On May 15th, 36-year-old Dustin Rudd of Ridgeland, Wisconsin, allegedly armed himself with a loaded .30-06 rifle, attached an American flag to a pole, livestreamed his actions online, and walked toward Prairie Farm School while threatening to murder children.
Investigators say he talked about shooting as many kids as he could before taking hostages and eventually killing himself in what he described as a “blaze of glory.” Police arrested him near the school driveway before he could make it onto school grounds. If they had been even a little later, this story could have made national headlines instead of being reported nearly two weeks later only in local media.
Authorities say Rudd had been making anti-government statements online and talking about the CIA spying on him and his family. They also said he had been posting photos of guns on social media before the incident. He later admitted to making the threats, although he claimed he knew police would stop him before anyone got hurt.
He also reportedly told investigators that he made the threats to “get people to realize that they are eating kids,” whatever the hell that means.
I found what I believe is a Facebook page that belongs to Rudd, and the media reporting is pretty spot-on. His May 15th posting spree alone reads like somebody whose brain has been completely consumed by paranoia and internet conspiracy culture. There are frantic, disjointed posts stacked on top of each other so that even Trump would be jealous of the manic posting frequency.
A few days before the 15th, Rudd posted a stereotypical truck video where he’s wearing wraparound sunglasses while rambling about online poker, missed opportunities, strategies, and a bunch of other disconnected trains of thought that probably only make sense in his own head.
The page gives off the vibe of somebody who has disappeared down every conspiracy rabbit hole the internet has to offer. More importantly, though, it also looks like somebody who is extremely mentally ill. Those are not always the same thing.
Plenty of conspiracy theorists are just gullible or politically angry. This feels way different. Rudd appears to genuinely believe he is being “gang stalked,” which is a conspiracy theory tied closely to what are known online as “targeted individuals.” I’m almost afraid to even bring that up because whenever I mention gang stalking, the ‘targeted individuals’ inevitably show up to try and convince me how real it is.
Anyway, the targeted individual movement is one of the darker corners of the modern internet. People who identify as targeted individuals believe they are being secretly monitored, harassed, followed, psychologically manipulated, or attacked by coordinated groups of people.
Depending on who you ask, the supposed perpetrators can be the government, the CIA, the FBI, neighbors, corporations, secret societies, or even random strangers. Gang stalking believers often interpret ordinary events as evidence of organized harassment. Somebody looking at them too long in a grocery store becomes surveillance. A car driving by twice becomes proof of a coordinated operation. Coincidences stop being coincidences.
Online communities have formed around these beliefs, reinforcing and escalating them. Rather than getting help, vulnerable people can find thousands of others validating their paranoia. Many targeted individual forums encourage members to distrust mental health professionals entirely because they believe psychiatrists are “part of the system.” That creates a feedback loop where severe paranoia is incubated instead of treated.
To be clear, not everybody who believes in gang stalking becomes violent. At the same time, this kind of paranoid delusion can become incredibly dangerous when mixed with isolation, untreated mental illness, being terminally online, and easy access to guns. The human brain is capable of convincing itself that almost anything is real if it spends enough time trapped inside an echo chamber.
That is what makes this story so disturbing. We came frighteningly close to another school massacre because a man who was obviously unraveling had access to a rifle and an audience online. He was broadcasting warning signs the entire time. There were paranoid posts, delusional claims, violent fantasies, anti-government rhetoric, and references to revolution. None of that happened on its own.
Yet this is becoming normal in America. Too many people are walking around with zero media literacy and untreated mental illness while marinating in conspiracy content twenty-four hours a day. Every algorithm pushes them deeper. Every online community reassures them that they are not sick but ‘enlightened.’ Every perceived grievance becomes proof that shadowy forces are controlling their lives.
Meanwhile, getting meaningful mental health treatment in this country can be nearly impossible, especially for people who are already distrustful or disconnected from reality. Even when warning signs exist, intervention often does not happen until somebody crosses the line into violence. Add to that America’s endless supply of guns, and situations like this become inevitable.
The worst part is that Dustin Rudd is not unique. There are countless people online right now posting similar paranoid content, talking about being targeted, ranting about secret enemies, and convincing themselves they are soldiers in some invisible war. Most will never hurt anyone. Some absolutely will.
Prairie Farm got lucky this time. The next school might not.
(Sources)
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