Apparel bearing slogans tied to notorious mass shootings is being sold on several major online retail platforms, according to a report due later this week from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research organization that analyzes extremism and online threats. The group found statement shirts linked to such attacks available from at least half a dozen internet retailers. The shirts reference, among other episodes, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, where shooter Eric Harris wore a white tee printed with “Natural Selection” and Dylan Klebold wore a black shirt reading “Wrath.”
According to the ISD report, sellers offered “Wrath” and “Natural Selection” shirts modeled on the Columbine apparel on TikTok Shop, Redbubble, Temu, Etsy, AliExpress and Walmart. Shirts carrying the slogan “Humanity Is Overrated,” like the one worn by a teen gunman who killed nine people at his high school in Finland in 2007, appeared on AliExpress, Temu and the TikTok Shop. A TikTok US representative said discriminatory and offensive products are prohibited on TikTok Shop and will be removed. A Redbubble representative said the marketplace bans content that glorifies or trivializes violence and that it had removed listings for the “Wrath” and “Natural Selection” shirts flagged by Wired. The other retailers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Katherine Keneally, ISD’s senior director of threat analysis and prevention, said the clothing is promoted by a cohort known as the True Crime Community, or TCC. She described the TCC as a predominantly online fandom rooted in an obsession with mass killers, regardless of their motivations, and distinct from fans of podcasts and documentaries about unusual crimes. Keneally said the TCC’s fixation can extend to minutiae such as what a killer ate on the morning of an attack, while the shirts give wearers a way to signal support covertly, with most people outside the group unaware of the reference.
Keneally said attackers often try to mirror earlier attackers while adding their own variations, and that the shirts signal interest in and glorification of violence and can also indicate plans to carry out an attack. The ISD report cites a 13-year-old arrested in South Africa last month after allegedly stabbing a 6-year-old while wearing a “Wrath” shirt, and an 18-year-old accused of fatally shooting two people in a California library in June who was apprehended wearing a “Natural Selection” tee. The shirt analysis is part of a planned ISD series on warning signs of future attacks, intended to help parents, teachers and law enforcement, particularly because youth and minors make up much of the TCC.
Keneally said adolescents engage with this content openly across mainstream and fringe platforms rather than only in darker corners of the internet. Reviews on the shirts show admiration for killers: one five-star review of a “Wrath” shirt read “we love dylan klebold!”, another attached an anime-style cartoon of Harris in the “Natural Selection” shirt and said the buyer was hiding it from their mother, and a third said the shirt would be used to become more popular at school. Keneally acknowledged a fine line, noting that even the best-known examples are not offensive or illegal in themselves, and that context matters, citing the TCC’s affinity for the German industrial band KMFDM, a favorite of the Columbine shooters.
Keneally said a teen’s purchase of a flagrant TCC shirt does not by itself help them commit an attack or necessarily indicate planning, but adults should weigh it alongside other factors such as access to weapons or talk of violence, and that wearing the shirt at all suggests a likely need for mental health support. She said retailers could remove much of the apparel if they adequately enforced their existing safety policies, and that the clothes fuel a toxic subculture. “It shouldn’t be that easy to access,” she said.
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