cmsellers wrote:I just want to complain about something I noticed, because people keep posting links in #the_van on Discord. Most of the articles on the shooter have his name in the URL. And a lot of media sources are talking about his manifesto as if it's actually relevant.
Now, I know that damnatio memoriae didn't work even in the pre-Internet era, which is why we have the term "Herostratic fame," and I know that "just don't click" is hard even with normal clickbait, but I really wish that on an individual level, people would make an effort to give these people as little attention as possible, and ideally not to call them by their names, but certainly not in the title and URL. It's far too easy for a fucked-up person to see the discussion of one of these attacks and think "hey, that could be me!" and they often directly credit prior attackers as motivation.
Heres the problem, though:
He's going to get the attention anyways.
No sooner than you posted that were claims made that his manifesto said that he was inspired by "so and so", and as a result "we should blame so-and-so and everyone and everything I think is even vaguely related."
Of course, if there's going to be an argument about the content of a document which might be informative about the motives of a shooter, then naturally other people will want to know the contents of the document. Its much like weapons in that sense. And, if someone is going to levy blame, or even craft social policy, on the basis of that document and the shooter who made it, wouldn't you think there's something crooked about denying everyone else the ability to know for themselves whats in it?
If someone is going to insist on arguing to condemn others off of that document, but think there's something wrong with covering it up in order to hamper anyone else's ability to argue back, then isn't it better to not use what one claims to be in the document as part of a political argument at all?