Deny them audience

Mass murderers crave the attention

WE HAVE another atrocity on our hands, a mass shooting with about 50 people dead. It took place in New Zealand. At two mosques. During worship. These mass shootings don’t appear to be going anywhere, but they’re all being slightly tweaked, in search of more audience(s). And that’s what’s different about this attack. It was tailored for easy spreading on social media to capture a larger audience.

These monsters want attention. And that’s the thing the rest of us should not give them. Let them starve for attention in a cold prison and die forgotten.

Supposedly this most recent shooter put a manifesto online somewhere. That’s nothing new. Manifestos have been a go-to means of alleged world-changing ideas from terrorists for decades. And not just terrorists. Every fool from Karl Marx to the Una-bomber wants the world to read his Brilliant Ideas.

This newest manifesto was designed differently, though. CNN reported that it was full of white nationalist language, as always. But it also contained memes and other Internet jokes, things the writer knew would go viral if shared quickly.

And the shooter instructed folks to go to a particular YouTube channel, one with 89 million followers, in hopes of further attracting attention and stirring more societal division. The rest of the shooter’s manifesto was full of similar attempts.

The Internet has done fantastic things, connecting soldiers deployed overseas to video chats with their loved ones, building a platform in which charitable souls can launch fund-raisers to pay for the treatments of sick children, providing near limitless knowledge to readers for free and so much more. But it can also be used by evil-doers.

It gives dangerous minds (and terrorists) a digital space to meet, connect, talk and legitimize their ludicrous ideas. Alone, a white supremacist might just stew upon his own hatred. But when united with others, across millions of miles via the Internet, he might be emboldened to do something crazy, like what we saw in New Zealand.

The best thing the rest of us can do to discourage this sort of behavior is to forget this person’s name. Some of us will never mention the name of the crazy man who shot John Lennon in 1980, even after all these years. Even while in a New York state prison, he’d love to see his name in print. We won’t grant him that favor.

Same thing should happen to the New Zealand shooter. Don’t forget the act. Don’t forget the violence. Just don’t give the shooter the fame he’s looking for. It may be a small piece of retribution. But from all these miles away, it’s the best we can do.

Upcoming Events