“I hate when others get more attention than me on the internet.”
So said Robert Crimo, the 21-year-old guy who shot and killed seven people while injuring 48 others at the 2022 Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
Crimo’s psychotic strategy to be a winner in today’s attention economy is hardly original. In “Our Narrative of Mass Shootings Is Killing Us,” (The Atlantic, June 2, 2022), Elliot Ackerman writes: There’s an “unmet desire on the part of many of these murderers to be at the center of a narrative, as opposed to on its periphery.”
“To be at the center of a narrative, as opposed to on its periphery.”
That’s obviously a sick excuse for killing innocent people, yet it does have a twisted internal logic. After all, who wants to be a supporting actor in a drama, or have no role at all, when you can become the star of the show — at gunpoint, if necessary. Pathological narrative narcissism, I call it, although the “pathological” has almost become normalized. Consider the ways we talk reverently about Story:
“Have a story-worthy week!” (The Moth’s old signoff)
“All of us are in some sort of theater that we create for ourselves.” — Werner Herzog
People are stories. Brands are stories. Court cases are stories. Narrative Is Everything.
Now, imagine hearing this drumbeat, week after week, year after year, but not being able to articulate a story of your own. If you haven’t inherited any master narratives from your family or community, then you have no existing story in which you might play a part. As a result, you have no narrative anchor. Your identity, unmoored, floats freely, which can be liberating; you can dream up and then inhabit a story all your own. On the other hand, you’re vulnerable to shifting winds that can push you to places you might prefer not to be.
The hectoring continues: What’s your story? C’mon, pal. What is it? Tell us. But Don’t Be Boring! I imagine this interrogation could induce some existential panic. A fear that if your life doesn’t have a compelling dramatic arc, then it — and you — are a failure. Given these high stakes, some story, any story, even a criminal story, might seem preferable to no story at all.
And what’s one simple recipe for an Instant Story? Pick up a gun and start shooting. Because then: The media horde descends to “bear witness.” Press conferences and candlelight vigils, think pieces and white papers, documentaries and feature films — they all revolve around You. The anonymity and angst, the chaos and demons that once haunted you — they all vanish. You have become the main character of a gripping drama with an international audience. A shooting star is born. A life of quiet desperation is quiet no more.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” P.T. Barnum once said. Or as Oscar Wilde put it: “There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Exactly right, says the next Robert Crimo.
Have a story-worthy week, says The Voice.