OSD 304: The copycat effect and that which must not be named
How to discuss something that it's a bad idea to discuss.
Kostas Moros posted this last week in a discussion about the assassination of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO:
There’s a catch-22 here. Discussing these things (both the crime itself and the way it could cause a copycat effect) is important. But the more attention you bring to it, the more likely it is to breed copycats. So there’s a weird Roko’s basilisk quality to the discussion, where the more aware you are of the copycat risk, the more likely you are to summon it.
Contagion is well-established in the context of mass shootings:
Researchers at Arizona State University analyzed news reports of gun-related incidents from 1997 to 2013. They hypothesized that the rampages did not occur randomly over time but instead were clustered in patterns. The investigators applied a mathematical model and found that shootings that resulted in at least four deaths launched a period of contagion, marked by a heightened likelihood of more bloodshed, lasting an average of 13 days. Roughly 20 to 30 percent of all such violence took place in these windows.
Findings indicate that the mass killers received approximately $75 million in media coverage value, and that for extended periods following their attacks they received more coverage than professional athletes and only slightly less than television and film stars. In addition, during their attack months, some mass killers received more highly valued coverage than some of the most famous American celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, and Jennifer Aniston. Finally, most mass killers received more coverage from newspapers and broadcast/cable news than the public interest they generated through online searches and Twitter seems to warrant. Unfortunately, this media attention constitutes free advertising for mass killers that may increase the likelihood of copycats.
If the mass media and social media enthusiasts make a pact to no longer share, reproduce, or re-tweet the names, faces, detailed histories, or long-winded statements of killers, we could see a dramatic reduction in mass shootings in the span of one to two years. Even conservatively, if the calculations of contagion modelers are correct, we should see at least a one third reduction in shootings if the contagion is removed. Given the profile of mass shooters, we believe levels of mass murder could return to a pre-1970s rate, where it becomes a truly aberrant event that although not eradicated, is no longer a common option that goes through the mind of every bullied, depressed, isolated, somewhat narcissistic man.
So, the more widely you’re discussing a high-profile assassination, the more it’s a good idea to use the same tips that help mitigate mass shooting contagion risk. They are:
Don’t use the killer’s name or face.
Don’t signal-boost their motivations. It’s normal to wonder why they did it, but in most cases the answer is that they’re out of their mind. Not a satisfying answer, but there’s usually nothing more to it.
Don’t dwell on graphic details or a lurid play-by-play analysis.
Focus on dry facts, on the victims, and on anyone who acted heroically during the incident.
That’s it. These things are worth discussing, and the copycat risk will never be zero. But following those simple guidelines will help keep the risk as low as possible.
This week’s links
Pat McNamara reviews famous movie gun scenes
Good to see Pmac becoming more mainstream famous. It’s overdue.
About Open Source Defense
OSD Capital
We invest in civilian defense and tech that accelerates it.
OSD Podcast
In-depth interviews with outstanding founders and builders in the civilian defense industry.
Merch
Grab a t-shirt or a sticker and rep OSD.
Discord server
The OSD team is there along with lots of subscribers. Paid Substack subscribers can join the chat.
> There’s a catch-22 here. Discussing these things (both the crime itself and the way it could cause a copycat effect) is important. But the more attention you bring to it, the more likely it is to breed copycats. So there’s a weird Roko’s basilisk quality to the discussion, where the more aware you are of the copycat risk, the more likely you are to summon it.
I am of two minds on this, and my values conflict. I don't know how to resolve it
On the one hand: I am a free speech maximalist absolutist. I believe that every person should have the unqualified right to communicate any information they want, at any time, to any one (conditional on any one having the right to reject that communication to themselves, whatever that means in context). I believe that I should have the absolute right, if I wanted to, to not only signal boost these crimes, but to advocate for them.
The reason I believe this, there's a bunch of reasons but here's the three main ones
1) Letting any authority decide which communications are legitimate immediately gives that authority a fully general tool to exploit, and I'd rather a handful of innocent people sometimes die, than the government be able to control our minds.
2) Silencing people doesn't stop their ideas, it just prompts them to hide them. If people are openly communicating abhorrent things, we know who the bad people are, and we can all point at them and mock them and then ignore them. If you silence their bad ideas, they just communicate them in secret, where they can spread with you being unaware until they build to a critical mass
3) Crime is already illegal. In fact, every citizen of the United States has both a moral and a legal obligation to not murder people, _even if someone tells to you_. And I think that any moves to silence speech on the grounds that it might encourage crime, is shifting the responsibility of crime away from the people who did it, and on to other people who didn't do it. I think this is both bullshit in a "I didn't do it, why are you mad at me?" way, as well as a dangerous risk of making the people who actually do crimes feel less responsible for them, which will increase crimes at the margins (eg "hey, I'm just the vessel, carrying out the will of that guy who told me to do it")
ON THE OTHER HAND THOUGH, in the context of mass shootings specifically, they are freak rare events. As freak rare events, they're basically random, and there's not much we can do proactively to stop them. And so, if our highest priority is stopping them, then we need to use whatever tactics are effective, and if silencing speech is effective, well, maybe that's what we have to do.
At the moment I square this circle by saying "yep, sometimes innocent people die. That's the price you pay for living in a community of more than 100 people". But, I can totally understand why other people might vehemently disagree with that.
I want to add one more thought.
I'm pretty frustrated at how many people I'm seeing online expressing shock at the fact that people would be supportive of this action.
I understand thinking that this action was bad and I understand being opposed to the people expressing support for this action. But I don't understand people who are surprised at these comments, and I suspect that all of them are disingenuous in their surprise.
I moved to the United States in 2012, and from the moment I moved here until the moment that woke anti-racism and LGBT stuff took over the collective conscience, rhetoric advocating exactly what this guy did was everywhere. Living in the Bay Area, every day ob my walk to work I would see stickers, posters, and graffiti that said things like "eat the rich" and "die teche scum" and "death to all landlords". These sentiments were so widespread and popular that even people who disagreed with them would smile and nod and pretend to agree with them because they understood it was socially expected to do so.
Society spends ten years saying these kinds of things, and then a guy acts on it. It's like everybody assumed the whole time that all of those comments were sarcastic or impotent or otherwise not literal. I don't think it's reasonable to ignore the things you see and hear every day for a decade, and then act surprised when you find out someone actually meant them.
For that matter, I think that's doubly unreasonable to anybody who would express ideas along the lines of "We can't even talk openly about this because there are crazy people out there and copycats are a thing". I'm not accusing anyone here of doing that, its just a convenient example. If one's threat model of this is that it's essentially stochastic terrorism and there are a handful of crazy people out there who will just do it if encouraged enough, so we need to do everything in our power to avoid encouraging them. If that is your threat model, then it doesn't even matter if all of those things people were saying in the 2010s were sarcastic because the random crazy person is going to take them seriously regardless of their intent.
So anyone who is sincerely surprised now on the grounds of, "holy shit, I didn't realize they were serious", is holding an unreasonable position if they believe that the risk of crazy people being encouraged to violence is a real thing.