Malcolm Gladwell on the social contagion of mass shootings

National Public Radio Morning Edition “How Riots May Help Us Understand School Shooters”

This is a great example of how understanding our cultural evolution, and how we have evolved to live culturally, could allow us to solve a social problem. We need to figure out a way to break the cultural continuum from one mass shooter to another.

I am not totally sure that the riot analogy is apt though. There are a lot of good evolutionary reasons why being a riot “joiner” would make adaptive sense: failing to join your group in some collective action — even if you would prefer not to join — could lead to either retribution from fellow group members or being expunged from your group. So we must have evolved some threshold for joining in such actions. Because the “group” of mass shooters is virtual and not real, I don’t quite see how this evolved instinct to join in riots would apply… unless some kind of mental illness is causing mis-application of what might be adaptive in a real group situation.

What’s more interesting is how the internet can create isolated cultural groups that can develop and proliferate norms that are entirely different from those of larger society. These norms can go unchallenged in these “dark alleys” of culture until they bubble up as a mass shooting. And the ideas of mass shooters like Eric Harris can live on in these cultural corners long after their creators have killed themselves. The real question is how to prevent anyone from wanting to walk into these dark alleys.