UPDATE: The shooter has been identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer. Rumors spread earlier in the day that the shooter was a a regular 4channer and active Youtuber known as “the eggman.” Obviously they were wrong.
This is beyond fucked up. In this archived thread from 4chan’s /r9k/ board, the apparent shooter at Umpqua Community College told fellow channers yesterday of his plans to shoot up a school today. He didn’t specify which school, mentioning only that it was in the “northwest.” /r9k/ is a board heavily populated by so-called “incels,” and the media is reporting that the apparent shooter regularly posted bitter complaints about his lack of success with women,
UPDATE 2: There is a lot of confusing and contradictory information out there, and the IDing of the killer has actually raised more questions than it’s resolved. An apparent Myspace page for Harper-Mercer suggests that he was obsessed both with guns and with the IRA.
There have also been reports that he was targeting Christians. According to the New York Post, a “woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded” reported that
“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian,” she wrote. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.
So was he — as an apparent supporter of the IRA — targeting Protestants? The Daiy Beast, for its part, says the shooter “hated religion.” Chuck C. Johnson of GotNews says he’s “confirmed” that the shooter was a Muslim.
Is the Myspace page really his? Is the report from the alleged granddaughter bullshit? Was the 4chan posting yesterday actually from him, or a comment from a troll that just happened to have been posted the day before a school shooting in the northwest?
I don’t know. But I still recommend that you read the rest of this post, if only to see the comments from the other 4channers.
Screenshots below:
Here’s his first comment warning fellow channers not to go to school today if they live in the northwest.
He then said he’d post again shortly before he started to shoot. (I don’t know if he did.)
Because 4chan is a fucking cesspool, other channers offered him advice:
Another anon suggested that indiscriminate killing wasn’t the solution, seeming to imply that more targeted killing was?
Others put forth their ideas of what sorts of people might be considered appropriate targets:
More encouragement. Note the reference to Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara “incel” killer.
A few others urged the OP to NOT carry out his plans.
After reports of the shooting hit the news, anons reacted with amazement:
Amazement and enthusiasm:
In case you’re wondering, “kek” is the equivalent of “lol.”
More excitement:
There’s much more of this in the thread.
Naturally, someone claims that the shooting could have been averted if only the shooter could have found a girlfriend.
Yes that’s right: he thinks the shooter was himself a victim, presumably of the entire female gender.
There’s a lot more in the thread but honestly I can’t stomach it right now.
Note: This post has been updated numerous times.
@Josh Miller
Who are you, and why do you think we haven’t heard the “both sides are equally bad” “argument” and needed it explicated to us, and why do you think it’s our responsibility to educate you about this site’s position on the Jezebel article when that information is available to you already with a teensy bit of Google effort on your part?
http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
^ that’s the article that AVFM had linked on their page. It is admittedly really awful and the comments are gross. I don’t think that excuses AVFM for continually bringing it up though, this is not something that is widely advocated for and Jezebel is hardly a good source. They just want to justify their sick fantasies of violence directed at women.
Srsly, Hank…4chan, “supportive”? How? Unless you mean nameless trolls and antisocial types egging each other on, I don’t see how the hell it can be supportive of anything but…well, antisocial behavior. Which a school shooting sure as hell is.
Anyhow, I’m outta here for the night. Here, everybody else, enjoy some sweetness, even if it makes Paulie’s head explode:
This is what the NSA should be investigating. Who these people were that posted in support and investigate them because they are the future mass shooters.
He’s an incel?
https://kiwifar.ms/threads/incel-loser-goes-shooting-in-oregon.13034/
Apparently this is the 294th mass shooting in the US this year.
And it’s only the 1st of October.
That such a coincidence could have possibly occurred is a disturbing hallmark to /r9k/’s cesspool status. Considering 4chan’s past behavior (assuming the new owner is similar in that regard of course) and the nature of the content that the media is talking about, I don’t see the board surviving this even if the OP wasn’t the actual shooter.
In fact, the FBI’s already in contact with the owner of 4chan according to his Twitter account, and the shooter not having been the same person doesn’t mean they won’t investigate.
I mean, they might be more lenient than planned, but it’s not like you’re necessarily going to get let off the hook if a detective finds out you attempted to rob a convenience store while they were gathering evidence about whether or not you robbed a bank (which, incidentally, you didn’t rob). Particularly if you did it in an egregious fashion and the media’s all over it, though not saying that the difference in attention you’d receive is a good thing.
Next twist is going to be that the Google search result for that name is an entirely different person, isn’t it?
And good on the sheriff for refusing to talk about the murderer – wish more would follow suit. The Internet tabloids are already all over it…but those are internet tabloids : P.
For the record, I’m not saying 4chan might get shut down or face criminal charges – I’m saying /r9k/ might get shut down and the people who made those posts, if somehow identified, could face criminal charges.
The government has the capability to know they are. Just because it says anonymous doesn’t mean crap. Even if they are hackers who conceal their ip addresses the government has better and more hackers. Even if this is not him posting people are
Literally cheering him after this was committed. I could give a rats ass if those people were executed.
cupisnique: Had AVFM called it out on the double-standard, they would have had a point. Instead, Elam went on to post violent, disproportionate and detailed revenge fantasies. Which is why they’re a hate group, not a rights group.
And holy shit, that 4chan thread is a great example of how the internet distills sociopathy.
Shit, that’s horrible.
I don’t know enough about 4chan to comment on them, but I’m not surprised to hear about more violence (apparently) driven by misogyny. Saddened, but not surprised.
I’ve been really busy with work and I haven’t posted here in a while (a small bit of good news, for what it’s worth – I did get the job I mentioned in the personal-thread post a few weeks ago) and I was wondering if anyone mentioned the Canadian murders on Sept. 23. A man with a history of domestic violence killed three women who were his exes (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/basil-borutski-triple-homicide-wilno-1.3239776).
I’m not saying all misogynists are murderers, of course, but let me say this: Any idea that certain people are inherently lesser than others seems like a kind of violence in itself.
One major bit of reasoning behind keeping the more extreme boards of 4chan up is containment. The argument alot of people use is that if you shut one down they will go and wreck havok on other boards.
@DavidFutrelle: It is probably a good idea to note that Chuck C. Johnson is Breitbart-level hack who shouldn’t be trusted with anything at all.
I really wish that US law enforcement did more to ensure that the shooters in these cases didn’t end up dead. Once someone’s dead, it’s so easy to dismiss them as unstable or mentally ill or a lone gunmen, whereas if they were alive they could tell their side of story. Psychologists and sociologists could then study them and try to understand what it is that really drives some people to mass violence.
Hate filled ideologies certainly help, but not all racists and misogynists are mass murderers, so what is it that drives these particular people to pick up a gun and head to the nearest school/shopping centre? Is there something that could be done, or some way to identify what the root causes are before a bunch of people lose their lives?
@Luzbelitx
Hey, Luzbelitx, I’m sorry to hear that. Sending good thoughts your way.
Shit son this happened on my birthday. I go on r9k a little bit when bored but sorta surprised someone actually did something like this cause most people are being ironic.
Bina,
4chan is a huge network of subforums with different topics and cultures, most of which we hear about when they act out. I don’t use it and never have, but I know people who do. Most of the users I know are what you might expect — white college students who like to get stoned and post GIFs — but some are very much not. I know or know of several trans people who were out on 4chan before they were out to friends and family.
I don’t really understand how the good experiences happen. Choosing the right board helps, but apparently they’re all chock full of slurs and bigoted trolls. The impression I got was that the people who experienced 4chan as “supportive” are people with very good filters. They were so desperate to feel understood that they were willing to overlook a lot of noise. If you post that you’re trans and scared to come out, you might get 5 people telling you they sympathize and 5 people telling you to kill yourself. That’s an extremely toxic community, but some people are able to block out the hatred and willing to do it because they haven’t found support anywhere else.
@Hank first off–the word is avid and RIP means rest in peace. Now, did you or did you not read the subsequent threads rejoicing and laughing after the shooting? That place is the very dregs of humanity and if you have any self-respoect left, I urge you to leave now while you still have some of your left.
I am not trying to advocate for 4chan or anything and I would not be sorry to see it go; just answering the question asked, which was how anyone could find it supportive.
”
I really wish that US law enforcement did more to ensure that the shooters in these cases didn’t end up dead. Once someone’s dead, it’s so easy to dismiss them as unstable or mentally ill or a lone gunmen, whereas if they were alive they could tell their side of story. Psychologists and sociologists could then study them and try to understand what it is that really drives some people to mass violence.
Hate filled ideologies certainly help, but not all racists and misogynists are mass murderers, so what is it that drives these particular people to pick up a gun and head to the nearest school/shopping centre? Is there something that could be done, or some way to identify what the root causes are before a bunch of people lose their lives?
”
My inner conspiracy theorist says they’re not kept alive specifically so we don’t learn what drives them.
I guess I can’t see how /r9k/, /v/, or /pol/ could possibly be supportive.
“The people on 4chan already decided to dehumanize people who are different from them ”
I’ve heard of 4 Chan but not that much. Who are the people different from them? Who are they?
Another Mass Shooting: Three Killed in Inglis, Florida
http://www.newsweek.com/another-mass-shooting-three-killed-inglis-florida-378888
David- is there a post on this site that gives you direction on how to block quote, post pics……
@amy
Here have a welcome package: https://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Or, specifically how to blockquote and stuff: https://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/comment-page-1/#comment-681