Scrolling through the feed on TikTok, users encounter short bursts of content that follow a familiar format. Images and video clips tick by in compilations made using the platform’s in-application editing tools. In one clip, a man dressed in all black and wearing a helmet dances in front of a building. Next to his head, the number “-51” floats as pop-electronic music plays.
The dancer is a facsimile of Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist responsible for the 2019 massacre at two New Zealand mosques (pictured above). The number is emblematic of the 51 people Tarrant murdered in cold blood. This use of a dancing perpetrator of horrific crimes appears repeatedly across different accounts. Similar posts show other white supremacist shooters like Payton Gendron, who killed 10 people and injured three others at a Buffalo, New York supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood on May 14, 2022. Another uses Dylann Roof, who attacked a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015, killing nine people. Dozens of well-known and obscure attackers from all over the world are featured this way, gyrating and stripped of the horror they inflicted on others.
Far from featuring only white supremacist killers, anyone responsible for a notable mass casualty attack can be added to the list of those celebrated by the True Crime Community (TCC). The TCC is an online fandom that glorifies mass killers, and in the most extreme cases, encourages others to carry out attacks of their own—with deadly consequence.
Recent actions taken by the social media company Tumblr, whose platform has long been a popular gathering place for the TCC, included removing accounts and banning certain hashtags related to the community. Since its ability to operate on the platform was curtailed, there has been a surge of TCC content appearing on TikTok, which continues to provide a mainstream home for the content to be created, shared, and spread.
Understanding the TCC
The True Crime Community is not a group, but a fandom made up of individuals engaged with podcasts, articles, and web forums. It has a significant presence on every major social media platform including TikTok, Reddit, and X. The TCC is considered to include consumers of mainstream and widely popular true crime content, but the macabre interest in murders and violent crime does not rise to the level of an extremist subculture on its own. As such, the TCC can be understood as existing in several layers or tiers of participation.
The mainstream or surface-level tier is a common interest typically focused on well-known criminal cases. This online content appears in blogs, podcasts, web forums, social media, and documentaries with massive audiences. Some of these spaces collect and share documents and information related to investigations and court cases. It is mostly benign and driven by common interest.
Another tier of involvement emerges when participants become fascinated and begin to admire the perpetrators of mass casualty attacks. The line between investigation and glorification becomes blurred as perpetrators are recast as misunderstood and tragic figures pushed into action by an unjust world. In some cases, perpetrators can become the focus of a romantic interest. This layer is often the most active and visible part of the TCC, as users there generate a considerable amount of content focused on the attackers. This content is not generally graphic and often does not rise to the threshold of content moderation efforts by platforms. On Tumblr, content was commonly fan art or clips of fictionalized stories written about perpetrators. Fan images are often cartoonish representations of mass murderers and are not explicitly violent. Without context, it can be hard to understand what and who is being represented.
Two images from the same video that show fan art versions of the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque attacks Brenton Tarrant (left) and the 2011 Oslo, Norway, anti-Muslim, mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Both are holding copies of their manifestos. (Source: TikTok).
On TikTok, like with the dancing Tarrant video, TCC content takes the form of video edits using archival images or footage of perpetrators. With the proliferation of editing tools, face swapping, and AI-generated videos, all available for use on mobile devices, there is a massive and seemingly endless supply of new content. Some of these videos are bizarre and satirical, like an AI-generated video of Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of an attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 20 children and six adults in 2012, eating pizza with infamous child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In another more disturbing video made by a different account, Lanza wears a neon safety vest and escorts children out of school. This video, captioned “big brother Adam saves 28 kids,” has been liked more than 23,000 times, has over 800 comments, and over 5,000 shares.
Two AI-generated videos shared by separate accounts on TikTok with recreations of Adam Lanza, the attacker at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. (Source: TikTok).
In other posts, account holders emulate the clothing or style of perpetrators, sometimes dressing in the same way as they did during the attack. Other posts recreate images posted by the perpetrators. This level of involvement transcends the mainstream fandom through its focus on the glorification of perpetrators, transforming them into figures worthy of emulation.
Moving deeper into the TCC, the expression of support for the violence, rather than finding justification for the behavior, becomes apparent and overt. There is also significant overlap with extremist spaces, as this is where some of the most extremist violent content can be found.
So-called “gore” content, graphic real-life depictions of extreme mutilation and death, circulates heavily in these spaces, often through website and forums dedicated to hosting the material.
The final level of involvement is made up of the smallest, but most radical members of the TCC, those who progress from ideation and encouragement into carrying out acts of violence. Ideology might be a considerable factor for the individual, though often the target has little to do with advancing a political goal. Violent acts linked to the TCC have been carried out by both ideologically driven individuals, such as neo-Nazis or white supremacists, and by those without a coherent, singular ideology. The performance for the rest of the TCC audience is often the most motivating factor.
Attacks and Plots
The online culture surrounding the TCC has increasingly intersected with real-world violence. There has been little study of the TCC’s relationship to extremism, but it has nonetheless been connected to numerous attacks over the past two years. In total, there were a minimum of 22 TCC-linked attacks and plots that took place between 2024-2026. This includes a November 7, 2025 bombing attack by 17-year-old Muhammad Nazriel Fadhel Hidayat on his school SMAN 72 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Hidayat detonated several homemade explosives during afternoon prayers, injuring a reported 96 individuals, with 29 being hospitalized, according to the Jakarta Metropolitan Police.
In posts shared on a TikTok account linked to Hidayat, the hashtags “teeceecee” and “TCC” appear in the caption. Other notable recent attacks or plots with links to the TCC in the U.S. have included an alleged plan by 17-year-old Alexis Pickett to carry out a shooting at her Indiana school in May 2026 with another individual she met online. Pickett recorded a detailed walk through of the school and sent it to their co-accused. The pair had begun to acquire firearms. An affidavit filed in court by a detective with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department included online conversations alleged to be Pickett discussing plans for an attack as well as the TCC.
On September 10, 2025, 16-year-old Desmond Holly walked into his high school with a gun. Firing a revolver through the halls of Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, the shooting ended with two students injured and Holly taking his own life.
An examination of Holly’s social media history by Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) revealed a boy drawn into extremist subcultures. He posted antisemitic conspiracy theories, shared images of weapons and gear, and engaged with online communities trading in gore and violent propaganda. Among his fixations was the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Holly went as far as recreating a t-shirt reading “wrath” in red painted letters just like one worn by one of the Columbine perpetrators.
On the gore-dedicated website Watch People Die (WPD), a since-banned account using the same unique screen name as Holly posted comments seven times since the account was created on Dec. 26, 2024. On a WPD post about a 2017 attack on a Quebec City mosque, where another user mocked the perpetrator, Alexandre Bissonnette, for killing “only six” people, the account responded in May 2025, “Like you could do any better.”
Members of the TCC will often recreate aspects of mass casualty attacks. This includes a range of references, inside jokes, and memes that mass shooters have managed to inject into the niche culture. One of the most prominent is a picture of boots and the “OK” hand sign taken in a bathroom. In posts on a TikTok account connected to Hidayat, which were shared the day before the Jakarta attack, a picture shows a hand making the “OK” sign and the photographer’s boots. This is an homage to several past killers, who posted similar images before carrying out their own school shootings. Natalie Rupnow, who killed two people and herself at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, and Solomon Henderson, who killed one person and himself at Nashville, Tennessee’s Antioch High School, both made similar posts.
The OK image is often recreated on social media, including on TikTok, where a post with the hand sign, boots, or a combination of both can signal an affiliation with the TCC. Comments sections on these posts similarly will include people responding with their own version of the image.
Multiple posts found on TikTok by accounts that self-identify as part of the True Crime Community. (Source: TikTok).
These symbols are echoes of past attacks. Certain individual perpetrators, and their signifiers, are referenced more frequently or viewed as more significant or “successful” than other killers by the TCC. Aspects of some crimes are thus more commonly recreated.
Striving for remembrance is a common goal of TCC-connected attackers, who seek to have their memory added to the lineage of the killers worshiped and lauded by the community. Carrying out an attack is not enough to achieve this goal. Robin Westman, who attacked the Annunciation Church and School in Minnesota on August 27, 2025, killing two children and injuring 21 other people before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, has largely failed to achieve any status among the TCC.
TCC Lives On Social Media
Diffuse and decentralized digital networks can be difficult to map and understand, but online communities that worship at the altar of mass killers have existed online for years. Observed during the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, obsessive fandoms emerged poring over the perpetrators, their motivations, and the writing and videos recorded before the attack. Losing Tumblr, a place where the “Columbiner” precursor to the TCC was prominent, is a blow to the TCC community, as it was a long-time organizing and meeting point for them. TCC Tumblr pages served as both archives for the fan art and means of interacting and connecting with content and individuals who were using the same hashtags.
A resilient network, there are few places the TCC does not have a home online. TCC content is easily accessible on social media platforms like BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X. This is often short-form content like the stylized video edits common to TikTok. The TCC also makes use of small and private chat features available on applications like Discord and Telegram.
There are also numerous dedicated websites that host case files, images, videos, and more where long-form materials and information are available, often including manifestos and long discussion threads between different participants.
Illustrating some of the difficulty of moderation, Tumblr’s changes have not completely eliminated the TCC on its platform. But while some users have tried to hold onto their place on Tumblr, creating new hashtags in an attempt to preserve their community, many have migrated elsewhere. The tags are often long and often not intuitive. The most recent shift to TikTok appears to be a practical one, as obvious and clear hashtags and searches can find hundreds of results of TCC content. The age of TCC participants often skews low, between 13 to 18, and as one of the most popular platforms among youth, TikTok is an obvious and easily accessible choice.
TikTok’s Community Guidelines ban both depictions of graphic content, as well as the “encouragement or glorification of violence” from the platform. While some content related to the TCC may straddle the line between interest and glorification, much of it is clearly violates this policy and includes edited attack footage.
