You Can Buy T-Shirts Glorifying Mass Shootings Almost Anywhere Online

On the day he carried out the Columbine High School massacre, 18-year-old shooter Eric Harris wore a white T-shirt with the phrase “Natural Selection” printed on it in black lettering. His fellow assailant, 17-year-old Dylan Klebold, wore a black T-shirt with the word “Wrath” printed in red across the chest.

Ever since, this apparel has been closely linked with mass murder, part of an ever-growing mosaic of niche allusions to deadly attacks on schools, places of worship, government buildings, and social gathering spaces. While you might not think twice about a person wearing one of the shirts Harris and Klebold chose for their assault on their classmates, let alone recognize the reference, there’s an online community that revels in this aesthetic, using it as a means to valorize and motivate nihilistic violence.

According to a report publishing later this week from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research organization that analyzes extremism and online threats, statement shirts associated with such horrific acts are widely available from at least half a dozen internet retailers.

ISD found sellers peddling “Wrath” and “Natural Selection” tees modeled after the Columbine shirts on TikTok Shop, Redbubble, Temu, Etsy, AliExpress, and Walmart. Shirts with the slogan “Humanity Is Overrated”—like the one worn by a teen gunman who killed nine people at his high school in Finland in 2007—turned up on AliExpress, Temu, and the TikTok Shop, according to the report.

In a statement, a representative for TikTok US said: “Discriminatory and offensive products are prohibited from sale on TikTok Shop and will be removed.” A representative for Redbubble said that the marketplace prohibits “content that glorifies or trivializes violence” and that it had removed listings for “Wrath” and “Natural Selection” shirts flagged by WIRED.

None of the other retailers immediately replied to a request for comment.

Katherine Keneally, ISD’s senior director of threat analysis and prevention, tells WIRED that these clothes are promoted by a cohort known as the True Crime Community, or TCC. Not to be confused with fans of podcasts and documentaries about unsolved or unusual crimes, the TCC “is a predominantly online fandom that is rooted in an obsession with mass killers, regardless of the mass killer’s motivation,” Keneally says.

The TCC’s fascination with the lore around specific killers can lead to dissection of details as minor as what they had for breakfast on the morning of their attack, Keneally says. But the statement shirts offer a convenient way to covertly endorse such massacres, with most people outside the in-group none the wiser.