The FBI says it has not yet identified a motive for the shooting

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Open-source intelligence analysts reported that Crooks didn’t appear to use mainstream social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram and had an almost negligible internet footprint, which is highly unusual for a 20-year-old. Instead, analysts said that Crooks corresponded with friends and associates on a Discord server that they were now trying to access.

Discord servers are restricted ring-fenced sections of the internet. They are often used by gaming groups and communities as secure chat rooms but are also used by fringe organisations to push their ideologies and discuss wild conspiracy theories and plots.

  • Awoo [she/her]English
    69•4 months ago

    I’m revising my guess at motivations to being more like a school shooter but against a cool target.

    • Speaker [e/em/eir]English
      13•4 months ago

      It’s 100% gonna be Epstein/Save the Children/QAnon. There was a story (apparently fake, but only pinocchio-evil-types say so) going around a few weeks ago about Trump being reinvestigated for Epstein behavior. I think it was only Pinocchio’d a few days ago, so I could definitely see the deboonking not having filtered into the Q space before this heroic moron bought a ticket to the cool zone.

    • moonlake [he/him]English
      5•4 months ago

      This is my take as well. If this were at all politically motivated, we would be reading his manifesto right now. Or at least his unhinged posts on 4chan/facebook. The fact that there are none of those things leads me to believe that this is just a guy who wanted to be epic. The target was irrelevant, if it was Genocide Joe on that stage he would have still taken the shot.