A Boone County, Kentucky, family has filed a lawsuit against Roblox Corporation and Discord Inc., claiming the platforms allowed predators and extremist communities to manipulate their 13-year-old daughter into suicide. The lawsuit alleges that through Roblox and later Discord, the girl was exposed to the ‘true crime community,’ specifically the subset that romanticizes and idolizes mass shooters, especially the killers at Columbine.

I’m not here to weigh in on the legal strength of the lawsuit. That’s for a jury to decide. But I am here to say this is not new. Not surprising. Not shocking. And tragically, it may be the same family from the story I wrote back on April of this year, the one the Daily Mail covered that some people tried to wave off as tabloid sensationalism.

It wasn’t sensationalism.

It was the raw, heartbreaking truth I’ve been warning about for over twenty-five years.

In that earlier case, a 13-year-old girl from Kentucky didn’t die because she wanted attention. She didn’t die because she was plotting violence. She died because she fell under the spell of two killers who should have been forgotten the moment their crime scene was cleared.

The Columbine shooters said their names would echo through history. They believed they’d become legends.

And disturbingly, they sort of did.

A child born around 2011, more than a decade after the attack, became obsessed with their imagery, their words, and their mythology. She drew their names in her school journal like teenage crushes. She gave herself their last name. She absorbed the stories, the lies, and the false narrative that they were victims who ‘fought back’ against bullies.

None of it was true.

They weren’t victims. They weren’t rebels. They weren’t warriors. They were narcissists who wanted to kill a school full of children and then be celebrated for it.

But the myth is stronger than the reality, and now it’s claiming new victims who weren’t even alive when it happened.

Which brings us to Roblox.

Also back in April, I wrote about the school shooting simulators embedded in Roblox’s user-generated content system. Columbine maps. Parkland maps. Uvalde maps. NPCs hiding under desks and playing dead. Endings where your avatar either gets shot by police or kills themselves.

Roblox removes one, and another pops up. It’s whack-a-mole with stakes measured in human lives.

This isn’t about video games being evil, and it never was.

I’ve been gaming since the Atari VCS. I grew up with joysticks in my hands. This isn’t outsider scaremongering. This is someone who knows the culture.

There have always been people who turn tragedy into identity.

Columbine DOOM mods. Super Columbine Massacre RPG. Virginia Tech Flash games. Sandy Hook “tributes.” None of this is new.

What is new is the access. Back then, you had to go looking for this stuff. Now, this stuff goes looking for your child.

Discord servers. TikTok edits. Roblox roleplay worlds. Group chats that feel like friendship. Echo chambers that feel like belonging. Aestheticized violence packaged as misunderstood rebellion.

And the ‘true crime community,’ especially its Columbiner branch, is not some niche Tumblr cosplay collective. It is organized. It is persuasive. It is predatory. It recruits the lonely, the isolated, the neurodivergent, the bullied, and the identity-questioning. Kids who are searching for meaning and self.

And this is where parents get misled. This is not the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. This is not pearl-clutching over music or games. This is not teens “just being edgy.”

This is real, this is active, and this is happening right now. This is killing children.

I’ve been documenting this subculture since almost the day after Columbine. I have been screaming about this for more than two decades. And for more than two decades, people have waved it off as:

“Just teenagers being dramatic.”
“Just dark humor.”
“Just curiosity.”

Curiosity does not write death dates into a journal. Dark humor does not lead a 13-year-old to hide their entire emotional world from their parents. Normal teenage behavior does not end with a funeral.

The family in this lawsuit did not fail their child. They set parental controls. They believed the platforms. They trusted the assurances.

But predators don’t need to break rules; they only need to bend loneliness to their will.

So here is what I need parents to understand.

If your child is suddenly fixated on Columbine, or school shooters, or “misunderstood killers,” if they start drawing them, quoting them, defending them, or joking about them, that is not a phase.

That is not harmless. That is not something they “grow out of” on its own. That is the sound of them reaching out from a very dark place, and someone else reaching out of the internet’s back alleys to pull them further in.

Check their backpack. Look at their search history. Open their Discord. Ask questions even when it feels awkward, invasive, or uncomfortable.

You are not violating their privacy. You are protecting their life.

Because if you don’t step in, someone else already has.

(Source)

• Boone County family files lawsuit against Roblox, Discord over 13-year-old’s death by suicide