December 18, 2024 - 11:55am
On Monday afternoon, 15-year-old Natalie Lynn “Sam” Rupnow walked into the study hall of her private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin and opened fire. By the time she took her own life, two others were dead and six were wounded.
Within hours of the shooting, social media users were debating the details of the event, long before official sources had confirmed anything about the tragedy. First, some claimed she was transgender. Some called her a misandrist who wanted nothing to do with men. Others described her as “chuddy”, a term often used for reactionaries, or placed her in the #tcctwt (True Crime Community Twitter) orbit.
An alleged online boyfriend surfaced almost immediately, posting a series of anguished tweets and claiming the love of his life had taken her own life because of “the worst people the world has to offer”. Competing manifestos soon emerged. One was presented by journalist Anna Slatz, who openly asked the supposed boyfriend for a copy of Rupnow’s writings and seemed to make a good-faith effort to verify the details. Another came in the form of Discord excerpts provided by someone who claimed to have been Rupnow’s friend until August, when she allegedly became radicalised into misandry.
Slatz’s “official” version was challenged by sceptics who questioned whether it had been written by a native English speaker. The excerpts offered by Rupnow’s “friend” were called out as forgeries via leaked screenshots in which he allegedly bragged about writing a “fake manifesto”; he then countered by saying the leakers had themselves forged their evidence. Some users dismissed the entire convoluted mess by saying that even if these claims were not factually correct, they “may as well be true”. To them, emotional resonance mattered more than literal truth — a type of “emotional truth”.
By Monday night, this no longer resembled the typical speculation that comes with news stories. Instead, it felt like a spontaneous Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with terminally online teenagers and 20-somethings improvising a story as they went. ARGs, when deliberately constructed, are immersive storytelling experiences that blend fact and fiction, usually culminating in a grand reveal. In contrast, these slipshod social media ARGs have no resolution. The goal is not understanding. Instead, it is about producing a version of events that feels emotionally satisfying, scoring clout, trolling journalists, and reaching some broader sense of narrative control. Knowledge-seeking is secondary, and is typically done by anonymous and pseudonymous posters on forums and imageboards.
This phenomenon is not unique to the Madison shooting, nor is it particularly new, but it is endemic to the internet. The 2017 Las Vegas shooting and 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre, as well as more recent episodes such as the assassination of Brian Thompson this month, all contribute to these feeding frenzies. In smaller cases, the fervour fizzles out before anyone truly engages; participants get bored and move on, leaving a half-finished puzzle behind.
What sets the Madison shooting apart is not a deviation from the norm, but how thoroughly it confirms the new normal. Violence is so common, so depressingly routine in America, that it rarely registers. Most journalists are no longer rushing to define the narrative; instead, a loose coalition of “anons” pick at the details and debate motives, if only for their own amusement or self-promotion. There may be no definitive exposé that pulls together the loose threads or tells us what truly shaped Rupnow’s path toward violence. And if one does get published, it may vanish into nothingness itself — a few clicks, a few shares, and then darkness.
What’s most likely is that as soon as interest wanes and fresh tragedy appears, the “players” of this ARG will scatter. The original event will be reduced to a footnote, recognised only by those immediately affected and within particular online subcultures.
Perhaps this time it will be different, and the Madison shooting will catalyse change. But there is a strong chance that this event will remain meaningful only to group of strange bedfellows. To those in obscure online subcultures, it will become a piece of folklore to be untangled, reshaped, retold, replayed. For the people of Madison, it will remain an unspeakable tragedy, though one denied a lasting national reckoning. It is another cruel reminder of a reality that has grown too familiar.
Katherine Dee is a writer. To read more of her work, visit defaultfriend.substack.com.
default_friend
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeStarmer would put all those people in jail for years.
Female school shooter? Must be that toxic masculinity feminists blame for everything 😉
She’s not the first but it’s not the norm. It will be interesting to find out the backstory. The fact that it was a Christian school made me p***k up my ears. They’re not known for being tolerant of differences.
Maybe random people on the Internet wouldn’t have so much traction if people trusted “established” media sources af all. There have been multiple times where they purposely withold information in these situations or release half truths in order to score political points and further an agenda.
People would put far less credence, and they would have much less interest, in random people on the internet if it hadn’t turned out that these people are just as accurate and reliable as mainstream news sources, and not in a good way.
Glass, China, and reputation are easily crack’d and never well mended. –Ben Franklin
Violence is so common, so depressingly routine in America, that it rarely registers. ——-> The hyperbole aside – most of us do NOT routinely face violence – but that which occurs is often excused, justified, or rationalized. Way too often, assailants get a literal ‘get out of jail free’ card in the form of no bail policies. Multiple cities are noteworthy for a refusal to arrest for certain acts, let alone prosecute. There is the endless racializing of thing where race is not an issue. And so forth and so on, all confirming one of the most fundamental things about human nature — you get more of what you allow.
Tragic story and how terrible that these events are becoming normalised.
I feel that the postmodern idea of fluid identities (and the forensic focus on identity itself) has led to confusion and a lack of any rooted sense of self, which in turn has contributed to psychological distress in a great many young people. Also I believe that the grievance culture has encouraged the blame game for perceived wrongs whether emanating from perceived “toxic masculinity”, racism, homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia etc etc. It has led to the abandonment of any sense of personal responsibility or agency and sadly nihilism seems to have taken its place.
For many the fragmentation of identities, the fragmentation of family and, on a wider scale, society itself has led to a hellish destination that threatens to swallow us all.
Not sure how we row back from here.
Teenage years have (at least since the “invention” of the teenager) been a period of questioning and searching for identity.
The internet has simply supercharged this, just as a mirror held up to the sun can cause a fire to ignite if directed at combustible material.
We’re in a new paradigm, and you’ve identified some key elements. I don’t think we can “row back” as such, but we definitely need to find a way through.
You’re right of course, even Socrates worried about the youth of his day. Teenagers have always experimented, rebelled and pushed against boundaries. To me, the weird thing is that in recent years it appears completely inorganic, coming from the top down rather than from the street up – and yes social media has enabled that mass manipulation. Rather than being edgy they are conforming to the new agenda that is actually being taught – even legislated. I think there will eventually be a huge wake up to that and a push back. Should be interesting.
Blame monetization of social media, where the elite users are paid based on how many other users are exposed to adverts. Slatz’s tweet about having been in touch with the alleged boyfriend and being provided with the ‘full manifesto’ garnered 29 million views. 29 MILLION. That’s a lot of Musk Money. Unfortunately, by encouraging vigilante journalism (‘You are the media now’ + monetization), Musk has created a free-for-all environment of ‘reporting’ where there is little accountability and plenty of earning opportunity. For the record, I don’t hate Elon Musk. But I think he’s taken a wrong turn here.
Nor does it help that legacy media (The Times, in this case) ran a headline putting the word ‘female’ in scare quotes before police had released any information about the shooter. Given the number of times male criminals have been referred to as female by the media in recent years, it isn’t surprising that readers would speculate on how this latest perpetrator might have self-identified.
I’m trying to reconcile the statement in this article about how commonplace violence is in the US with Archer’s substack that just came out saying violent crime just went through a historic contraction.
https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-in-2024-a-historic-drop-in?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1234332&post_id=151838777
He spe ializes in studying crim3 statistics from diverse sources.
I suspect it’s a matter of perspective. America’s crime rate could drop by double digit percentages and the nation would still lead the world by a wide margin in violent crime and by percentage of the population incarcerated. Two things can be true. Violent crime can be decreasing by percent and still be commonplace relative to most everywhere else.