If you say that enough times, you summon Grafton Tanner

I think there are a few people (myself included) aiming to diagnose the same kind of thing, but central to a lot of it is action and performance for a perceived audience of peers.

Socially Performative Violent Extremism is precisely what I'm writing a paper about at the moment.

Acts of violence collapsed into the ongoing memeplex of references and symbology of a specific community.

To clarify; it is clear that Tyler Robinson is NOT an NVE shooter. However, I believe it is worth acknowledging we have now seperate and distinct examples where *being* part of an extremely online space creates a distinct treatment of offline violence.

... and action is flattened to belong in a loose collection of symbolic references.

I don't disagree with you, but you have to ask what connection is there to designate O9A beyond decontextualised memetics. My point is to stop looking at O9A as a marker to find drivers (or worse, an easy 'solve' for this) & instead look at participatpry dynamics shaped by online forms and culture.

I've just posted some expanded thoughts on this that echo exactly your point!

The groups using "neo nazi Satanist" symbology aren't learning star games or acausal time. Functionally, here it's a clubhouse symbol that's been memed to the point of empty reference to nothing but the *myth* of O9A; simultaneously shorthand and excuse for "just be evil, open to CSAM."

I'd argue this is a parody of O9A distilled through various online recombinations. Some of the language and symbols are there, but none of the meaning & certainly not the practice. These kids aren't learning chants or acausal time-grammar. It's an edgy clubhouse symbol now. It's been memed.

"This is my manifesto, which is posted for you. Take this and read. Reference it in remembrance of me."

This whole bit is a strategy of "semiotic cold reading" - a scattershot of references, in-jokes, esoterica without a centre. There are enough for various researchers & journalists to manufacture the centre, the point to this, that they would like. For others in the community; it's content.

I really ought to turn notifications back on here...
This does seem to grasp at the wider cultural/artistic negatives of ontological flatness. I'll have to roll it around in my head a bit first but it's a good thread. Some of the work on various post-postmodernisms might be useful too.

This sounds incredibly exciting. Loads of my favourite topics in there!

It never was...