[droptablemain]

Right now seemingly all of Bluesky is in a frenzy trying to insinuate that this killer is somehow a Republican or "MAGA." Or a Groyper.

The level of cognitive dissonance when people lock themselves in echo chambers is truly astonishing.

You can literally scroll for hours, thousands of posts of people making the same sorts of outrageous and deflective claims.

https://bsky.app/profile/trending.bsky.app/feed/412019139

[zahlman]

I have seen comments on HN posting this narrative as well. It defies comprehension. One of the pieces of evidence used to spin this story is the suspect wearing a Trump costume for Hallowe'en, as a 14-year-old, in 2017 (the year that this costume was popular; the entire point was to protest Trump by treating him as a literal boogeyman).

(But of course, it is only seemingly all of Bluesky; and of course it's very easy on social media to start filtering for this content once you first encounter it.)

[maxerickson]

Why do you think the killer had to have a coherent motive?

[zahlman]

I'm inclined to think that a gunman without a coherent motive wouldn't write slogans on the bullets, for one thing.

[kevinh]

One of the "slogans" was a reference to the game Helldivers 2. They were memes.

[maxerickson]

You think that writing messages on the casings is obviously coherent?

[f33d5173]

People are calling for violence against left wingers at large because of this one lone wolf. I don't blame people who want to disassociate from him.

[zahlman]

> People are calling for violence against left wingers at large

I have seen nothing of the sort, and I have access to beyond-the-Overton-window right-wing sources. What they have been doing, instead, is pointing out the Bluesky users that TFA concerns itself with.

[f33d5173]

Consider turning on showdead and looking at your sibling comment lol

[zahlman]

I do have showdead on and have had it on basically since I joined the site and learned of the option.

"cindyllm" is, as far as I can tell, an automatically filtered, AI-powered shitposter.

[mkfs]

I don't think we can conclusively say what his motives were yet, even though it is leaning towards him being leftwing. Everyone assumed the Trump shooter was a leftist, but it turned out he was just an incel loser trying (and failing) to make a name for himself.