Research

March 2026-Present

“Thankfully I Still Have My List”: Mass Violence Ideation, Meme Culture, and the Problem of Ironic Threat

with James Densley, Jillian Peterson, Jordan Estrada, & Kelvin Hsueh

Abstract: In May 2025 a viral Instagram Reel drew 760,176 likes and 559,000 shares. It showed a Grand Theft Auto VI character walking into a school, scored to “Pumped Up Kicks” and overlaid with Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. We treat the post and comments as a revelatory case of how a mainstream platform absorbs mass- violence fantasy, using a two-stage mixed-methods design. Stage 1 sorted 4,420 comments through keyword flagging and expert review, finding 683 with frame- ambiguous violent content and 19 flag-rows, from 17 commenters, carrying linguistic markers associated with leakage. We reopened that middle, coding it by register and target and crossing both against engagement. Stage 2 coded the public profiles of 1,261 commenters. Three findings organize the paper: 1) a normalization gradient running from ironic performance to sincere threat; 2) a validation ceiling: engagement followed a power law, five comments captured 96.7% of likes, and the platform’s metrics amplified the ironic and ideological registers while leaving first-person school- focused ideation unliked; the 19 marked rows drew one reply between them; 3) two transgressive populations rode the same meme. The platform ignored a personal, school-focused (autogenic) register and made an identity-targeting (ideological) register viral. The commenters whose language raised most concern showed no weapons or violence on their profiles and barely posted. Concern did not escalate over the post’s life, placing the mechanism in the meme rather than the thread. We read these patterns through cultural criminology and communication scholarship and draw implications for threat assessment and content moderation.

May 2024-Present

Reaching the Right: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study Examining Alt-Right Individuals’ Perceptions and Experiences of Counseling

with Nicole Hurless & Kelly Guidry

Abstract: Alt-right refers to a right-wing extremist ideology that has gained prominence on the Internet within the past fifteen years. Alt-right ideology has influenced some individuals to commit targeted violence and acts of racism, antisemitism, transphobia, and misogyny. Previous studies on alt-right-adjacent communities have prompted concerns about the mental health of these individuals as well as mental health clinicians’ competence in counseling these individuals effectively. Alt-right individuals may avoid seeking mental healthcare because they believe counselors may reject them, unilaterally attempt to change their views, or otherwise not be of help. Through the use of a mixed methods survey distributed on internet platforms with high concentrations of alt-right-aligned individuals, the authors sought to identify this group’s perceptions of counselors and the counseling process.