Thread by @TheRynheart

1. On what riots, school shootings and acts of racist mass murder have in common.

In 2015, Malcolm Gladwell talked about riots and offered a tentative idea to explain school shootings.

In 1996, the first school shooting occurred. Six more occurred in the two years following.

2. Then Columbine happened and things markedly escalated. Columbine was a turning point. A script was laid out. A narrative.

Gladwell: ‘This (school shootings) is a very contemporary phenomenon. It is an overwhelming American phenomenon.’

3. Gladwell comments that riots will trigger behaviors that people would never normally do. Ok, but how?

Granovetter, a sociologist, felt that riots were a ‘social phenomenon.’ He proposed we all have thresholds: ‘The number of people who are doing something before you join in’

4. A threshold of one means one person has to do it, before you join in. A threshold of two, means two go first.

The last person IN has a threshold of 99. Someone who would never, ever do something, unless absolutely everyone is doing it.

5. Gladwell: ‘It’s essentially my mother. If absolutely everyone is doing it, she will be: ‘all right, all right, all right.’’

So, ‘everything changes with Columbine.’ The shooters have website & a manifesto. In many of the cases, the kids are just redoing Columbine.

6. Gladwell: These are the ‘low-threshold’ radicals writing the scripts. But, by ‘laying out a script so precise, that it makes it possible for kids with really high thresholds to join in, they are bridging the gap between the radicals and everyone else.’

7. Gladwell’s comments also translate well to white supremacist mass shootings.

The NZ shooter who just murdered 50 innocent people, idealized a Norwegian neo-Nazi, who killed 77 people in 2011, who also wrote a lengthy manifesto.

8. The N.Z. shooter himself published a manifesto, sending it out shortly before his attack. There are guidelines in his manifesto, on how to recreate his act of terrorism: ‘Avoiding ending up on watchlists.’ ‘Avoiding suspicion from relatives.’ etc.

9. As per @washingtonpost today, Tarrant’s grandmother said he spent most of his time playing games on computers.

“I don’t think girlfriends were on the agenda — he said getting married was too hard.”

10. Tarrant was socially isolated in real life. Idealizing violence. Unemployed. Most of his connections are online racist sites/social media and games, lowering his threshold.

11. And being online disinhibits some people, because there is no real life body language and tone to indicate feedback disagreement or discomfort. Our body language constantly signals to others what is acceptable and what isn’t and suppresses behavior in others.

12. And somehow in Tarrant’s isolated mind, he was only able to connect with others, with the faint hope he will be idolized. Really, no different then ISIS.

Facebook & other social media platforms create pockets of radicalization where thresholds are lowered and not monitored.

13. Facebook had to remove 1.5 million videos of the N.Z. shooting in the first 24 hours.

Luckily, three (so far) have been arrested for praising/disseminating/acting out, because of the terrorist’s video. One in UK and one in NZ. One in Arizona.

14. Trump is blithely ignoring a problem, that unless addressed, will only escalate. And he won’t address it, as it suits his and the GOP needs. 😑

15. Malcolm Gladwell on school shootings, 2015 @ the New Yorker Festival.

/end