Murder is mimetic. The Zodiac Killer — who murdered at least five people in Northern California in the 1960s and sent cryptic messages to the news media — inspired copycats and established a dark cultural archetype: the serial killer who leaves taunting clues for his pursuers to try to decipher.

Michelle Goldberg

The New York Times

Opinion

School shooters, often emerging from irony-poisoned, meme-addled online subcultures, tend to perform for one another. The same day Charlie Kirk was assassinated, a 16-year-old apparent white supremacist opened fire at his Colorado high school; one of his TikToks included a picture of Natalie Rupnow, who killed two people at her Christian school in December.

Over the last 10 months or so, a frightening new pattern has emerged. First, in December, Lui

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