Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein challenged conflicting narratives circulating about Tyler Robinson by obtaining online chats and speaking with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
Agreed - I really hate doing this “next generation bad” thing, but this really is a different situation than what we’ve seen before. The way the Internet creates a feedback loop of extremism around every single topic is terrifying, and people are completely missing the profound effects this is having on developing brains - priming them for radicalization while critical thought atrophies.
When we grew up we had a set of influences which grounded us in reality. Even if we found subversive places on the Internet, we still spent most of our time with our parents and teacher and coaches, etc. This is completely inverted now. Kids traverse the internet like a dog sniffing out idiotic ideas, and when they find the validation they seek, there’s seemingly no way to pull it out of them.
I used to live in a house that was on a big circle, with all the back yards joining in the middle. None of the houses had fences, so it was just one huge field, with the occasional tree. If that had been my backyard as a kid in the 60s and 70s, that giant field of combined backyards would have been filled with kids every day. I would have known the names of every other kid, where they lived, and probably their parents, too.
But when I lived there about 10 years ago, I seldom saw a single kid out there. In the 5 years I was there, I saw kids playing maybe 3 times.
A couple years before we moved, one of the house on the circle sold to a family with kids. They put a giant fence up, and the kids played in their own backyard, with no contact with others.
Agreed - I really hate doing this “next generation bad” thing, but this really is a different situation than what we’ve seen before. The way the Internet creates a feedback loop of extremism around every single topic is terrifying, and people are completely missing the profound effects this is having on developing brains - priming them for radicalization while critical thought atrophies.
When we grew up we had a set of influences which grounded us in reality. Even if we found subversive places on the Internet, we still spent most of our time with our parents and teacher and coaches, etc. This is completely inverted now. Kids traverse the internet like a dog sniffing out idiotic ideas, and when they find the validation they seek, there’s seemingly no way to pull it out of them.
I used to live in a house that was on a big circle, with all the back yards joining in the middle. None of the houses had fences, so it was just one huge field, with the occasional tree. If that had been my backyard as a kid in the 60s and 70s, that giant field of combined backyards would have been filled with kids every day. I would have known the names of every other kid, where they lived, and probably their parents, too.
But when I lived there about 10 years ago, I seldom saw a single kid out there. In the 5 years I was there, I saw kids playing maybe 3 times.
A couple years before we moved, one of the house on the circle sold to a family with kids. They put a giant fence up, and the kids played in their own backyard, with no contact with others.