UPDATE: The shooter has been identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer. Rumors spread earlier in the day that the shooter was a a regular 4channer and active Youtuber known as “the eggman.” Obviously they were wrong.

This is beyond fucked up. In this archived thread from 4chan’s /r9k/ board, the apparent shooter at Umpqua Community College told fellow channers yesterday of his plans to shoot up a school today. He didn’t specify which school, mentioning only that it was in the “northwest.” /r9k/ is a board heavily populated by so-called “incels,” and the media is reporting that the apparent shooter regularly posted bitter complaints about his lack of success with women,

UPDATE 2: There is a lot of confusing and contradictory information out there, and the IDing of the killer has actually raised more questions than it’s resolved. An apparent Myspace page for Harper-Mercer suggests that he was obsessed both with guns and with the IRA.

There have also been reports that he was targeting Christians. According to the New York Post, a “woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded” reported that

“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian,” she wrote. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.

So was he — as an apparent supporter of the IRA — targeting Protestants? The Daiy Beast, for its part, says the shooter “hated religion.” Chuck C. Johnson of GotNews says he’s “confirmed” that the shooter was a Muslim.

Is the Myspace page really his? Is the report from the alleged granddaughter bullshit? Was the 4chan posting yesterday actually from him, or a comment from a troll that just happened to have been posted the day before a school shooting in the northwest?

I don’t know. But I still recommend that you read the rest of this post, if only to see the comments from the other 4channers.

Screenshots below:

Here’s his first comment warning fellow channers not to go to school today if they live in the northwest.

He then said he’d post again shortly before he started to shoot. (I don’t know if he did.)

Because 4chan is a fucking cesspool, other channers offered him advice:

Another anon suggested that indiscriminate killing wasn’t the solution, seeming to imply that more targeted killing was?

Others put forth their ideas of what sorts of people might be considered appropriate targets:

More encouragement. Note the reference to Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara “incel” killer.

A few others urged the OP to NOT carry out his plans.

After reports of the shooting hit the news, anons reacted with amazement:

Amazement and enthusiasm:

In case you’re wondering, “kek” is the equivalent of “lol.”

More excitement:

There’s much more of this in the thread.

Naturally, someone claims that the shooting could have been averted if only the shooter could have found a girlfriend.

Yes that’s right: he thinks the shooter was himself a victim, presumably of the entire female gender.

There’s a lot more in the thread but honestly I can’t stomach it right now.

Note: This post has been updated numerous times.

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