OUT: COPYCAT SUICIDES. In: Copycat Murders.

Very few of these attackers received material support from ISIS, and in fact for many of them, the only sense in which they were ISIS attacks is that the attacker pledged allegiance to the group. So functionally, this graph could largely be titled “Loners who rent a truck or get a gun or make a bomb, shout something about ISIS, and then kill people: 2014-2019.” People are no less able to do that in 2019 than they were in 2015, or 2005 or 1995 for that matter. In most cases, ISIS’s contribution was just the awareness that this is a thing that one can do. And there’s no reason that would have changed from 2014 to 2019. The internet still exists, people still post pretty much whatever they want, and information spreads anarchically.

Actually, though, I glossed over an important nuance: “ISIS’s contribution was just the awareness that this is a thing that one can do.” I think that may be a lot more powerful than we think. The declaration that hey, this is a thing. If you are part of this, you are part of something.

Contrary to popular belief, the people who commit mass murder aren’t necessarily mentally ill, at least not in the sense of having a diagnosable condition. Some do, but most don’t. So that’s not the common thread.

What is a common thread is that they are almost all frustrated losers. . . .

This mental model does a lot better at explaining the decline in ISIS-inspired attacks. Roughly nothing has changed in terms of people’s ability to carry out such attacks. So what must have changed is their desire. Now that ISIS isn’t on the upswing, nobody wants to join a losing team.

“Joining” them no longer gives people “See, I’m not a loser” validation. Because now, to join them is by definition to be a loser.

There’s a fascinating history around how the KKK was embarrassed nearly out of existence in the mid 20th century. A PR campaign, via Superman comics, cast the KKK’s secrets and rituals as pathetic jokes, which helped turn membership in the group from “I’m part of a thing” to “I’m a loser that people will make fun of”.

Dean Ing wrote on this decades ago.

UPDATE: Anya Pechko: “We have risen a generation of men who clearly do not know how to be in the world, we have armed them with violent games, ultra feminist mothers, we have made it impossible for a boy to now pay a simple compliment to a fellow student or a colleague at work. . . . We continuously blame the kids for this, but the kids are not to blame, this is what we have fed them, these are the seeds we have sown.”