re cooped up inside for days on end. School shootings are a performance, they follow a pattern just like a Punch and Judy show. Or at least those that do are highlighted, the more on script they are the more intensely so, while those that do not are disregarded. Elliot didn’t ever harm any of the people who actually bullied him or shunned him, he killed a bunch of random normalshits who were of a similar social standing to them. They were a representation of those people who he mentioned (by name in many cases) he was actually resentful towards, they were props in his big show. Cho talked about how he was doing what he did for “the weak and defenceless”, he wanted to make a point with what he was doing it wasn’t about getting revenge on his classmates. Adam Lanza went back to his elementary school for his shooting at the age of 20, he wasn’t avenging himself upon people he knew he was killing the school as a representation of the suffering he and millions of boys like him went through in schools across the western world. Look at the fucking most famous of all these shootings, Columbine. Eric and Dylan were in full costume, that black “trenchcoat”, edgy printed t-shirt, black boots ensemble is something that everyone is familiar with today two decades later. They secured themselves a legacy, something all performers long for. Bones put it perfectly in a song about the subject, “young dead suicidal superstar icons”. It’s well known that the fame is a huge motivator, and how not showing the faces or names of the killers is one of the best methods of preventing copy cat crimes but yet every time the exact opposite is what happens. I’m struggling to find it now but there was a paper and interview by this criminologist talking about it that was circulating in pol9k circles not too long ago. You can look for that if you’re interested, or just assume I’m making it up whatever suits you. These shootings are a spectacle, there are various different interpretations of what it all means just like with any good piece of art. They give losers all over the place something to fantasise about as well, they serve as a form of escapism in a sense just like many videogames, movies, books, shows, etc. When I was in school with that friend I mentioned in the last entry we would regularly joke about it. What groups of other kids we’d target, how we’d do it, shit like that. This is when I was at my most mentally healthy… Yes I said I was actually doing reasonably well and was hopeful for the future but we were still the weird kids. I had someone there with me though which also made it way easier, and I was young enough that the whole “they laugh at you now but they’ll be working for you one day” meme and it’s variants were something I thought had some truth. They also give the people who do bully and ostracise these kids validation. You can hear it when that bulldyke 56% face whore from the Florida gun grabbers squad talks about how she and the other normies actively ostracised him because “it was no surprise to hear that he was the shooter”. I suppose this kind of goes against my earlier point, because in the case of the Florida shooting Nick Cruz did personally know the people he was trying to kill. That clip isn’t hard to find if you haven’t seen it btw, the kind of thing that really activates your almonds.

I have to say, there is a kind of beauty to these events or performance pieces as I now tend to see them. Like I’ve said a lot of the victims are totally random. Yes a certain demographic is targeted but that really is the only trend. Some shooters go across the country, others target schools they once went to but students in a completely different age group, the message is that it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. It fits perfectly within the contemporary view of any hierarchy, that your place in it is random. These kids, the ones who shoot and the many many more who feel they can relate to those who shoot feel like their place which they’re of course unhappy about is random and unfair. What are the chances I ended up at the loser table? Whenever the normalfag hears about these shootings they can’t understand, how could you go and kill a bunch of innocent people? That’s the point, sometimes the best way to express yourself is to just fucking do it. Now people are dead, people like you, you get to experience that feeling of unfairness. The shooter is the performer, the victims are his props, and the normalfags who get sp00ked every time one of these attacks happens are the intended audience. If this were a youtube video essay I’d play Kids With Guns by Gorillaz as my patreon supporters’ names scrolled by now. There’s more I could probably say, but I don’t know what I’m doing and I think this is good enough for me. Not sure what I’m going to talk about after this. There’s two new people at work I haven’t met yet, sometimes interactions with customers can put me on a weird train of thought, who knows. Next time I’m bored with nothing but hours of scrolling through the catalog on r9k to look forward to, somewhere I’ve been an ungodly amount of times the last few years, I’ll write instead.