If you've viewed viral screenshots depicting private chats from an anonymous online persona going by the name "Armand," whether they be conversations with the Buffalo shooter or foreshadowing of the Uvalde school shooting, what you saw was a fake.
Since the May 14 shooting at a Buffalo, New York supermarket, internet users have pored over online documents shared by the shooter, who killed 10 people in a white supremacy-fueled hate crime. Screenshots supposedly from the shooter's Discord server quickly spread online once the gunman's presence on the platform was known.
One viral screenshot that originated on the imageboard 4chan purported to show a conversation from March 2022 between a user named "Armand" and the gunman, who went by "Jimboboiii" on Discord. On message boards, social media platforms, and in videos across the web, users speculated about possible interpretations of the short back-and-forth. These screenshots quickly helped birth theories about the shooter having been "groomed" to go on a shooting spree by federal agents.
Mashable has confirmed with Discord that these screenshots are fake. According to a Discord representative who spoke to Mashable, the company has strong evidence which suggests that the user, "Armand," faked an interaction with the suspect in the Buffalo shooting using multiple Discord accounts.
According to Discord, there appears to have been no contact on Discord between the Buffalo gunman and a user by the name of "Armand."
The "Armand"...
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