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Two school shootings, just weeks apart in late 2024 and early 2025, were united by a common thread: the violent gore website WatchPeopleDie. After creating accounts on the site in June 2023, over the course of 19 months, both Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow and Solomon Henderson increasingly engaged with extremist ideologies, including adopting white supremacist views. On December 16, 2024, Rupnow opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two and injuring six before taking her own life. On January 22, 2025, Henderson shot and killed one person and wounded another at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, before also dying by suicide.
WatchPeopleDie (WPD) is a forum where users can post and view real images and videos of violence, including murders, torture, rape, executions, beheadings, suicides, dismemberments, accidents and animal killings. WPD originated on Reddit, but was banned from the site in March 2019 after a user posted clips from white supremacist Brenton Tarrant’s livestreamed Christchurch shooting. Today, the forum is an independent site reminiscent of Reddit, with boards centered around specific types of violence and gore.
The ADL Center on Extremism (COE) analyzed WPD to examine the overlap between violent and extremist content. Researchers found that extremist material — such as white supremacist and antisemitic manifestos and videos of white supremacist and antisemitic mass murders — was readily accessible. As a result, WPD serves as a virtual space where users — young people in particular — can access extremist content alongside graphic violence, potentially desensitizing them and increasing the risk of ideologically motivated violence.
WatchPeopleDie’s White Supremacist Landscape
In many cases, white supremacist posts on WatchPeopleDie are met with downvotes and derision. However, COE has identified an interconnected network of dedicated users – including Natalie Rupnow and Solomon Henderson – with white supremacist profiles that venerate extremist killers and post extremist content. A COE investigation also found that extremist content is widely available on the platform, including videos of white supremacist and antisemitic mass killings, mass shooter manifestos and mass shooter “fan edit”-style videos.
White Supremacist Network
The interconnected network of accounts that post extremist content on WPD included Rupnow and Henderson, who both followed and were followed by other explicitly white supremacist accounts. Because both teens would commit their shootings roughly 19 months after joining the site, this shows that online engagement with extremist ideologies and depictions of heinous acts of violence can lead to on-the-ground attacks. Furthermore, this network acts as an echo-chamber that normalizes violence, gore and white supremacy.
During its investigation, COE identified some of the most active accounts in this network. What defines these users are their connections to other extremist accounts, and their ability to widely share extremist content to a large, interconnected web of like-minded individuals.
One of the most active users monitored by COE has a profile that features background and banner images of Brenton Tarrant and Tops supermarket attacker Payton Gendron. This user posted videos of several extremist mass shootings and mass shooter manifestos; they also praised Tarrant as the “patronized [sic] saint of terror mass shooter[s].” Their posts are not limited to their own profile, though. When someone made a forum post asking for images of Gendron’s guns, this user replied with detailed diagrams showing the symbols and phrases scrawled on them and what those symbols and phrases meant.
Paying homage to violent extremists is a popular theme within this network of WPD users. One person’s profile page includes images and videos of Gendron, Tarrant, Halle, Germany synagogue shooter Stephan Balliet, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, violent incel Elliot Rodger, white supremacist mass shooter Dylann Roof and several other violent extremists. Another active user even has a photo of Gendron as their profile picture, as well as memes of Gendron and other violent extremists and killers in their profile’s comment section. Also part of this network is a user whose accounts are dedicated to the Norwegian white supremacist shooter Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, even using versions of Breivik’s name as their username. Their profile also includes images of Dylann Roof and Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in an attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016. They name their favorite fellow WPD users on their profile page, one for being a “fan of the mosque shooting” – a reference to Brenton Tarrant – and another that pays homage to Mateen, and listing “atheists, f@gs, troons [a slur for trans people]” and “Reformed Jews” among their enemies. Notably, Natalie Rupnow followed this user.
Users in this network also shared content related to known white supremacist and antisemitic networks. Another “friend” of the Anders Breivik account’s profile picture is the mugshot of antisemitic streamer and Goyim Defense League (GDL) affiliate Paul Miller. Another user, who was mutually following Solomon Henderson, refers to themselves as a “Natsoc [national socialist] Accelerationist who likes… Mass [sic] shooters.” On their profile, the user lists Payton Gendron, white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ Bratislava attacker Juraj Krajčík and Poway, California, Chabad attacker John Earnest as their “inspiration.” With a background image showing violent extremist Attomwaffen Division members holding the group’s flag, the user’s profile page also includes a “recommended reading” section that refers viewers to accelerationist propaganda materials and handbooks from the Terrorgram Collective, as well as mass shooter manifestos.
Profile featuring images of extremist mass killers and members of Atomwaffen.
Other Violent Extremist Content
While reviewing WatchPeopleDie, COE found many videos of extremist mass killings, including those that were livestreamed as they occurred, such as the Christchurch mosque and Buffalo Tops supermarket attacks. The videos were originally streamed using bodycams, allowing viewers to witness the violence from the shooters’ perspective as they carried out their attacks, vicariously experiencing the bloodshed. The top post with footage of Tarrant’s attack has nearly 700,000 views, 5,000 comments and 5,500 upvotes alone. Another post, which reports to contain “EVERY SINGLE mass shooting caught on film,” boasts 70 mass killing videos, over 300,000 views and nearly 4,000 upvotes. The post also claims that “livestreamed POV [point-of-view] shootings seem to be a fan-favorite,” specifically citing Christchurch and Buffalo, as well as the 2019 Halle synagogue shooting.
COE was also able to locate extremist killers’ manifestos on WPD, including the writings of Anders Breivik, Brenton Tarrant, Payton Gendron, Patrick Crusius and several others. These manifestos are unedited, unannotated and accessible to all, allowing any user to consume this extremist content without providing context about the disinformation in them. The top comment on a post containing Breivik’s manifesto praises the killer’s white supremacist and Islamophobic writings, saying, “bros [sic] spittin [sic] facts.” Posts with manifestos also further allow WPD users to engage in fan-like behavior, even creating a fandom for specific shooters. For example, the top comment on a post with Gendron’s manifesto thanked another user whom they called “WPD’s #1 Payton Gendron fangirl” for sharing additional information about Gendron. In the replies, another user wrote, “Being a Gendron fangirl is amazing. I love him so much. You are now my favorite user on here. <3.”
Images of Dylann Roof (left), Payton Gendron (center) and Anders Breivik (right) used as profile pictures on WPD.
Fan edit-style videos and memes venerating mass shooters are also common on the site. These generally consist of clips from attacks and images of killers using stylized filters and text, set to music that glorifies the shooters and their actions. Solomon Henderson posted one such edit depicting Payton Gendron as a saint holding his manifesto in place of a Bible. The video shows Gendron’s attack and others with the text, “kill them all.” Another fan edit, posted by a user Solomon Henderson followed, shows Brenton Tarrant’s manifesto before playing footage of his shooting, interspliced with memes and an overlay of the popular first-person shooter Call of Duty’s “kill streak” text. Another Tarrant edit, with 160 upvotes, exclaims, “kill all the fucking muslims [sic]!”
Screenshot from a fan-edit video containing footage of Tarrant’s shooting.
A user whose username is a tribute to Tarrant posted an edit glorifying a violent Russian white supremacist group with the caption “kewl as fuck,” and two images of Adolf Hitler. Another user posted a fan edit of Dylann Roof in response to a post containing a video of his attack. This user’s profile complains that “THE SHALOM OFFICERS HAVE GOT TO ME,” and has a banner with photographs of several extremist and non-extremist killers, as well as a screenshot from Tarrant’s livestream and an image of Gendron’s assault rifle. Members of the shooter fandom will also sometimes use fan edits to express romantic or physical attraction to shooters, including explicit sexual desire. In one case, the user DylannRoofs_Cumslut (whose signature reads, “I [heart emoji] Dylann Roof”) replied to a Dylann Roof edit with the comment, “He’s so hot.” In an attempt to minimize these killers’ hateful attacks, users will also create and share drawings depicting shooters like Tarrant, Gendron and Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza in “cute” art styles.
WPD profile with a banner image with cartoon depictions of Brenton Tarrant.