"The attack is an advertisement"
A view from Buffalo
Hi friends. Today is May 27, 2022.
And I’m writing from my home in Buffalo, N.Y. — now less than two miles from the site of a racist massacre. (Tw: violence, racism)
I work at the local newspaper in Buffalo. I don’t know how many of you know that. I tend not to discuss it very much here, because this newsletter and that work are very separate. But on May 14, an 18-year-old white supremacist drove 200 miles to kill 10 Black people at a nearby supermarket; a white supremacist who, like several of his predecessors, marinated in the filth of 4chan before plotting his attack. And so, since the 14th, I too have marinated in 4chan, and in 8kun, and in the gunman’s racist screed, and in the 600-plus pages of Discord notes he left as a kind of journal. I think I’m getting into his head, but he’s getting into mine. Him and his whole subculture.
We got the manifesto first, early Saturday evening. By Sunday morning I’d also read the Discord logs, though confirming they were legit would take another day. My editors asked for a story about the symbols on the gunman’s rifle, which requires repeat viewings of his recorded live stream.
Later, they asked that I monitor a handful of forums, to see what other white supremacists were saying about the attack. As far as I can tell, the general response comes in three flavors: false flag, sleuthy or hero worship. All are similarly vile in their content, and identical in the breezy, jocular tone they take toward the attack. I saw one image macro of the moment a woman was shot in the head. I saw complaints, on Wednesday, that the Buffalo gunman had “lost” to the Texas school shooter, a framing that some extremism researchers call the “gamification of violence.”
I’m learning a whole new vocabulary this week, actually: neo-fascist accelerationism, pioneer effects — to say nothing of the slangy, slur-filled vernacular that 4chan uses. Many of them have clearly pored over the gunman’s “manifesto,” which the counter-terrorism expert Jacob Ware told me was likely his ultimate purpose: “The attack is an advertisement,” Ware said, for the ideas in this document.
So too, I think, are the live stream and the Discord logs and everything that followed: the memes, the shitposting, the Tucker Carlson debate, the news coverage — my own inevitably included. The more time I spend in these forums, in fact, the more I struggle to differentiate the practical consequences of my work and the channers’. We have vastly different motivations, sure, but have both introduced the gunman’s writings, this faction’s ideas, to people who did not yet know about them. “I’d never heard of 4chan before this week,” someone tells me, and I wish they still hadn’t.
I begin to probe the borders of “newsworthiness,” what it means to be worthy of an audience. My definition grows smaller and smaller, while the internet’s grows steadily more expansive. Facebook and Twitter have struggled to stem the spread of this material; meanwhile, there are no standards on the message boards or private servers the gunman favored, and that is by design. Each attack pulls in a new potential audience, and they accrete in these spaces over time.
On Monday and Tuesday nights I dream about the shooting. I don’t remember exactly what. I have the queasy feeling I watched it from the shooter’s perspective — the one I saw a dozen times in the video. Jason subsequently nags me to log into a virtual counseling session my paper hosts for staff. A very nice man with a slow, soothing voice tells us to take deep breaths from our diaphragms. I have been trying this, when it’s hard to sleep; and also when the news out of Texas broke; and also as I sit in front of my computer for hours on end, screenshotting these racist teenagers’ appalling fucking jokes.
But it doesn’t touch my truest, deepest anxieties — about the nature of people, about these online ecosystems, about the trickles and eddies of information that can inspire men to kill. About how it can be changed, so late in the day. About whether it will.
Please note: Ad sales from this month’s newsletters are going to the 5/14 Survivors’ Fund. If you would like to donate, you can do so directly on GoFundMe; alternatively, if you’re interested in getting your contribution matched by a corporate donor in Buffalo, I can help you do that — you know where to reach me.
If you read anything this weekend
“What Bullets Do to Bodies,” by Jason Fagone in Highline. This piece, published in 2017, should not be getting more relevant. And in the interests of giving you all a break from the last two weeks’ news, that’s the last I’ll link on the subject.
“How an Expert on Online Disinformation and Harassment Became the Target of Both,” via Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Nina Jankowicz, the very short-tenured head of the Disinformation Governance Board at DHS, on how the board failed and why it’s still so hard to be a woman (... or a trans person, or a person of color…) on the internet.
“The Inescapable Horror of Depp v. Heard,” by Lux Alptraum in The Cut. When you’re a hammer everything’s a nail, I know, but I see alarming parallels between the aforementioned 4chan shit and the mainstream memeification of domestic violence playing out via the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial (with an assist from far-right media outlets). The New Yorker also has a good legal explainer on this.
“A ‘Warehouse’ by Any Other Name,” by María Paula Rubiano A. in Grist. A surprisingly (!) fascinating exploration of the otherwise deeply boring, neglected policy factors that have allowed ecommerce to invade unsuspecting neighborhoods from New York to California.
“‘Grandfluencers’ Are Sharing a New Vision of Old Age,” by Charley Locke in The New York Times. This profile of a hype house of retired gay men (+ other elderly influencers) is life-affirming in a way I can’t fully express right now.
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from the last newsletter was this piece in The Atlantic on “female incels.”
The classifieds
Techno Sapiens is a newsletter about technology and psychology, written by Brown professor Jacqueline Nesi.
Is social media bad for me? Should I be on my phone around my kid? How do I find a therapist? Am I too #NormCore? For answers, join thousands of other curious sapiens and subscribe (free!).
Postscripts
Cyberchondria. Anti-fans. Deuxmoi's digital trail. The memeification of neighborhoods and the virtual black market for baby formula. The traumatizing implications of a “facial search engine.” What Google’s cute new AI image sets deliberately leave out. Did politics kill the social media challenge, or are we just older and more jaded now…?
How to stop caring about your email. Why tech hasn’t made us more productive. (Related: new cleaning bots just dropped, but don’t really expect them to help women.) The TikTokification of Instagram. A dispatch from the actual metaverse. Musicians say they’re pressured to score TikTok hits … even as fans reject “TikTok music,” go figure. Two arguments (Slate / Intelligencer) against the current disinfo dialogue. The incomplete science of the hanger reflex. Last but not least: “Everyone knows that whichever child’s name or birthday is used as the parent’s password is the true favorite.”
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin
And thanks to Steve for the link on household tech!