The author of this article would like to stay anonymous out of concerns for their privacy and safety.
Warning: This article revolves around topics such as school shootings, shock content, gruesome killings, animal abuse, and other things that may be distressing for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, as of Monday, October 13, 2025, there have been more than 330 mass shootings in the USA. While many disagree on what counts as a “mass shooting,” five mass shootings by official classification have occurred at a school or university in 2025 alone.
More alarming, however, is the fact that more than 161 shootings, though not all considered “mass shootings,” have occurred in schools and/or universities this year, according to NPR, as of September 15th, 2025. That number has since increased to 200 as of October 13, 2025 (K-12 School Shooting Database). Many factors have led to this increase in violence in schools, including easier access to firearms, untreated mental health issues, and exposure to ideologies that glamorise the actions of mass killers from a young age.
While I will not be debating the issues of gun accessibility and mental health, I will, however, be discussing the alarming rise of a larger community that encourages young teens and children to follow in the footsteps of past mass killers. But, to fully understand how and where this community originated from, we first must discuss some of those whom they idolise.
Columbine
The Columbine High School Massacre was perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, both seniors at the school. Homemade bombs were placed in strategic locations of the lunchroom and set to go off at times when the room would be full of students and teachers. However, the bombs malfunctioned and did not end up harming anybody. So, the two boys decided to shoot the students themselves before taking their own lives. In total, 16 people died in the shooting, including one teacher and both perpetrators.
After the shooting, letters and online posts made by Harris and Klebold were released to the public. However, three of the five “Basement Tapes,” or tapes they made before the shooting that chronicled their plans for the attack, have remained fully unreleased. In summary, though, the two seemed to agree that they wanted revenge for mistreatment in their lives, that they wanted to harm as many people as possible, and go down in history as infamous individuals. It was the first major school shooting in the USA that influenced others to commit similar acts and continues to serve as some sort of twisted inspiration for recent school shooters.
Adam Lanza and the Sandy Hook Shooting
The Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting is the second most deadly school shooting in the USA, with 28 deaths (20 being that of first-grade children, 6 being teachers, one being his mother, and the final being Adam Lanza, the perpetrator) and 2 injuries. There is no information as to what his motives were for the shooting, but some forensic scientists have suggested that the variety of mental illnesses he suffered from could have played a part in it. During the investigation in the aftermath of the shooting, it was revealed that Lanza wrote that he was extremely “scornful” towards humanity and also had an obsession with pedophilia.
The Academy Maniacs
The Academy Maniacs are surprisingly not from the USA, even though many perpetrators of recent school shootings list them as inspirations. Nikita Lytkin and Artyom Anoufriev murdered 6 people and injured 9 others in Russia throughout 2010 and 2011. According to Wikipedia, Anoufriev’s motives lay in his ties to white supremacist groups, whereas Lytkin was ostracised from said groups due to his heritage. It is also confirmed that they wanted to follow in the footsteps of their “favourite” mass killers, like Alexander Pichushkin, Viktor Sayenko, and Igor Suprunyuk (or the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs in Ukraine who killed 21 people in the span of one month; there are striking similarities between the Academy Maniacs and the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs. Both went out of their way to target the vulnerable, like the elderly, disabled, and children). Rather than simply shooting their victims, there were instances of them repeatedly bashing their victims’ skulls and bodies with mallets, baseball bats, and cutting off their limbs in grotesque ways. They would record the processes and send them to their friends. Both Anoufriev and Lytkin were arrested and went to prison, but Lytkin committed suicide. Anoufriev is still serving his life sentence and is now married.
Now, what do all three of these have in common?
A dedicated fanbase of people who believe that their actions were applaudable, and in many cases, to be replicated. Whether it be self-proclaimed “Columbiners” or “Adam Lanza Apologists,” the True Crime Community, or the TCC, is a community of children, teens, and adults who idolise the criminals behind these killings and, in some cases, romanticise the idea of carrying out a similar act themselves.
Many individuals who are a part of the TCC say that they do not condone the actions of the killers, but rather are extremely interested in them and perhaps even empathise with them. However, contrary to their assurances, at least seven of the criminals who have carried out the deadliest school shootings in 2025 have had explicit ties to the TCC online (NPR). Those who like to indulge in true crime podcasts, shows, and documentaries usually will not label themselves as “TCC,” as that label explicitly refers to communities on Twitter and Tumblr where cutesy edits, information, fanfiction, and fan art are posted, all of which feature mass murderers or criminals of some form. Many individuals who are a part of the TCC say that it is a coping mechanism for their own mental health issues; they find comfort and belonging in the “edginess” and that they see these killers as misunderstood heroes.
The TCC isn’t just something that limits itself to microblogging sites like Tumblr and Twitter, though. They infest almost every platform, including niche websites and larger platforms. This also includes sites that are marketed towards children, including Roblox and Scratch.
The members of the TCC range from children under 13 to full adults. In many cases, the adults who openly associate with this community are extremely dangerous and are usually the ones who rope younger children into joining this community. These people prey on a specific stereotype of a person, especially people who are more likely to feel empathy for these killers: those who are socially awkward, suffer from mental illness, are lonely, are currently experiencing or have experienced extreme bullying, and/or people who have low internet supervision; the younger, the better.
When children are at their lowest, these people will prey on their insecurities and push for them to take revenge on those who have wronged them, slowly introducing them to the world of school shooters and, simply put, how to hurt as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time.
One doesn’t need to scroll very far in a TCC thread romanticising following in the footsteps of a killer (especially on TikTok) to find links to Telegram chats that advertise how to get access to firearms illegally, how to build bombs, and tips on how to carry out a shooting and cause as much damage as possible, all the while using euphemisms so that censors and moderation tools do not detect them.
Not only do some individuals in the TCC idolise mass violence and encourage others to harm those who surround them, but some are also members of 764, which is an online extremist terrorist organisation being investigated by the FBI; it is known for its (s)extortion of minors, cybercrime, and hate crimes carried out by its members globally. Some older and more tech-savvy TCC members also harass survivors and relatives of victims, as there are online databases with their home addresses, phone numbers, full names, and other personal information. Their motive?
“I don’t care about the victims. They’re not interesting, and if they succumbed to their deaths, they deserved it anyway.”
There are red flags to watch out for in those around you that you may suspect are being roped into the TCC. As always, correlation is not causation–if an individual likes a certain style of music or likes a movie, that is not a basis to report them for dangerous behaviour. However, if an individual seems to have a pattern of obsessing over many of these things simultaneously, then that may be something to raise concerns about with them.
These red flags include:
Being heavily obsessed with any of the following movies and their protagonists:
Duck! The Carbine High Massacre (1999)
Zero Day (2003)
Elephant (2003)
Zero Hour: Massacre at Columbine High (2004)
All of these films are based on the Columbine shooting. Many of these films are satirical and paint the massacre in an unserious manner, or in a light that glamorises the perpetrators. Many members of the TCC obsess over the protagonists of these films (i.e., Cal Gabriel, Andre Kriegman, Derwin, Derick, Alex, and Eric), claiming that it is not harmful to be attracted to and/or empathise with a fictional school shooter. For someone who is uneducated on this subject, it may seem harmless for a child to feel one with a silly fictional character. However, for all of these films, all directors have stated that the characters were based on or were one-to-one replicas of Klebold and Harris. Many TCC members cover their obsessions with the actual shooters under the guise of “kinning” these movie characters.
Being extremely obsessed with the following bands or artists:
KMFDM (and MDFMK)
Nine Inch Nails
Rammstein
Marilyn Manson
Acid Bath
Columbine Carcass
Robbyn Kirmssé
Collective Soul
Negative XP
Fried by Fluoride
Purgen
While many of these artists have stepped forward to denounce the massacres they associated with, they continue to appeal to TCC members today, as these bands were prominently listened to by those whom they idolise. Because many of the individuals in the TCC are young, they will go out of their way to try and replicate everything about their idols, including looks and music taste. Again, correlation ≠ TCC. These bands exist independently from the situations that drew attention to them, but in combination with other factors, an obsession with these specific bands and artists may be a cause for concern.
Wearing or wanting shirts with these logos or statements on them:
KMFDM logo
Negative XP logo
Purgen band shirts
A shirt with the word “wrath” written on it
A shirt with the words “natural selection” written on it
A white shirt with the word “Army” written on it in black
A shirt with the words “AoLeeT d00d” written on it
Many school shooters and mass murderers have “iconic” clothing that they wore regularly or shirts they wore to perform their deeds. Many TCC members, especially if they plan on imitating crimes, will wear replica shirts or shirts similar in nature to those they idolise. A recent example of this phenomenon is the Abundant Life Shooter, Natalie Rupnow, who wore a KMFDM shirt that was almost identical to the one Eric Harris was noted to wear regularly.
Using any of these as a username online:
Smiggles
voDKa (with that specific capitalisation, sometimes styled as << voDKa >> or in association with the word “green”)
Reb, rebdomine, rebldomakr, or rebdoomer
Sturmgeist89 or Naturalselector89
Another pattern among individuals within the TCC is using the old handles and usernames of the criminals they look up to as tags or as their own usernames.
Shock content and gore
Many individuals in the TCC consume and share shock, death, and gore videos with others. While again, many say that it is a “coping mechanism” or “just a joke,” some TCCers will intentionally save and post videos of people and animals being murdered and/or mutilated to social media platforms with the intention of causing those who suffer from self-harm to relapse and to traumatise other innocent people who happen to stumble across their posts. This has become an increasingly difficult issue to resolve on small indie platforms and larger platforms alike; indie platforms are run by smaller teams of moderators. Therefore, attacks on those types of platforms by the TCC are difficult to contain, as everything must be manually removed. However, on places like TikTok, these individuals put AI filters on the shock content so that it is not flagged automatically by moderation tools; one look at the comments would provide information on where to find the original, uncensored material. A notorious example of this is the “AI Minion Gore” that flooded TikTok half a year ago.
There are other criminals that I did not originally list who continue to serve as inspirations for recent shooters. If anyone you know seems to have an obsession with or mentions any of the following in a manner which seems idolatrous, perhaps it would be best to have a conversation with them or let an adult know.
READER DISCRETION ADVISED! The following breakdowns of these cases may be distressing to readers.
Andrew Blaze/Randy Stair: Eaton Township Weis Markets shooting. Popularised due to his fame and presence on YouTube.
Seung-Hui Cho: Virginia Tech shooting; currently the most deadly mass shooting on a university/school campus in the USA. 33 deaths in total, including Cho, and 23 injuries.
Samantha Rupnow: Abundant Life shooting; recent Columbine copycat. Many TCC people look up to her, as she is one of the most relevant female school shooters who has been publicly announced to have been associated with TCC ideologies. She had connections to 764, an online terrorist network, but conveniently, somebody wiped all of her communications with these people when the news became public.
Salvador Ramos: Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde; 22 deaths [19 being that of 9-11 year olds], 21 injuries. Ramos was said to have been playing “sad music” while carrying out the shooting, mocking victims by saying “good night” before shooting them, writing “LOL” on a whiteboard with a dead student’s blood, and after shooting around a classroom, he pretended he had left the room to see who he had not killed and then proceeded to fire rounds into the classroom a second time, killing every student that had not died the first time.
Nikolas Cruz: Parkland High School shooting; 17 killed, 18 wounded. He set off the fire alarm, which caused students to evacuate the building and move onto his path, where he shot indiscriminately at people. After the shooting, he managed to evade authorities for a short period of time, as he blended in with the surviving victims who were responding to the fire alarm.
Pekka-Eric Auvinen: Jokela High School shooting in Finland. 8 killed, 13 wounded. His reasoning for the shooting included revenge for bullying and Social Darwinism–he believed that those who would die at his hand deserved it for being the “weaker.” He also attempted to burn down the school by pouring engine fuel in the halls, as it would force those still able to move outside the school and easier for him to shoot while trapping others inside the burning school. However, he was not able to light the fuel and took his own life after shooting others. He was directly inspired by the Columbine shooters.
Luka Magnotta: The murder of Jun Lin, a university student in Canada, as well as animal abuse. Prior to the killing, Magnotta had uploaded videos to the internet of himself brutally killing kittens by suffocating two in a plastic bag with a vacuum, drowning one in a bathtub, and feeding another to a snake. Internet users tried to tell Canadian authorities to punish him, as he may move on to human victims, but the complaints were not taken seriously. Infamously known as the “One Lunatic, One Ice Pick” video, Magnotta uploaded a video of Lin’s dismemberment to shock sites. He repeatedly hacked at the student’s body with an ice pick, dismembered it, and fed parts of Lin to his dog. Magnotta is currently serving a life sentence and will be eligible for parole in 2037. He has attempted to appeal the sentence and asked to be retried in 2015, but the request was denied.
It is distressing that violence of this magnitude in schools and universities has become this prevalent in the USA. No child should have to fear losing their life at school at the hands of someone they knew or someone who was in the grades above them. It’s sickening to know that no matter how much you practise hiding during lockdown drills, the disgusting truth is that most likely, the person who will shoot up your school is somebody who knows every corner of campus and has already planned what they will do; it’s up to fate to decide whether or not they happen to enter the room in which you are hiding behind a desk.
It’s also disappointing that it seems that no action is being taken against those who encourage others to pursue this destructive path. It’s not a coping mechanism to meticulously plan out how to kill as many people as possible, nor is it revenge to harm children who have done nothing other than mind their business and go to school.
Stay informed, treat others with respect, seek out professional help if you find yourself becoming excessively attracted to the idea of harming others, and do not be afraid to report to school authorities if you are worried about the behaviour of others. The best defence against a school shooting is to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
https://k12ssdb.org/all-shootings
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/08/nx-s1-5321082/school-shootings-radicalization