TAIWANESE ANIMATORS: The night before the Umpqua Community College shooting near Rosenburg, Oregon, a post was made on 4chan warning others of malicious intent. Other anonymous users called his bluff, and a few told him to not to do it, but some jokingly posted, “beta uprising.” The term “beta uprising” is a joke referring to “beta males” who may feel jaded by society and unwanted by the opposite sex. The jokesters purport that beta males may resort to violent actions in their futile search for significance. Therefore, the term is often associated with mass murderers. The random 4chan boards “/r9k/” and “/b/” have a reputation for hating women and “normies,” defined by the the Urban Dictionary as the 97 percent of people without a mental illness. However, 4chan remains a rather safe place for the First Amendment to be exercised, and if a board gets banned there, there are other places anonymous posters can go. But let’s be real, after Thursday’s tragedy, the beta uprising joke has lost its charm. MORE
URBAN DICTIONARY: typically found in 4chan‘s /b/ random folder a /b/tard is
1. an elite force of the internet
2. a drop in the all-crushing sea that is anonymous
3. male, racist, virgin, white, 18+ years old, with a cock the size of longcat MORE
NOISEY: Anthony Fantano is a music vlogger who posts video reviews of albums under the moniker The Needle Drop. […] however you feel about him, please know that he is NOT the armed gunman responsible for the tragic mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon yesterday. SBS News, the Australia-based news organization, made this error yesterday in their television reporting on the shooting, accidentally using a photo of Fantano in their broadcast, instead of Chris Harper Mercer, the gunman who was killed in a firefight with police. MORE
CNN: The gunman, while reloading his handgun, ordered the students to stand up and asked if they were Christians, Boylan told her family. “And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,'” Boylan’s father, Stacy, told CNN, relaying her account. “And then he shot and killed them.” Boylan, 18, was hit in the back by a bullet that traveled down her spine. While she lay bleeding on the floor, the gunman called out to her, “Hey you, blond woman,” her mother said. She played dead — and survived. Stacy Boylan also said the shooter delivered “a box” to someone during the shooting. He said his daughter told him the man “gave somebody a box, somebody who lived, and said, ‘You gotta deliver this.’ Somebody has a box. I don’t know what that’s about.” MORE
JEZEBEL: Mercer’s mother, Laurel Harper, is described as “fiercely protective” of him. The two previously lived in Torrance, California, where neighbors remembered him as an anxious, shy, socially maladjusted teenager, whose mother once went door to door campaigning to get rid of roaches in the apartment complex, which she said were bothering her son. A neighbor recalls her saying, “‘My son is dealing with some mental issues, and the roaches are really irritating him.” By the time the pair arrived in Roseburg, neighbors there described Mercer more or less, as an asshole. […] The Times also found Mercer’s social media profiles showed an obsession with the IRA. A dormant-looking dating profile under the name “IronCross45” is still up for Mercer on a website called Spiritual Passions; he describes himself as a conservative introvert Republican, who doesn’t like organized religion and loves industrial music. MORE
DAILY BEAST: Forget the 26-year-old zero who murdered 10 innocents at Umpqua Community College on Thursday morning. The one to remember is 30-year-old Chris Mintz, the student and Army vet who was shot at least five times while charging straight at the gunman in an effort to save others. Mintz did so on the sixth birthday of his son, Tyrik. “It’s my son’s birthday, it’s my son’s birthday,” he was heard saying as he lay wounded. When word of Mintz’s heroism reached his kin in his native North Carolina, his cousin Derek Bourgeois was hardly surprised. “It sounds like something he would do,” Bourgeois said. MORE
TMZ:Chris Mintz-Plasse, aka McLovin from “Superbad” … is not the Chris Mintz who was shot 7 times Thursday while trying to stop the Oregon community college shooter. Chris Mintz-Plasse, the actor, took to social media to address the case of mistaken identity. The Oregon Chris Mintz is an army vet who remained in the hospital Friday recovering from his gunshot wounds and two broken legs. Chris, the actor, says he’s got nothing but love for Chris, the hero … and has since re-routed all the well-deserved fan fare toward the correct Twitter and Facebook pages. MORE
CHARLIE PIERCE, ESQUIRE: I’ve been doing the politics blog only since the fall of 2011. This I think is the fourth [mass murder by a lone gunman] I had to write about. I was struck by the last bit by the president, where he talked about other things where you react to. The fact remains we only allow ourselves two political parties in this country. And one of our political parties is completely insane. [emphasis added] It’s the party that when we have mine disasters, blocks mine regulations. It’s the party that says when we want to fix our roads, you can’t have an infrastructure bill. You can’t raise the gas tax. It’s the party that when some people have floods, like New Jersey, marks Chris Christie lousy because he accepted help from the federal government. And we have the same party who has somewhere between three and 600 people running for president, none of whom will do anything about the problem of mass shootings in America. MORE