The Echo Chambers That Form Killers

Community, Alienation, and Modern Violence

After the most recent tragic school shooting, there is a clamoring to discover the why, as perhaps we have done since the late 1990s, when these events first began happening.

The most recent shooting at Tumbler Ridge secondary school in British Columbia was enacted by a trans shooter. It’s a dynamic that we have seen repeated over the past few years. Before that, the shooters were merely described as socially inept loners.

And so we now ask: was it the trans ideology that warped his brain, the illegal drug use, the drugs that he was prescribed for depression, the content he watched, the Reddit subculture that he lived in, or something else?

Perhaps the answer can simply be a singular yes. After all, these are all indications of a loss of the good. Said differently, someone who has embraced all of these subcultures has separated himself from any connection to reality. His “friends” are depersonified in the world of the Internet. Unlike real friends, they can carefully curate the image that they put forth of themselves. His drug use and experimentation served to further sever him from his locality. Eventually, the adoption of transgenderism caused him to deny even the reality of himself.

To take the point further, imagine how unusual it would be to find out that the shooter had a healthy hobby—such as if he was actively engaged in the local tennis club, or built robots with other kids his age, or was immersed in his local church group. We never hear that. If anything, we hear about how these young men left their former activities months or years before such atrocities.

None of this is to suggest that one cannot use the Internet in positive ways, of course—it allows this work to exist. But it cannot and must not be our only source of engagement with other human beings. Using only the Internet to fulfill our social needs is like trying to hydrate with alcohol. It feels similarly wet as you drink it, but it gradually poisons you and increases your need for real water.

Over the last few decades, we have become less social with our neighbors and communities. Those who come from broken or challenging homes experience that privation even more intensely. We get some sense of who we are (especially as adolescents) from our relationships with others. Our interlocutors become a mirror through which we can view ourselves. Godless echo chambers in the recesses of the Internet can reflect a distorted image.

So many young people decided that they were transgender after immersion in Reddit and Tumblr pseudo-communities, which provide affirmation and acknowledgement at the cost of denying oneself. Then, after taking these often irreversible steps, such victims struggle to feel whole and healthy. Some are missing body parts. Haunted by a sense that something is perpetually amiss, many take their own lives. Increasingly, some become monsters who take other people’s lives.

The teenage stage that we have begun to view as typical, in which a child develops no hobbies or social interests but isolates him/herself for hours every day is a conduit to personal misery and cultural degradation. Gen Zers are fond of using the phrase “touch grass” to admonish those who have lost touch with reality because they have spent such little time in it.

We cannot fix other people’s lives, but we can form a community and build a culture around us that reflects what we should aspire to. Healthy, thriving communities and groups attract people. They heal brokenness and provide a counterweight to the despair that descends upon the victims of modernity.

The Internet may distort, drugs may numb and confuse, and ideology may deceive, but none of these abolish the will. Evil remains a choice. If we want fewer such choices, we must form souls capable of resisting them.