A little over a year ago, a 14 year old opened fire at his high school in Georgia. When investigators searched his bedroom, they found a wall he had built and covered with photographs of mass shooters he admired. Among the faces pinned up there was the man who murdered my son Alex in Parkland.
I need you to sit with what that means. Somewhere out there, the person who killed my 14 year old boy is a poster on another teenager's wall. He has fans. And a new organization from the ADL has just documented exactly how large, and how organized, those fans have become.
The ADL calls it the True Crime Community, or TCC. The name is misleading, so let me be clear about what it is not. This is not the true crime of podcasts and documentaries, the kind that studies criminal cases, the justice system, and the victims. This is something else entirely.
The TCC is an online subculture built around admiring, glorifying, and in the worst cases imitating violent criminals and mass killers, especially school shooters. Its members treat murderers the way other kids treat bands or movie characters. They make fan art. They make edits and memes. They give the killers affectionate nicknames. They build shrines. And the community is made up overwhelmingly of minors and young adults. ADL analysts have found children younger than 14 active in these spaces.
Here is the part I want to be fair about, because it matters. The overwhelming majority of young people who drift into these spaces never hurt anyone, and many of them actively push back against the ones who cheer for violence. But for a vulnerable few, the fascination becomes a pathway. And the community is built, socially, to push them down it.
What makes this so dangerous is what it rewards. ADL describes the TCC as part of a nihilistic ecosystem where the goal is not a political cause but infamy, attention, and a hatred of humanity. In the group chats, a higher death toll earns more status. Attacks with low body counts get mocked. Members goad one another. Would-be attackers are encouraged to livestream, to leave a manifesto, to record videos of themselves beforehand, so the fandom has material to glorify them with afterward. Since 2024, ADL counted at least 7 of these attackers who livestreamed their violence or tried to.
The most worshipped case of all is Columbine, in 1999. It has taken on an almost mythic status in these circles, and the original Columbine fandom was the seed the modern TCC grew from. Newer technology has poured fuel on it. There are now AI generated videos of mass shooters dancing or shopping, passed around on mainstream apps. There are real massacres rebuilt as playable games. The machine runs on one currency, and that currency is attention.
Which is exactly why I will not print a single one of their names in this newsletter. Not the man who killed my son. Not any of them. Notoriety is the prize they are chasing. It is the one thing all of us, parents and reporters and platforms, can refuse to hand them.
Let me say something carefully, the way ADL does. Mental illness does not make a person violent, and the vast majority of people who struggle with their mental health never harm anyone. But these communities deliberately target kids who are isolated and hurting, offering belonging to a child who feels they have none, and then feeding them a worldview where violence is the answer. Warning signs rarely arrive one at a time, but a cluster is worth paying attention to.
The things a parent or teacher can actually notice: a deepening fixation on specific mass shooters or on "school shooting" content; images of killers collected on a bedroom wall or in a notebook; hours spent on forums that exist to show real footage of people dying; recreating real massacres inside video games; usernames and symbols that reference past attackers; a sudden obsession with Columbine. Any one of these, in isolation, may be a dark teenage phase and nothing more. Several of them together, in a kid who is withdrawing and in pain, is a reason to lean in and get help, not to look away.
I want to leave you with the case I hold onto. Earlier this year, an 18 year old in Indiana, obsessed with the same man who murdered my son, planned a Valentine's Day attack on her school. She called it "Parkland part two." She never carried it out. Someone recognized the warning signs and reported her through an anonymous tip line. She was arrested with the ammunition and body armor to do it, and she is now serving 20 years.
A tip line and one person who spoke up stopped another Parkland from happening. That is not a small thing. That is everything. ADL's data shows at least 21 of these plots foiled since 2024, most of them right here in the United States. They were not stopped by luck. They were stopped by tip lines, by threat assessment teams, and by adults who noticed and acted. The same online world that radicalizes these kids also leaves a trail. When someone reports it, we can get there first.
So talk to the kids in your life about what they are seeing online, without shame, so they will tell you the truth. Learn the warning signs. Make sure your school has a real anonymous reporting tool and a trained threat assessment team. And keep the pressure on the platforms, from the big apps to the gaming sites to the gore forums, to stop delivering this to children in the first place.
Two moves. First, sit with the kids in your life and ask, without judgment, what they are really seeing and sharing online, so they trust you enough to tell you the truth. Second, find out whether your school has both an anonymous tip line and a trained threat assessment team, because in case after case, that combination is exactly what stops an attack before it starts.
They built a fandom out of the worst day of my life. We do not beat it with fear. We beat it by paying attention, by telling someone, and by refusing, every single time, to make these killers famous.
For Alex. And for all of them.
Max Schachter
This piece touches on youth violence and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. To report a safety concern about a student, use your school's reporting system or the Sandy Hook Promise Say Something anonymous tip line. Learn more about school safety at schoolsafetydashboard.org.