This week, I'm sure a lot of my fellow Observers are probably expecting me to write about the incidents that occurred over the past couple weeks in yet another two movie theaters in Lafayette, LA and Antioch, TN. Normally I would acknowledge current issues such as these and my sympathy goes out to any family members that have suffered such a tragic loss, but if there is one thing I hate doing to my readers is repeating myself. Especially about a subject the hasn't changed and unfortunately never will. For those of you that might have missed my article which addressed subject matter encompassing the fore mentioned, feel free to read February 14th's "My Heart Belongs To A 44" at www.44valentine.blogspot.com at your leisure and you'll understand my point.
With that stated, onto this weeks topic after a small explanation on my part. With everything that has been going on lately, I'm sure you all can understand that I can't write about everything I want to all the time. I sometimes have to "archive" a current event that I want to address in lieu of another subject, but this makes the one I pull off the back burner a little later on no less important than the one I chose to write about first. So, this week I'd like to take you back to the end of July when The Washington Post reported that Sharon and Richard Moreno were awakened by a phone call from local police at around 2:30am and were told to vacate their home and not alert their adult son, William. It turns out that they were responding to a post, attributed to William, on a web forum site called Fairfax Underground that stated "I just shot my parents now I will kill my sister.". Although I credit the police with their swift attention to this matter, a little more investigation on their part may have stopped them in their red and blue flashing light tracks, kept most of them at their station instead of on the Moreno's front lawn with guns drawn and prevented 32 year old William from being body slammed in his "tidy whiteys" on the families front porch for the whole neighborhood to see. A simple phone call (well...they got that right... I believe in giving credit where it's due) and maybe a patrol car would have been more than enough to reveal to them that this was just another "swatting" incident brought on by internet "trolls". Guess it was a slow night in Sterling, Virginia.
The Moreno's have since filed a lawsuit against two Fairfax Underground users that they claim have accused William, online, of rape, mass bomb threats, child molestation and incest. Further accusations within the lawsuit claim the two named are responsible for emails to his college, Virginia Commonwealth University, that jeopardized his education. He has received death threats, his parents home has been vandalized, his car was broken into and his mother almost lost her job as an "intelligence contractor". Police have been involved numerous times, William has been arrested (with no charges resulting in any convictions) and this intrusion from the online world of cyberspace into the offline world of reality has even pushed William to attempt suicide.
I understand some of you that actually read my articles are probably asking yourselves, "What gives? This guy never plays the sympathy card for anything.". Well... you caught me... I'm not playing it this time either. You know me all to well, my loyal reader, and realize as well that there is always a flipside to a coin, another shoe to drop and a third side to every story. I admit that it would be easy to say "Poor William.... nobody should have to go through what he and his family have endured.", but it's not practical. I have learned over the years that pity is not deserved in correct proportion to the amount we dish out. We tend to only read the headlines and draw our own conclusions, interpret editorials as articles, take opinion as fact and act as if we've been lied to when we finally understand the whole story. It is true that these incidents did indeed happen to the Moreno's, but as we dig deeper we also learn that William, who his parents claim has a "mild form of autism", suffers from "major depression" and finds it "painful to socialize in the real world" turned to Fairfax Underground as a way to interact. Posting under the online pseudonym "Mr. Misery" William was eventually banned from the forum for flooding it with posts ranging from what was considered "quirky humor" to offensive comments about child molestation and the 9/11 attacks. Even though he was prohibited from using the site, William kept returning and posting under numerous other names. Moreno claims that his posts were not serious and found it surprising that some of the 1.5million users had a problem with what he wrote. Ya think?!?!? Sounds to me that William's world just came full circle and he has come down with a severe case of "what comes around, goes around." and doesn't seem to like it..... but I'm no doctor.
It amazes me that even with having this technology around for the past 20+ years, we still don't understand it's purpose and the consequences of it's use. That people actually believe they can post inflammatory comments anytime they want and believe that others shouldn't have a problem with what they wrote. "It's just a post." "It doesn't mean anything." "I was joking." It's only online, nobody saw it." I find it hard to believe that someone hasn't told me to jump off a cliff yet for some of the stuff I wrote about. As of this moment, my trolls aren't barking..... or is it howling?.....yet. I do, however, see my "Likes" and "Follows" fluctuate after my Saturday posts though. For right now, I'll happily take it.
Malicious "trolling" is on the rise and has been an increasing online concern for many. RIP "trolls" deface Facebook tributes to deceased loved ones. Christian "trolls" post remarks on atheist sites and atheists return the favor on theirs. Political "trolls" target the opposition. Racist "trolls" deploy "troll armies" to target religious, ethnic and political sites. I've even heard of "trolls" posting on baby name sites and forums. Well listen, Moe Lester, it's not their fault that your mother decided to name you after her father... so lighten up, would you please? The response to "trolling" has been overwhelming not only in effort but in expense as well. Twitter puts out public lists of known "trolls" that account users can share. YouTube has reconstructed it's comment posting in an attempt to limit "trolling" and some magazine sites, like Popular Mechanics, don't allow visitors to post comments at all. There have even been studies into what makes "trolls" tick. The results have labeled "trolls" with dark personality traits and show signs of sadism, antisocial behavior, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. OK all you human nature experts.... What else is new? Sounds like half the people I know and you know what I do when I run into one of these antisocial butterflies of dismay and discourse? I ignore them. Avoid them. Pay them absolutely no attention or give them any conscious thought. They are simply not worth anyone's time and should be dealt with as such.
Although many people think I have a certain amount of disdain for technology. I assure you this is not the case. I have stated many times and will continue to stand by the belief that the technology we all enjoy is a wonderful thing. It connects the world in a way we never though possible and gives us useful information at the press of a button. It's what we do with the technology that gets under my cyber-skin. Along with using it for information we sometimes use that information against each other. Instead of connecting us we use it to disconnect human interaction and distance ourselves. We use it to criticize, to hurt, to degrade and persecute. We take our daily dislike for each other that we would normally keep to our own thoughts and without even blinking post things online we would never say out loud. It's much too easy to lose our inhibitions hitting enter than using the spoken word, don't you think? So just who are these "trolls"? Whose responsible for them? The answer to both questions is very simple. We all are. We create them with every thought we place online without thinking first and every picture we post without looking before we click. They are the "dark triad" of our collective personalities that has simply manifested itself in a more prominent form on the internet and we give it the ability reach from beyond it to affect our lives with every keystroke. Strictly an Observation. If you'll excuse me, I have to check my comment posts.
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