BlogSpot Graveyard: No Bad Memes

First post: Monday, August 2, 2010

Last post: Sunday, December 16, 2012

    Yet another interest of mine is internet archaeology. It started out as simply searching for old and/or rare videos on YouTube and has since evolved into digging up dead Blogger blogs. I'm going to use this series to spotlight these dead blogs. For me to consider a blog dead it must not have any posts within one calendar year and large gaps between posting must not be a regular occurrence.

    First up is a blog that has gained a little bit of infamy on the internet lately for allegedly being owned by Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

    I had first heard of No Bad Memes on the subreddit r/masskillers in the comments on a different post about Adam Lanza on his recently discovered and since terminated YouTube channel CulturalPhilistine. The comments speculated that No Bad Memes was Lanza and a cursory glance supports this. Not only is the blog filled with longwinded, pseudo-intellectual ramblings about subjects Lanza was known to be obsessed with such as anti-natalism and chimp society but the last two posts made on December 15th and December 16th, 2012 talk about guns and a generic mention of the Sandy Hook shooting (but doesn't mention it by name, only mentioning Connecticut). In addition, any Blogger user knows that posts can be scheduled to publish at a predetermined time meaning it is entirely possible that Lanza scheduled these two posts as a 'parting gift' for society. It would be a mighty large coincidence that a blogger sharing similar views as Lanza would cease posting within days of Lanza killing himself.

    However upon closer inspection it appears the blog is not connected to Lanza. For example the blog author, Leaving Society, claims across several posts to be an "IT guy" with "several college degrees". Lanza was a 20-year old jobless, college dropout living with his mother. Perhaps more convincing is that Leaving Society makes several comments well after Lanza's demise. As far as I know it is not possible to schedule comments:

• January 26, 2013 at 8:31 PM
  
• January 26, 2013 at 7:38 PM
  
• June 16, 2013 at 10:28 AM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 11:02 PM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 10:34 PM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 9:44 PM
  
• January 29, 2013 at 10:43 PM
• January 29, 2013 at 10:09 PM
  
• June 16, 2013 at 10:17 AM
  
• June 16, 2013 at 10:21 AM
  

    We can see that at least three comments were made as late as June 2013, some seven months after Lanza died. My conclusion is that No Bad Memes was not owned by Adam Lanza, it merely shared his beliefs.

    An interesting note, however, is that Lanza had a YouTube channel named 'fuckcomments' and that at least half of the comments on No Bad Memes are made by anonymous trolls mocking the blog. I also found it a little bit humorous that No Bad Memes/Leaving Society was at least aware of the existence of 4chan all the way back in November 2011.