I Read the El Paso Shooter’s Manifesto Out Loud, and I Was Shook
His feelings about race-mixing, in particular, really hit home for me
Days after the tragic El Paso shooting, rumors began to swirl about an alleged manifesto penned by the shooter and posted to a now-defunct 8chan chat board. Despite social media and other websites’ vain attempts to quickly remove it from public consumption, mostly legible screenshots had already circulated in group chats and text messages as curiosity regarding the shooter’s frame of mind began to mount. Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, I gave it a cursory read before taking my musings to social media.
Reading it was one thing, but reading it out loud was a whole different beast.
One of my friends, who is visually impaired, asked if anyone knew where he might read it using his assistive software. Due to the fact that there were no reliable sources of text that could be converted to audio, I offered to read it aloud to him. (After all, it seemed fair that he should have the same opportunities as those of us with 20/20 vision.)
Reading it was one thing, but reading it out loud was a whole different beast.
