A student at Washington State University in Seattle has been arrested after detailing plans to copy Elliot Rodger, who killed seven and injured 13 on a campus in Isla Vista, California, last month.
Using the name 'Dark Foss' on YouTube and Google Plus, the 23-year-old would-be copycat left chilling comments like: 'I am the next Elliot Rodger. And guess what, I'll do the right thing this time. I'll make sure I only kill women.'
The posts started out by saying that Elliot, a men's rights activistwho recorded YouTube videos of him denouncing women for not sleeping with him, was right in his actions: 'Everything Elliot did is perfectly justified.'
But, according to the as-yet-unnamed copycat student, the one flaw in Elliot's killing spree was that he killed men. 'I'll make sure I kill only women, and many more than what Elliot accomplished,' the student said in later comments, according to US reports. Detectives used his IP address to locate the computer in his building, where FBI agents then arrested him.
The student is currently being held in jail on $150,000 ( £88,500) bail, and could face charges of felony harassment and cyber stalking.
It's a dark development in a case that's gripped the internet. In past cases of mass shootings, such as Columbine, the media was encouraged not to talk too much about them, and only do so in a sensitive way so that no copycats were encouraged. However, as the #yesallwomen hashtag sprung up on Twitter in response to Elliot Rodger's deep-seated misogyny and men's rights activists and pickup artist forums hailing him a 'hero' and replicating the YouTube videos in which Rodger detailed exactly how much he hated women, it's clear that the infamy surrounding massacres in an internet age have a whole new set of problems attached to them.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.