The NY Times published a guest essay yesterday titled We Study Mass Shooters. Something Terrifying Is Happening Online.
Until recently, if asked to profile a typical mass shooter, we would have described a middle-aged man who was socially isolated and in despair. He was not in the grip of a political ideology, nor did he have a mental health condition such as schizophrenia. Rather, he was deeply despondent about a life crisis, perhaps a divorce or a job loss. In attacking a workplace or a group of people he blamed for his problems, he was both exacting vengeance and effectively or literally committing suicide.
Over the past several years, something has changed. We are witnessing the emergence of a different paradigm: a mass shooter no less despairing about life’s hardships but younger, highly connected to online social networks and seemingly convinced that in acting violently he or she is carrying out the only meaningful act possible in a world otherwise devoid of meaning. This shift is highly significant for our understanding of the online-fueled pathologies that afflict our society and for the policies that could help prevent such tragedies.
Consider a recent example. Last month in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, an 18-year-old killed her mother and half brother at home, then opened fire at a secondary school she had attended, killing five students and an educator. In the aftermath of the shooting, amid the expected evidence of the shooter’s despair, there emerged an alarming trail of online activity: On Roblox, a game platform, the shooter had created a game simulating a mass shooting; her TikTok account reportedly featured reposted videos of a mass shooter; she belonged to a gore forum where users can post uncensored videos of violence, which has been frequented by other mass killers; and she had visited the online profile of a 15-year-old girl who killed two people at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., in 2024.
But. There’s a catch. You know what it is, of course. That “she” is not a she. The guest essay starts with a major, repeated lie about the very subject the authors are writing about. They tell us We Study Mass Shooters but what’s the point if they then systematically lie about the sex of at least one of their subjects?
I looked for more information and found that Wikipedia does the same thing.
On February 10, 2026, a mass shooting occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at their home before going to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed six people and injured twenty-seven others before killing herself. Van Rootselaar was a former student of the school.
No footnote, no brackets, no warning, no explanation – just the big lie.
My signpost to this outrage was, as so often, Helen Lewis.
Leave a Reply