The media often calls mass shootings "senseless." Many true crime researchers see shootings as senseless wastes too, with no valid meaning beyond the shooter's (implicitly erroneous) justifications for their massacres.
What if it wasn't?
I know there is no delineated code of beliefs shared by each shooter and their manifestos vary in ideology--on the surface. Underneath each of them, there are propositions in common, and each of them hold certain truths to be self-evident.
1) That something has gone horribly wrong with the society around them;
2) That this brokenness is preventing them and people like them from reaching self-actualization, success, freedom or happiness;
3) That the problem can be witnessed and analyzed, by themselves and others, through its manifestations in their life experiences;
4) That the problem is irreconcilable and irresolvable without exacting a massive death toll.
Shooters might be unconsciously organizing around a meme, despite not knowing each other or having exact agreement on what the wrongness in the world is or where it comes from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Eric and Dylan tried to codify shootings more concretely, with the documents they left behind. To a point, they did. Not as well as they hoped--few of the shooters after followed their blueprint, but there were common ties to their beliefs, here and there. Many had Columbine-related spaces or discourses as a launching pad or starting point.
It existed before Columbine--"do not think we're trying to copy anyone," they said, "we had the idea before anyone else.". Yet those proverbial "fucks in Kentucky with camouflage and 22s," and Kip Kinkel...they somehow came up with the same idea, despite never having met or spoken to each other.
If it's a revolutionary movement organized around a meme--where did this meme come from, what is it under the surface, and to what extent is this meme correct?