Dee's article "The Nihilism of the Mass Shooter" (written in 2022, even) (https://default.blog/p/the-nihilism-of-the-mass-shooter) provides more specifics than the generalities in this op-ed. I'm a regular reader, so it's easy for me to see, but I believe that her passion about investigating and reporting on these things is visible even to a new reader. It's clear to me that she actually spends time looking at the sources, e.g. there's a link in the article to one of her sources, a pdf of the law enforcement report on a shooter from Parkland.
This isn't the true crime of classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_crime but rather people commenting on crimes.
https://www.wisn.com/article/madison-school-shooting-reveals...
True Crime Community
Researchers say these posts and her online actions fit the mold of the internet group "True Crime Community," or TCC.
The online group often focuses on mass shootings and other crimes, researching and in some cases idolizing previous attacks.
"TCC and other similar online forums are one location online where individuals who are seeking justification for their desire to engage in violence, to express their anger at society, to express their feeling of being a victim, and they consume content found on those forums," Cohen explained.
"The "true crime community" of tumblr is really fucked up" - https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/7e7v0b/the_true_cri...
What I learned is that true crime as a genre is different than the True Crime Community(TCC) which is a different demo and is associated with glorification of violence and one of the sources of enacted violence.
More broadly, I'm concerned that the civilization glue of community continues to be in retreat, lack of uniform mental healthcare and healthcare, and lack of reasonable bounds on who can/'t have firearms with similar respect as vehicular operation.
While that means I'm concerned about the same loser types Columbine that continue to be a problem (as mentioned), but I'm also concerned about organized domestic and international terrorists (including accelerationist, race-oriented, and religious groups) out to do much greater harm in ways that aren't just mass shootings.
Also, AI chatbots opens up the potential of automating sentiment manipulation through astroturfing leading towards radicalization goals.
Final qualitative observation: Functional, healthy civilizations seem to produce far fewer revenge-suicide events per capita per time interval.