An empty chairs and bicycles remain near the scene of the shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday, July 5, 2022. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The young man who has confessed to killing seven people at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb on Monday was “an extremely online creature” and crafted a confounding digital footprint that experts say he wanted everyone to analyze.Besides his YouTube videos, social media profiles, and Spotify playlists, Robert E. Crimo III hung out in some of the darkest corners of the internet, areas where graphic violence and mass shooters, in particular, are romanticized. He left behind cryptic clues that researchers, journalists, and the general public have been poring over in recent days—and experts say that’s exactly what the suspect wanted. Advertisem*nt
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Dad Helped Highland Park Suspect Buy Gun Even After Threat to ‘Kill Everyone’
"He embodies sort of the pop-culture image of a mass shooter,” Conley said. “For decades, especially since Columbine, the media has been talking about the idea of a dangerous level of mentally ill, confused, schizophrenic young man who doesn't really have any intentions—, he's just crazy, right? And this is a shooter that said, 'OK' and embodied that. Everything about him is confusing on purpose.” Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
While some of these communities say they don't want to shy away from the grim reality, the works created by the shooter and the communities he entrenched himself in can lead to a detachment from reality according to Alex Newhouse, the deputy director of the Center on Terrorism at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who says the content is intentionally disorienting, to the point where it’s amenable to carry out violence."Reality is meaningless, and if they can destroy reality, then that's the only thing worth doing anymore,” said Newhouse. “The dehumanization of both the self and other people is the core aspect of why this shows up in these types of cases. Advertisem*nt
Deliberately hard to understand
Extremism researchers warn that failing to understand how these communities operate, and how the people like the Highland Park shooter become radicalized means that these incidents will continue to happen. But it’s also crucial that the media and academics don’t glamourize it in any way.“We waste a lot of time getting in the head of the most recent shooter and not enough time getting in the head of the next one, because however we respond to this one will determine how the next one goes,” Conley said. “Every single one of the shooters builds their profile based on the success or failure of the ones who came before them; they know what works, they know what plays well in the media, they know what makes a big splash, and we play into it every time by sensationalizing their story.”Police say that the Highland Park shooter planned the rampage for weeks—and on Wednesday police said Crimo admitted to planning a second attack—which seems to correlate with his online footprint. On his now-deleted YouTube page, the shooter made videos with flashes of violent images; one image showed the street the parade went down. Experts said there were hints that he may have been trying to leave an alternate reality game—an acquaintance of his told VICE News he enjoyed these immensely—for his audience and the online community. This could be seen through works he published and shared to both his Amazon and YouTube accounts. Advertisem*nt
Do you have information about the Highland Park shooter? Please contact Mack Lamoureux at mack.lamoureux@vice.com or David Gilbert at david.gilbert@vice.com or DM either on twitter and ask for a Signal number.
Within minutes of the suspect’s name being released by police while he was still on the run Monday afternoon, his social media presence, YouTube channel, and Spotify account were all quickly discovered and dissected. His songs on Spotify were full of references to mass shootings and his music videos were filled with violent visuals. His social media posts showed him posing with a Trump flag and attending a Trump rally in a Where’s Waldo? outfit. But he also followed left-wing figures on Twitter. And for amateur sleuths, political warriors, and cable pundits, that was enough to understand his motives, with many looking for a quick way to label him like other mass shooters. Was he a white supremacist? A Trump supporter? A part of antifa? A member of a militia? What were his political beliefs and motives?“I would not be surprised if [his digital footprint] were crafted to be confusing on purpose, as this is about par for the course with a lot of the stuff coming out of these online communities,” Full Beard, an anonymous researcher of online extremism with Dirty South Right Watch, a group of researchers who mostly focus on tracking extremism in southern U.S. states, told VICE News. Dirty South Right Watch published a review of the kinds of communities the shooter existed in. Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
The shooter was infamous on the forum for posting images of a young-looking sex doll he had. He also posted some videos of him with a nonlethal firearm. The Fourth of July shooting has been the central topic of conversation on the site since it occurred, with some fans of the site worried it will be shut down. Many spent time parsing the shooter’s posts for any hints of real-world violence.“I’m shocked,” wrote the website's moderator in a chat with fellow members. “The guy was strange, no doubt, but he never seemed like a violent person to me. I mean Christ, he carried his life sized sex doll with him from place to place.”“It seems he was here online until around 12:10 (a.m.) or so on the 4th. He must have been posting here, went to sleep, got up, and decided to head down to the parade.”
A possible troll
A former friend of the alleged gunman who was also in a rap crew with him told VICE News that the suspect was a troll who thought both sides of the political spectrum were idiotic—but that could have changed since the two fell out of touch a few years ago. The friend, who wanted to be referred to as his rap name Nod so as not to be associated with the suspect, spent a lot of time with him in the late 2010s and even had him living on his couch for some time.The friend said the man was a loner who frequently self-isolated. The rapper told VICE News that the suspect was a bit of a gamer kid, and while he could have seen him killing himself, he’s shocked he took violence against other people. Advertisem*nt
Another person in this friend group described the suspect as “an isolated stoner who completely lost touch with reality.”“He co-opted aesthetics from the left and right, but I don’t think he was any of those things, I think he was lost,” they said. “Gravitated towards aesthetics he found interesting.”Both Nod and the other friend didn’t excuse their previous acquaintance's actions and urged people not to jump down rabbit holes he may have left behind.“If I could say one thing, it would be this: Do not spend your time focusing on his motives, his backstory,” wrote a friend on Twitter. “This isn’t a TV show, there isn’t some grand conspiracy here. Maybe elsewhere, but not here. Please check in with your friends.“Please show the victims support.”FollowDavidandMackon Twitter.Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to the Uvalde shooter as a white male. That reference has been removed.