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The Internet Is Now Part of the Crime Scene
theodp (442580) writes "Over at Forbes, Kashmir Hill examines the disturbing Internet footprint of Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger. 'A decade ago,' observes TechCrunch's John Biggs in The Internet Is Now Part Of The Crime Scene, 'a crime scene was a photo and a report. Now it is a sea of interconnected tracings, the murderer bobbing loosely in social media and the forums. We can watch him make his way through these straits, we can watch the madness growing, and we can watch his terrible end, all through murk of media. We are quick to judge and we are quick to look at his wake and say, definitively, that he was this or he was that. He was frustrated. The frustration grew. He went to a place he thought would help. It didn't.'"
This is official police business. Ctrl-Z and wait to be questioned.
..the places where he made the shootings and possibly where he prepared.
the internet is not a "crime scene"(for this) any more than the postal system and newspaper opinion pieces were 30 years ago..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Like pretty much any invention mankind has ever come up with, the Internet can help or hurt. If someone is feeling upset over something, they can turn to friends online for help and can get assistance, support, and guidance through their troubled times. Or, if they aren't as lucky or don't look in the right places, they can find abuse hurled at them, idiots saying "Why don't you just kill yourself" and the like, or an echo chamber where particular prejudices are amplified and focused against Group X being the cause of all of the person's problems.
This isn't really that different from a distraught person seeking help from others via face-to-face social interaction except that the "kill yourself" jerks are probably somewhat less likely to say that to a person's face. Then again, some people I've met in person don't seem to care at all if what they say/do hurts another person. In fact, they consider hurting another person as "harmless fun." These people would be jerks even if the Internet had never existed.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No wonder people keep committing mass killings: they see the people that killed before them and see someone who was invisible, that no one paid attention to, become a household name. How many people here know the name of the person that shot up Sandy Hook, or the Colorado movie theater, this guy, or Columbine? Now, name me some of their vicitms? You can't. People that feel unstable, or feel marginalized and that no one ever notices them or cares about them, they already need mental help. If they turn to the internet, post videos on youtube or write blogs, they get pushed over the edge even more when no one watches their video, or people write negative comments. They get to the point where the only way to get noticed is to start killing people. If they do that they become famous, everyone starts talking about them. When you see yourself as only something they might see killing as the only way to become someone. Stop publishing the names of these killers, stop implicitly glorifying these people, and killings will drop. We also need to improve mental health treatment in the country, but that's a whole other topic.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil