The Highland Park Shooting & The Roots Of Doomer Culture

Joe: On the news Monday, we saw the July 4th parade shooting in Highland Park that killed 7 people and injured about 20. CNN says two dozen or more. And this was allegedly done by Robert Crimo III. Now, when I say allegedly at this point in time, he admitted to it. He climbed up onto a building overlooking a parade and had two rifles with him. Apparently one of them was in the car, and one was with him on the roof. He opened fire and he basically rained down on the parade. There were cops in the parade who responded fast; they turned around and quickly surrounded the building, but he also dressed in women's clothing to disguise himself, left the gun on the roof and got into a car. So, he planned this out; he was hours away from the crime scene before they caught him. In fact, he had taken his mother's car. Again, when I say allegedly, he admitted to it already and told a prosecutor that he had stopped in another city nearby and was planning to shoot at that parade too. He had a second rifle in the car, which I think is more than 60 rounds. He was ready to do it again, and he just sort of considered not doing it.

Todd: This reminds me of the tragedy that happened in Las Vegas, the casino shooting. A very well-to-do gentleman planned for years using the National Guard Armory of Weaponry. It's just so disgusting to me when I hear things like this. I served in the Army, and I think if you want to go fight somebody, why would you go to a place where there are kids? I don't know; it's below evil. And then we get callous. We hear these numbers and if it's not a big number, we don't pay attention. But I'm just thinking, I like to hear the bio of each of these people. How do you feel about it? The actual act?

Joe: I'm going to put this in a strange way. I'm going to put this in the context of disillusioned youth. I feel upset and outraged and disgusted both at our politics and at the act itself. The way I think about it is whenever we see a shooting like this, we go from showing the families and the victims on the TV. We then have a couple of days of obsession where we want to see who did it. Like, they splash the picture of the person who did the murder, and it raises the back of your hair on your neck; it makes you sick to see it. Then we kind of go numb and go to the next one. And when I say next one, I mean like there were literally dozens of shootings that day. It wasn't just this kid. I saw a map online that four or more people were shot, which by definition is a mass shooting and not a gang-related incident. Just somebody had a gun and they decided to take it out on everybody else and the map of the US where this happened, that same day, there were like almost a dozen in different states.

Todd: You made a good point there about how it happens, and we move onto the next one. I think back to all the things that have happened. And then I always think about years ago where they were protesting the Gulf War in this country. There was a Vietnam vet that I was friends with, he was a local business owner and he said, ‘Todd these same people who are protesting and shutting down the highways in Portland are the same people who will be supporting it tomorrow.’ And I thought, huh? And then with the Ukraine being huge news, it was big one moment and then we just kind of forgot about it. We just move on to the next one. Our lives may go on, but these people who were impacted have their lives destroyed. They never heal or get any kind of justice. There is no justice for such senseless crime.

Joe: There have been 300 mass shootings this year so far. We're only in July and there's been three hundred or more. So, do you want to talk about what is going on in the minds of people who are doing this because it's a big enough movement to where we can have a new shooter every day, and the argument about gun control might solve the issue. We don't know that though; we can speculate based on what other countries do and we can argue about mental health would probably solve it if we devoted a lot of money to mental health. But our country doesn't seem to want to devote any money to health coverage whatsoever. So, I was wondering if you'd like to just kind of breeze past those seneschal solutions that seemed to be a never-ending argument, especially with well-funded lobbyists in the way. And do you want to get right to what is going through their minds?

Todd: I would, and this has been heavy on my heart since pre-planning for this show. It's not on this scale, but I thought about people I've known in my life. More so people I didn’t like and was short with. I think, did that bullying manifest itself in their life to hurt other people? How much of that is on me? And yes, they might not go shoot up a school, but they might be mean to their spouse or sister as an outlet of not understanding that I'm treating him a certain way. And I thought, oh my goodness, I guess you don't know, right? Unless they confront you on it.

Joe: You touched on one of the magic words. After the Columbine shooting, there was a lot of talk about how the shooters were bullied. And that's why they did it; It was a retribution killing. But lost in the news and in the interviews, they did afterward find that the shooters weren't bullied that much. They were Matrix lovers; video gamers liked heavy metal. But they weren't being shoved into lockers. A lot of the kids that came out talked about how they were actually being bullied, not the shooters.

Todd: Don't we all spin that narrative, though? Don't we all feel like we were bullied at some point in our life? I moved around schools all growing up; it was hard making new friends and stuff. But if you have a group of friends to talk with and you have a group of kids to eat lunch with…how bullied are you really? Usually, bullying comes from your own.  

Joe: Actually, do you mind if I bore you with some statistics about bullying and kind of put this into context?

Todd: You always do Joe, and I appreciate that about you.

Joe: So, UC Davis did an awesome study that blew my mind about bullying and made me immediately think of school shootings. This study showed that bullying doesn't happen out of the blue. It's not usually the jock beating up on the karate kid. It happens between peers and groups that have friction with each other. According to the study, bullying takes place when one person tries to rise above in their social class and everybody around them doesn't think they deserve it. Especially the bully who's about to do it. It’s somebody in your peer group who thinks they are cool and starts acting and speaking like they're better than you. And you know, deep down, that they are a chess nerd like you, so you take them down a peg.

Todd: What's been your experience? Have you been bullied in your life?

Joe: Oh absolutely.

Todd: How has that manifested itself in your other relationships, at your home relationships and with the other friends? With your self-esteem? Where has it taken you emotionally?

Joe: Originally, in early school, I thought I was being bullied strictly because of my appearance. I was fat when I was younger…still am. I was overweight without any shape or frame. So, I was pretty relentlessly bullied. But as I've grown up, especially looking back to those days, I realized almost everyone who bullied me was a friend or had been a friend at some point. In fact, I was able to look back at an incident and realize that yes, I have definitely been the bully at some point, even though I viewed myself as a victim of being overweight at the time. And it was almost crushing and hard for me to see that I'd done it myself. So, after reading the study, I look back, and I'm like, oh, I've seen that happen. You were bullied a bit, weren't you?

Todd: You probably heard me say this a hundred times; it is not strangers that hurt us.

From what you're saying and the research you've found, yes, it was people who are close to me. And let's face it, we're so much more sensitive when the people we love tell us something. It stabs you right through the heart.

Joe: Right. So, I have been casually taking lectures and absorbing information from The National Institute of Justice. When we look at these shooters and everybody's like, oh, they got bullied; that's probably why they went out and got retribution. However, that's not the case. According to the National Institute of Justice, it's actually the bullies who do this. They are the people who are more likely to be social recluses in the first place, who choose to harm others and show callousness socially to other people. It's really the folks who already kind of have that extreme nature. You mentioned something about cruelty, like you can't imagine somebody being like that, and you said that you've looked back into your past at the people that you've known who have been off or who have seemed strange to you. Have you ever met somebody where you could see them doing something like this?

Todd: Oh yeah. There are certain people that I've met throughout my life, and it isn’t about their reputation or appearance…you just get the creeps when you meet them. There's just something about them. We had a property at an instruction company up in Seattle, kind out of my home. And one of our neighbors came over and he was always complaining about the noise. He was just a normal guy to me. But one time I saw him talking to my step kids and a shiver came over me that I swear must have been a hint from God. Something was wrong. Come to find out, years later, he was molesting multiple kids in the area. These people just seem to prey on the vulnerable, like kids, pets, and older people.

Joe: Yeah. And that's what a lot of these people at Highland Park were; a lot of the victims this week were elderly. They were, you know, 80. This neatly brings us kind of full circle. I want to tell you some interesting facts and then we can dive into what makes these people without empathy tick in the first place. Like, it's not just being a sociopath, it is kind of darker, and I want to take us down that road. My first big fact to drop on you came from The Washington Post. Did you know that two-thirds of all mass shooters are under age 18? Of those 300 we've had this year, about 200 or more were under 18. that's shocking,

Todd: That’s shocking. I think of that 40 year old middle-aged white guy who's unhappy. I would think that would be the majority and kids? Come on. Kids are happy, right? You haven't been beaten down by life yet. You don't have any reason to want to kill a bunch of people, right?

Joe: Well, you would think, but that beaten-down mentality is actually what's kind of crude spawning this as a movement. And I use the word movement very tactfully in this case because you would think that a young teenager would be like, well, what's the worst that's happened? It can't be that bad, right? But if 2/3rds of all shooters are under 18 and darn near the rest of them land between that 18-21 bracket, it is indicating to me and to the professionals at The Institute Of Justice that this is an epidemic of the youth. We hear in the news every time this happens about gun control, which I agree with certain measures, and we talked about mental health, which again, I agree with in certain measures. But what we don't hear people talking about is that it is almost always done by somebody who is under 21. And now I think we're kind of getting some talk about that when they mention banning certain weapons for people under a certain age like no assault rifles under 21 or whatever. But frankly, I think we should be addressing something called Doomer culture. Have you ever heard of the term?

Todd: Let me unpack this for a second. It's all kids. Now, I've always felt that there's a certain responsibility on the parents and I brought this up to some of my guy friends who are very close with their kids. And they've all kind of echoed the same thing – there are signs. There's always signs after the fact, but I've always felt that the parents have some responsibility to see that the kids are going off. And all my male friends have said you don't want to believe your kid would be capable of anything even close to that. But according to my kid-whispering mother, she says the parents know. The parents know their kids are on edge. So where is the responsibility in that?

Joe: In this current case, the July 4th shooter, the parents knew. And not only did they know, but he had been reported by people around the town. He also had been contacted by the police because he threatened to kill himself once. So, the parents knew. And there is absolute responsibility on the parents, but I don't know where that starts and stops. I mean, what are they going to do? Lock up their kid?

Todd: Well, that's a good point. You have to actually do something to get in trouble. You can't just get arrested because you’re thinking about something. I think you just want to blame, and you want it to stop.

Joe: Right. I think that if it was so rare, I would say it's the parents. I would say that there are some parents out there that have some explaining to do. But because there are so many and it happens so often, the parents can’t take all the blame. We know this kid had a community around him who knew what he was capable of. Maybe the parents missed some things while they were raising him and maybe they could have spanked him less or got him better help. But we really don't have mental health in this country. You have to be affluent just to see a psychologist.

Todd: Even to get in front of one, you need a parent that doesn't work 50-60 hours a week just to even have the time to schedule the appointments. And we're not even talking about the funds and the time to take them.

Joe: Right. And the adults who are looking at the news saying, why didn't these parents take their kids to see a psychologist? Those same parents pointing the finger don’t have health coverage that covers psychology. Oftentimes, the people who are saying the parents should have done more, they don't have a resource they would have been able to turn to either unless they make X amount of money and have free time to do it. So, the reason why Doomer culture comes up is because one of the news reports early on, when his social media was still out there, somebody mentioned that he was heavily involved in something called Doomer culture. And I don't think he's the only one; I think if you look through these shooter profiles all of them are. This is going to start with a couple of questions. Consider this a trivia test about how much you know about the scum pits of the internet. Todd, have you heard of 4chan?

Todd: No.

Joe: Okay. 4chan was invented back in 2003 by a guy who was just making sort of an image board. It is like a blogger forum where you post pictures instead of lengthy journal talks or questions. And when you post a picture, it's got a timer on it; the board can only handle so many images at once. So, the ones at the bottom that have been around longer, they get deleted at the end. Now, the board moves fast; you can post something and within an hour, once it reaches the bottom, it goes away. Once it gets buried under other people's posts, it disappears forever. And the people posting there were anonymous, so a lot of honest people posting anonymous content whenever they wanted led to this becoming a huge board. I can't overstate how large 4chain or how much sway it had politically.

Todd: Does it get shocking if there's no kickback? You could just be violent and disgusting and no backlash? Does that kind of snowball?

Joe: That's exactly right. Early on it was larger than Reddit, or at least had more traffic than Reddit. And there were times when hackers started on 4chan. And a lot of the Donald Trump meme makers started on 4chan. There have been groups, and there have been murders who literally will go post on 4chan and say they're going to do this crime and then they go do it. It just so happens that this July 4th shooter was on 4chan, and he was on discords. He participated in forums and a lot of this Doomer culture. 4chan has invented a lot of weird terms that have circulated through the internet and are watched by the FBI. And most people posting insane stuff will tease about it and ride the line of legal vs. illegal. They'll be like, hey, you can post X about a horrendous crime, and as long as you don't show certain things or say certain things, the FBI can't move on it; they won't come to get you.

Todd: Two things. First of all, my street-smarts have always told me that you never have to worry about the guy yelling and screaming he's going to kill you. You really don't. It's the person that doesn't say anything.

Joe: Yes.

Todd: And I need to ask you this. Have you ever wanted to kill somebody who's wronged you?

Joe: I think I have wanted to do violence toward people who have wronged me. I don't think I've ever gotten to the point where I wanted to murder anyone.

Todd: Yeah, I think I think I'm in the same boat. But it's always been aimed at somebody specifically, not the general public.

Joe: Exactly. If you're in a 4chain forum and everybody is normalizing violence, it becomes almost a competition for who can shock each other the most and that's where we get a term called Doomer. So, this came from a 4chan board, and this term has spread out from there. A Doomer is a young person who realizes that they're not going to have an education. They're not going to have meaningful jobs in the near future. It's like, here's this list of things that you'll never get in life because the odds are stacked against you. Doomer culture, that's their cornerstone, that's the starting place… realizing they're not going to have anything.

Todd: Well, this thing touches me. For about five years, I served in my church as security and being a public speaker. The natural thing for me to do at church was to be part of the ministry and do some talks. But I want to do something totally different. So, I got into serving the church and I was trained for shootings. In big churches, there are shootings all the time. And we wanted to be ready. And the overall theme people would say was…if it happens, it happens; God will protect me. But I called bs, we're not going to let somebody come into our church and kill our kids. We're going to stand up for ourselves. The reason I bring this up is I learned so much so fast about people and how much this happens. It happens, everywhere. One training really stood out to me; we were planning for a live shooter at the church. They showed us these videos that they had made and then they showed us some footage of real-life shooting stuff. It traumatized me. When we talk about video games and Hollywood, it's very different when it's real life.

Joe: It is absolutely chilling, and the thing that they don't show on the news is how much people keep moving after they've been hit. That was the thing that always has sort of chilled my blood and stayed with me.

Todd: It'll stain you; it'll tattoo in your brain.

Joe: And it's telling to me that you and I have this strong of reaction just seeing a couple of videos of this for training purposes. These are the types of videos that are being shared between these 2/3rds of shooters under 18.

Todd: They are desensitizing themselves to this, right?

Joe: Yes; they're getting calloused, and they radicalize themselves because they don't think they have anything else, and this gives them a strong emotion…something that disgusts us is what gives them a thrill.

Todd: Do you think that this sad, sick thing is about power? Do you think when they have these groups, and they're getting themselves worked up, they're thinking, well, if you kill 16 people, I'm going to kill 30...?

Joe: I actually read a couple of transcripts from other collections on 4chan and what the NIG has basically pointed at, it's worse than what you're thinking. It's oftentimes humorous...like they are joking about how other shooters could have done better, and there is a lot of chatter in hypotheticals of what they would do, glorifying it. Once you get past the part where it turns your stomach, then it's just sort of realizing that this is a group of people who would bully for no reason. They would harm somebody for no reason. They are calloused by choice, and they are using Doomer culture as an excuse; they are using the fact that they probably don't have a future as an excuse to continue in this and to eventually pull the trigger. I think it's very telling that this kid tried to kill himself before he ever picked up a gun to kill other people. So, I would like to ask for you to tell us about what happened during the TED Talks.

Todd: We went to the TED Talk. We went to Portland, and we had great seats. I mean, we were four rows off the stage. But during the TED Talk, they did something that was a big no-no by TED Talk standards; they got political. They did an interview with Betsey Johnson in the middle of the talk, and this was about a week or so right after the Houston school shooting. Well, a couple of the people in the audience caught on to it, and they were in the 'why.' It turns out that she's a gun-carrying NRA member and supporter funded by them.

Joe: Right. She comes from Rural Oregon. She used to be a Democrat but is now an independent running for governor and she believes in gun rights. People in the audience knew, but Todd and I didn't really hear of her. I knew she used to be a state representative, but I didn't know she was running for governor. And so, when the outrage started, it was sort of mind-blowing. You tell what happened when she started talking.

Todd: Well, the people started screaming. It was a little inaudible, but it was very uncomfortable. It was extremely awkward. They were screaming about guns, and the host scolded the whole crowd. I've never seen a man scold 20,000 people, but I saw it that night. This was a very blur crowd.

Joe: It was so strange to think a lynching was going to happen among so many liberal nerds.

Todd: It was very bizarre. And so, finally, she started to talk about guns, and she said, I am a responsible gun owner. I collect guns, and then the crowd starts roaring up again. It just seemed so inappropriate.

Joe: It was. She immediately went to the mental health talking point. She started talking about how we need to keep a better eye on mental health and have better restrictions based on mental health and better access to mental health. But she didn’t have a plan for it just like everyone who ever points to that. 

Todd: I do believe that mental health does need attention. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. But to say it in such a very naive way is what put it off.

Joe: Right. Somebody, please hit the mental health button under their desk and we can all be done with this. So, I have one last question for you. With mental health in mind, should somebody else, another flawed human, be able to say when you're not allowed to have a weapon?

Todd: This is the problem I have with this. There are so many false alarms. I can see law enforcement not knowing which holes to block in the boat. You put your fingers on all these mental health things, but you don't know who's going to jump off.

Joe: I get where you're going with this. We are not just asking the police to be the judges of someone's mental health. We're not asking them to use a crystal ball to tell us this person would snap. I'm just going to put this out there, but if the statistics are that 2/3rds of shooters are under 18, what if we just let more people in those groups have more access to affordable mental health?

Todd: You're absolutely right. I'm going to say those groups need to be aggressively broken up as well. And if you were to put resources in a certain spot, focus on the age group that is struggling the most. How many lives could we save?

Joe: Right. We are willing to put guards in schools but if we could just screen for that age and demographic. We could prevent literally hundreds of shootings a year. And then, if we had a mental health professional that was experienced with youth and Doomer culture, that would be a bonus. I think we would be able to fish a lot of trout out with that net.

Todd: Agreed and well said.

Joe: Says the middle-aged guy podcasting in a closet right now because I moved to Texas without preparing properly. 

Final Thoughts

Todd: I want to send this out to the families who lost their loved ones. I pray for you to be able to get through this. I don't know how you forgive. I'm always impressed when I see people whose family was taken from them by murders that they can somehow forgive the person. I hear they do it for themselves, but I don't know how they do it.

 Joe: I have the luxury of being in a closet, literally. And looking at the statistics online, anyone dealing with this has a stronger heart than I do. And they're going through something I will never really understand. And my heart goes out to them too.