C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019
mainstream platforms such as
YouTube. And while the neo-Nazi
website Daily Stormer has man-
aged to stay online in some form,
its traffic did diminish after
mainstream companies stopped
providing hosting services to the
site following the deadly white-
nationalist rally in Charlottes-
ville, said Rebecca Lewis, a re-
search affiliate at Data & Society
Research Institute who studies
far-right political subcultures
online.
It’s not clear what effect the
current deplatforming of 8chan
will have. “Practically speaking,
any downtime is going to be
detrimental to an organizing
space like 8chan,” Lewis said.
“It takes away their immediate
ability to organize, and also
their sense of security,” she
said.
The environment online his
shifted since the site splintered
off from 4chan. Back then, the
companies that control the In-
ternet (and many media organi-
zations) were still dismissing
much of the extreme speech on
those sites as “trolling.” Now,
there has been years of evidence
to the contrary, including vio-
lence, and a change in public
perception. It’s not a given that
another 8chan will be able to
rise up under the aegis of tech-
no-libertarians who love free
speech.
Up to this point, 8chan has
benefited from its mythology as
the darkest place on the Internet.
Banning it won’t stop the Inter-
net’s extremists from finding an-
other dark corner — and tempt-
ing the media to similarly “fe-
tishize” it, as online-extremism
researcher Joan Donovan wrote
in the wake of El Paso. In Buzz-
Feed, reporter Ryan Broderick
has argued that shutting down
8chan won’t fix the fact that
anger and bigotry are driving
American young men to extreme
spaces, and that the next 8chan
may already exist on a decentral-
ized platform such as Telegram
or Discord, which have both
been used by online racists to
commune and organize.
Still, it’s possible that the cur-
rent backlash against 8chan
might actually hamper online
extremists — partly by depriving
them of the stage that gave them
access to mainstream audiences.
It may at least take some time for
the users to regroup. “8chan had
become so deeply entrenched,”
Lewis said, “that any downtime
could impact that.”
[email protected]So maybe this is the moment of
8chan’s obituary, after a nearly
four-year run as the go-to space
for the worst people on the Inter-
net. After three massacres that
were, in part, performed for the
audience of 8chan’s extremists —
a man in Christchurch, New Zea-
land, literally live-streamed a
massacre at a mosque so that
8chan users could watch and
cheer along — the obituary feels
past due.
But can you really kill some-
thing like 8chan? Or will the
Internet’s white-nationalist and
misogynist extremists simply
find somewhere else to coordi-
nate online harassment, radical-
ize new visitors, and celebrate the
murder of women, religious wor-
shipers, and people of color?
You have to understand: 8chan
wasn’t just a community of mutu-
ally radicalized racists. Its cul-
ture was self-aware, steeped in
memes and prepared to make the
most of mainstream attention.
The fact that multiple mass
shootings had an 8chan connec-
tion was celebrated like a fun
game there. Robert Evans, a writ-
er who has researched the online
culture of radicalization, wrote
shortly after the El Paso shooting
that, on 8chan, body counts have
become “high scores,” a meme
encouraging others to try to
“beat” the total of the
Christchurch massacre.
Memes are designed to spread,
and 8chan happened to be the
base for those who knew that, on
the Internet, a share — even
when the person sharing is con-
demning you — is still a victory.
The goal is attention. After the El
Paso shooting, anonymous 8chan
posters encouraged one another
to create more “OC,” or “original
content” about the shooting. The
audience for that content wasn’t
other racists, it was everyone.
Journalists know to look at 8chan
after racist violence because
there might be a connection;
8chan treats members of the
mainstream press like the audi-
ence at a concert.
Simply pulling the plug on
online cesspools has had mixed
results: Reddit has banned some
of the worst discussion boards
that once thrived on the site in
recent years, forcing users to flee
to alternative places that have
promised not to censor their
content. Individual personalities,
including Alex Jones, have strug-
gled to retain the size of their
audiences after being kicked offANALYSIS FROM C1always break down at party lines.
Liberals will talk about gun
control, with America’s
grotesque worship of the Second
Amendment.
Conservatives will talk about
mental health. “The bottom line
is mental health is a large
contributor to any type of
violence or shooting violence,”
said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott,
after the El Paso shooting.
Both conversations are worth
having, and heaven knows we
need to get better at having
them, because our national
sickness doesn’t show any sign of
healing.
But these points seem like
only two pillars of a three-legged
conversation. The third pillar is
gender. The third pillar is how
we got to the point where
troubled young women vomit
quietly in bathrooms, and
troubled young men go online
and order assault-style weapons,
as the Dayton shooter allegedly
did, and then commit mass
slaughter.
We need to talk about how the
shooters keep getting guns. We
need to talk about how the
shooters keep not getting the
right kind of psychological help.
And we need to talk, frankly, and
exhaustively, about how they’re
almost always men.
[email protected]Monica Hesse is a columnist writing
about gender and its impact on
society. For more visit wapo.st/hesse.High School and the Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal
Church. Based on all the quiet
loners upon whom we
retroactively bestow pages and
pages of psychological analysis,
based on the fact that only nine
out of 250 active shooter
incidents between 2000 and 2017
involved female shooters,
according to the FBI. White men
have committed more mass
shootings than any other group,
according to one accounting of
the data.
After shootings, we seem
willing to talk about various
contributors to and solutions for
the violence. The discussionssummer I graduated — like
shooting lots of people was a
thing troubled young men did.
Society and culture had
somehow made them believe it
was an option for them. Not a
good option; it was, in fact, the
worst option. But the message
that shooting after shooting
seemed to reinforce was this:
The pain and resentment and
anger of young men is so grand
and vast and special that they
can and will make others pay
for it.
Based on Orlando. Based on
Virginia Tech. Based on Sandy
Hook and Sutherland Springs
and Marjory Stoneman Douglasrevelers in a nightlife district.
But, allegedly, they were both
young men. A 21-year-old and a
24-year-old, described by the
words that neighbors and
acquaintances now always seem
to use to describe young male
shooters after the fact: Quiet.
Loner. Disaffected. Troubled.
The suspected El Paso shooter,
a former classmate told the Los
Angeles Times, was “irritable
and had a short temper.”
The suspected Dayton shooter
once kept a “hit list” of
classmates and administrators
he planned to target. “He was
not bullied in school, he was a
classic glorifier of violence who
had threatened many of my
friends in the past,” read a
Facebook post written by
someone who said he was a
former classmate. “His violence
was simply ignored as ‘boys will
be boys.’ ”
“Boys will be boys” is such a
glib-sounding statement, such a
reductive description of
personality traits. Most boys are
not that kind of boy. Not all the
boys who seem like that kind of
boy will go on to do horrible
things.
But the phrase gets at
something that I never much
thought about as a high school
student, and which only seems
the slightest bit odd to me now:
We never, ever worried about the
girls.
There were definitely young
women who were troubled.
There was one who’d set fire to
her own locker, another who
quietly cut her arms and legs,
another who regularly ran
herself to exhaustion around
the track and then made
retching sounds in the
bathroom.
These, it seemed, were the
girlish responses to pain.
Inward, self-harming responses,
enacted on their own bodies.
Sad. Tragic. Material for an after-
school special.
The boys, though: We thought
it was very possible that at least
one of the troubled young men
would kill lots of people.
Because even back in the late
1990s it was beginning to look —
based on Columbine, based on
Paducah and Pearl and Bethel
and Thurston, based on the
Fairchild Air Force Base
shooting, and the Chuck E.
Cheese shooting, and a shooting
rampage of a 21-year-old neo-
Nazi just a few miles from our
town, which left two dead the
HESSE FROM C1
Television
BROADCAST CHANNELS
8/6/19
7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30
4.1 WRC (NBC) ◆ News ◆ Access ◆ America’s Got Talent (10:01) ◆ Bring the Funny News ◆ J. Fallon
4.2 WRC (IND) Little House on the Prairie Frasier Frasier Frasier Frasier Will & Grace Will & Grace The Office The Office
5.1 WTTG (Fox) Fox 5 ◆ TMZ ◆ Spin the Wheel ◆ First Responders Live Fox 5 News at Ten News The Final 5
7.1 WJLA (ABC) ◆ Wheel ◆ Jeopardy! ◆ Bachelor in Paradise ◆ Bless This M.◆ black-ish News ◆ Kimmel
9.1 WUSA (CBS) Off Script ◆ ET ◆ Love Island ◆ NCIS ◆ Blood & Treasure 9 News ◆ Colbert
14.1 WFDC (UNI) Amor eterno La reina soy yo La Rosa de Guadalupe Sin miedo a la verdad Noticias ◆ Noticiero
20.1 WDCA (MNTV)◆ Family Feud◆ Family FeudFox 5 News ◆ Family FeudFox 5 News ◆ Family Feud Big Bang Big Bang ◆ Chicago P.D.
22.1 WMPT (PBS)Farm-Harvest Outdoors ◆ Soundbreaking ◆ American Experience ◆ Amanpour-Co
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66.1 WPXW (ION)Criminal Minds Criminal Minds Criminal Minds Private Eyes Private Eyes
CABLE CHANNELS
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AMC Two Men Two Men Two Men Two Men Two Men Two Men Two Men Two Men Movie: Ghostbusters II ★★
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TBS Big Bang Big Bang Big Bang Big Bang Big Bang Big Bang Big Bang Detour Conan The Detour
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WGN Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops
LEGEND: Bold indicates new or live programs ◆ High Definition Movie Ratings (from TMS) ★★★★ Excellent ★★★ Good ★★ Fair ★ Poor No stars: not ratedEx on the Beach (MTV at 8) One ex
is sent home while another couple
struggles to define their status.
America’s Got Talent (NBC at 8)
Comedian Jay Leno joins as a guest
judge before the quarterfinals.
Chopped (Food Network at 9) Four
chefs battle it out over epic burger
creations.
Drunk History (Comedy
Central at 10) Cook Mary Mallon,
also known as Typhoid Mary.
Pose (FX at 10) Relationships are
damaged beyond repair after
Damon reveals secrets.
RETURNING
The Real Housewives of Orange
County (Bravo at 9) Braunwyn
Windham Burke joins as a
housewife. Season 14.
Intervention (A&E at 9)
Interventionists work with officials
and families to offer support for
opioid addicts in Philadelphia.
Season 20.
Hard Knocks: Training Camp With
the Oakland Raiders (HBO at 10)
Season 14.
PREMIERE
Woodstock: Three Days That
Defined a Generation (PBS at 9)
This film explores the attendees’
experiences, the organization of the
event and its impact on U.S. culture.Undercover Billionaire
(Discovery at 10) Billionaire Glenn
Stearns sets out to re-create his rise
to tycoon status with just $10 and
90 days to build a million-dollar
business from scratch.LATE NIGHTDaily Show/Noah (Comedy Central
at 11) Marianne Williamson.
Tonight Show/Fallon (NBC at
11:34) Dakota Johnson, Post
Malone, Jon Lovitz, Tyler Childers.Late Show/Colbert (CBS at
11:35) Amanda Seyfried, Jacob
Tremblay, Brady Noon, Keith L.
Williams.
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC at
11:35) Ben Stiller, Robin Thede,
Brad Paisley, Max featuring Quinn
XCII.
Late Late Show/Corden (CBS at
12:37) Melissa McCarthy, Elisabeth
Moss, Jakob Dylan and Jade
Castrinos.Late Night/Meyers (NBC at 12:37)
Michelle Williams, Noel Gallagher,
Tommy Orange, Julian Dorio.
— Nina ZafarMore at washingtonpost.com/
entertainment/tvTV HIGHLIGHTS
MICHAEL HICKEY/BRAVO
Flipping Exes (Bravo at 10) Former couple Nina Klemm and Michael
LeSure turn their roller-coaster relationship into a business flipping homes
in Carmel, Ind.
Gender must be addressed amid mass shootings
MONICA HESSE
MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST
People leave flowers outside the El Paso shopping center where 22 people were killed Saturday.AMY BETH BENNETT/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Parkland, Fla., school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz stands in the
courtroom in February.8chan is gone — until the
next 8chan comes along