Charlie Kirk Shooting Suspect Had Ties to Gaming Culture and the “Dark Internet.” Here’s How They Radicalize
Studying Radicalization in Gamer Circles
For many, the Kirk shooting has resurfaced the perennial question about the link (or lack thereof) between playing violent video games and real-world violence.
But while this is an important line of inquiry, the evidence suggests most radicalization takes place not through playing video games themselves, but through gaming platform communication channels.
In 2020, my colleagues and I studied an extraordinary data dump of more than nine million posts from the gaming platform Steam to understand this process.
We found evidence of radicalization occurring through communication channels, such as team voice channels. Here, players establish connections with one another, and can leverage these connections for political recruitment.
The radicalization of vulnerable users is not instantaneous. Once extremists have connected with potential targets, they invite them into platforms such as Discord or private chat rooms. These spaces allow for meme and image sharing, as well as ongoing voice and video conversations.
Skilful recruiters will play to a target’s specific grievances. These may be personal, psycho-sexual (such as being unable to gain love or approval), or related to divisive issues such as employment, housing or gender roles.
The recruit is initiated into a fast-changing set of cynical in-jokes and in-group terms. These may include mocking self-designations, such as the Pepe the Frog meme, used by the far-right to ironically embrace their ugly “political incorrectness”. They also use derogatory terms for “enemies”, such as “woke”, “social justice warriors”, “soyboys”, “fascists” and “cultural Marxists”.
Gradually, the new recruit becomes accustomed to the casual denigration and dehumanization of the “enemies”.
Dark and sarcastic humor allow for plausible deniability while still spreading hate. As such, humor acts an on-ramp to slowly introduce new recruits to the conspiratorial and violent ideologies that lie at the heart of terrorist shootings.
Generally, these ideologies claim the world is run by nefarious and super-powerful plutocrats/Jews/liberals/communists/elites, who can only be stopped through extreme measures.
It then becomes a question of resolve. Who among the group is willing to do what the ideology suggests is necessary?
What Can Be Done?
The Australian Federal Police, as well as the Australian parliament, has recognized the threat of violence as a result of radicalization through online gaming. Clearly, it’s something we can’t be complacent about.
Social isolation and mental illness, which are sadly as widespread in Australia as they are elsewhere, are some of the factors online extremists try to exploit when luring vulnerable individuals.
At the same time, social media algorithms function to shunt users into ever more sensational content. This is something online extremists have benefited from, and learned to exploit.
There is a growing number of organizations devoted to trying to prevent online radicalization through gaming platforms. Many of these have resources for concerned parents, teachers and care givers.
Ultimately, in an increasingly online world, the best way to keep young people safe from online radicalization is to keep having constructive offline conversations about their virtual experiences, and the people they might meet in the process.
Matthew Sharpe is Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian Catholic University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
