Defeating the Duck Test
What do we do when frameworks for identifying extremism fall short?
PROSECUTORS charged Trinity Shockley, 18, for allegedly plotting a Valentine’s Day shooting at their high school in Mooresville, Indiana, last week. The teenager faces conspiracy to commit murder and two terrorism-related charges.
Note: Shockley is transgender and used other names, including Dex and Jamie, but was charged as Trinity. It is unclear what pronouns Shockley used, so this article uses gender-neutral ones (they/them).
According to an affidavit, investigators took interest in Shockley while investigating messages about a shooting plot they allegedly sent on Discord, a social media platform. Notes from a police interview included in the document said Shockley admitted sending the messages and planning an attack but claimed they changed their mind.
Police believe Shockley thought a shooting would prove their devotion to Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who shot and killed 17 people during the 2018 Parkland school shooting. A school counselor who met with Shockley last week told investigators the student confessed they were “sexually attracted” to Cruz and dreamt of having “multiple children” with him.
Officers who searched Shockley’s home, where they lived with their father, found photos of Cruz and other mass murderers decorating the teenager’s bedroom walls and personal items. White supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof was among the pictured killers. Notebooks in a backpack in Shockley’s room contained swastikas and a remark denigrating “useless” minorities. Some notebook entries quoted in the affidavit praised mass shooter Elliot Rodger using language identical to the violent misogynist “incels” who idolize him. Police reportedly found magazines for an AR-15 rifle, a box of bullets, and a soft armor vest.
Investigators have not suggested that Shockley was motivated by political beliefs, despite what officers reported finding in their bedroom. Evidence in the affidavit instead portrayed Shockley as someone who was categorically obsessed with mass murderers (a group that happens to contain many extremists) and whose violent urges stemmed from struggles with mental health, trauma, and anger.
Swastikas be damned, Shockley defeated the Duck Test.
II. What the Duck?
Contestants on the cooking competition show “Is It Cake?” decorate desserts with so much precision that they’re able to fool people into believing that they’re something else. At the end of each round, contestants display their creations next to the items they’re impersonating and hope celebrity judges will incorrectly guess theirs is real.
It’s impressive how often they succeed. Each time the show’s host, Mikey Day, slices into an object to reveal it’s a cake, the judges are dumbstruck. With fondant icing and cake, contestants make a mockery of the Duck Test:
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
The Duck Test is a classic example of abductive reasoning, which is so integral to human cognition that we often do it unconsciously. Duck Test results are correct enough, often enough, that we depend on them for survival. When cakes are mistaken for beach balls, we’re dismayed; the limits of our daily Duck Tests are laid bare.
Traditional frameworks for identifying extremism are, at their most basic levels, Duck Tests. Subject-matter experts observe individuals and groups of interest, then judge whether they match definitions and concepts. As those models exist today, what police found in Shockley’s room – the swastikas, notebook entries, and photos of a white supremacist killer – are “quacks” of extremism.
But considering the broader picture the affidavit paints, calling Shockley an extremist feels like a stretch, or even misleading. Extremist content clearly resonated with the teenager on some level, but nothing in the affidavit suggested that Shockley admired killers for their specific political beliefs.
If we think the swastikas in the notebooks police found in Shockley’s room aren’t useful for understanding what happened in their case, we also have to explain why we think some Duck Tests results are worth tossing out and most others aren’t. It raises an existential question: Why trust a model that fails?
In recent years, extremism experts have debated how to deal with failed Duck Tests. Traditional methods of analysis demand “yes” or “no” answers, and a situation like Shockley’s is less clear. Some have tried to solve the puzzle with new terms. A “salad bar” analogy dominated counterterrorism discussions for years and even appeared in remarks former FBI Director Christopher Wray made to Congress in 2020:
I think trying to put a lot of these [threats] into nice, neat, clean buckets is a bit of a challenge because one of the things that we see more and more in the counterterrorism space is people who assemble together in some kind of mish-mash, a bunch of different ideologies. We sometimes refer to it as almost like a ‘salad bar of ideologies,’ a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and what they are really about is the violence.
However accurate anyone might think Wray’s explanation was, trying to fix a defeated Duck Test by forging a new “bucket” is bound to confuse, and even offend, most people. It might have utility in a closed-door meeting about preventing the next shooting, but the public will be appalled by those who say “well, actually” to their broken hearts.
What could a killer’s sincerity possibly matter to communities burying their murdered children?
Let’s consider another approach.
III. Beyond The Flock
Teenagers who allegedly planned or attempted mass shootings in Tennessee and Wisconsin — and now Indiana — shared a commonality: they were plugged into an online subculture that worships mass murderers.
The people in these communities share graphic material – death, gore, hate, and abuse – like any other form of entertainment and horrify each other on purpose. They treat violent criminals like movie stars and count corpses like high scores on an arcade game.
That’s nothing new. What makes this subculture different from the pre-social media shock sites that traded in similar material is not the content – it’s the community formed around it.
Many of the cliques in this subculture are purposefully grotesque; others hide their venom behind false fronts or in-group speak so complex its own members liken it to a schizophrenic episode. Shockley appears to have made friends in one of the many “true crime community” groups, where people who idolize mass murderers disingenuously claim to be “researching” their crimes.
The outward images of groups vary, depending on what kinds of people participate and the killers they admire most. But no matter how they present themselves, they all share a love for violence.
The best research about this subculture explores how its groups are organizing their communities and encouraging their members to commit violent acts. Research that tries to dissect the content is less helpful. It’s important what these groups are doing, not what they’re saying.
Extremist ideologies have undoubtedly shaped this death-obsessed subculture, even when they haven’t served as its north star. Supremacist movements can appeal to it for reasons unrelated to the nuances of their politics. Many racist mass murderers leave behind a feast of offensive materials for people in these communities to devour, for example. The content isn’t completely irrelevant, but it fuels the engine of more impactful things: bonding experiences and shared identities.
The Duck Tests for identifying extremism are imprecise tools for understanding the dynamics of this subculture, and I’m skeptical that recalibrating them will get us any closer to preventing violence.
As more teenagers come of age with high-speed portals to the web at their disposal and an internet that has reorganized around social media platforms, it’s easier than ever for them to form friendships and lose themselves in these communities.
When I visited shock sites as a teenager, drawn by my adolescent curiosity, I did so with a dial-up connection on the “family computer.” At a point, I had to disconnect from these spaces and process their nightmarish materials on my own. Unsurprisingly, I found them repulsive.
I didn’t hang around.
Notes:
Articles that appear here contain my personal opinions. They often relate to the work I do in my day job, but my employer has no input on what I say here.
Michael E. Hayden, who co-hosts the “Posting Through It” podcast with me, helped me think through a few different versions of this article. He’s a great writer and brilliant mind, and you should read his blog: Extreme Measures.
I put a lot of work into these articles and write them in my personal time. If you found value in this essay, I hope you’ll consider signing up for the email list to receive others I write in the future. It costs nothing. You’ll also be first hear about new podcast episodes.
Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing their mind from
The paint on a sign
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time
Here is a valid duck test; the cause is the online gaming industry and the whole US entertainment industry (including mainstream media), all rife with glorification of gratuitous violence and gore.