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The first thing people usually ask after someone commits an act of violence is “why?” But what if it was just violence for violence’s sake?
Researchers Luke Barnes and Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat with the New York University (NYU) Center for Business and Human Rights dug into this phenomenon, dubbed nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), in a recent report. The people who fall into this category demonstrate an obsession with violence and have no clear adherence to any ideology or political party. Most are young, male, and heavily motivated by achieving notoriety in their chosen online community, be it Discord, Telegram, or WhatsApp. They may be sympathetic to certain causes or issues, but are mostly lone wolves, Barnes says.
“There hasn’t been any real taxonomy of [NVEs] up until about March 2025, when that term started being used publicly…in court documents by the FBI,” says Barnes. “That’s important because it shows an attempt by federal law enforcement to kind of better quantify a threat.”
In September, FBI Director Kash Patel reported that the US has “1,700 domestic terrorism investigations, a large chunk of which are nihilistic violent extremism (NVE), those who engage in violent acts motivated by a deep hatred of society.”
Notable examples include the deadly school shootings this year at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis and Evergreen High School in Colorado. The shooters—who are 23 and 16 years old, respectively—participated in what the researchers call NVE-aligned communities, where members glorify violence and may try to commit certain acts to impress each other and boost their status within the group.
“September is our month,” one person wrote on Tumblr, shown below. “1. Charlie Kirk died, 2. There was a high school shooting in Colorado, 3. Another attack too.” The author also mentions “and Dylan’s bday is tomorrow.” They are likely referring to Dylann Roof, who killed nine in a mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina in 2015. Idolization of previous high-profile shooters is another key hallmark of NVE communities.
Examples of NVE posts (Credit: NYU report)
The leader of a group known as 764 was charged last week with running a child exploitation ring. Members chatted on Discord and Telegram, where they challenged each other to find vulnerable children on social media and in games like Minecraft and Roblox. They then encouraged the kids to commit acts of self-harm and endure sexual abuse, Wired reports.
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When one member successfully grooms a young person to do this, it proves to the other members of 764 that they are “about that life, so to speak, so they can level up and have more integration into the community,” Barnes says.
This is not a US-only problem; there are documented NVE network cases in Eastern Europe, Sweden, and Belgium. In some instances, young people committed random acts of violence, such as attacking someone on the street, and posting a video of it in their online groups.
Even if they go to prison, it’s worth it to them. “The prospect of achieving virality is so enticing for many young people, and the way to do that is [for the group to] gamify it so members can level up,” says Rosenblat. “It’s not the tech platform’s fault, but having strong encryption and privacy can facilitate the process by creating a feeling of exclusivity.”
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Perhaps most frightening for parents is that kids who join these communities move through “the radicalization pipeline very, very quickly” with no offline signals, Barnes says. This makes NVE grooming difficult to track and prevent.
Although it’s too early to tell if Tyler Robinson, the alleged Charlie Kirk shooter, falls into the NVE bucket, he exhibited certain telltale behaviors. He was heavily involved in a Discord channel, where he reportedly confessed to the crime before he was arrested. He also exhibited a “desire for virality evidenced by his inscriptions on the ammunition,” the report says, but had an ambiguous connection to organized politics.
Tyler Robinson Discord chat (Credit: NYU report)
The troubling trend may be an extension of the rise of lone wolf killers in the 2010s, such as Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in California in 2014 and became an “incel hero,” as the BBC put it. But in Rodger’s case, there was “some attempt at a coherent ideology,” Barnes says, unlike NVEs today, who are more focused on violence as a performative act. Committing an attack to mimic Rodger could be an NVE goal in itself, for example.
The study and understanding of NVEs is still evolving, especially with the FBI designating it as an official extremist threat only this year. One thing that’s clear to the NYU researchers is that “technology facilitates new types of extremism where it is in everyone’s interest to look across the partisan divide and try to address this problem,” Barnes says.
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As a news and features writer at PCMag, I cover the biggest tech trends that shape the way we live and work. I specialize in on-the-ground reporting, uncovering stories from the people who are at the center of change—whether that’s the CEO of a high-valued startup or an everyday person taking on Big Tech. I also cover daily tech news and breaking stories, contextualizing them so you get the full picture.
I came to journalism from a previous career working in Big Tech on the West Coast. That experience gave me an up-close view of how software works and how business strategies shift over time. Now that I have my master’s in journalism from Northwestern University, I couple my insider knowledge and reporting chops to help answer the big question: Where is this all going?
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