Hey everyone, I'm back again, been a while. Lots been going in my life with school and stuff so yeah, I've got a free moment now, I'm writing exams and I've gotten to the stage of staring out of the window...wait that's what I was like from the start...eh it's fine I have a study day tomorrow and nothing but essay exams this weeks so I'll be fine. Anyway, onto the topic I wanted to discuss...hmm...this should probably go into the serious discussion, but then again...I dunno whatever I'll just put it here. One of our fine moderators can move it if he sees fit. Anyway, there have been some occurrences in my community recently that have disgusted me, annoyed me and jolly well pissed me off I guess. I'm sure you are all familiar with those rubbish messages that get circulated every now and again, you know the ones, they usually end off with "If you have a heart you will forward this" or "your safety could be jeopardised if you do not let everyone know about this" We all have those every once in a while. Well this time, one was circulated, and people took it seriously. The basic message was that there were two men in a Blue Toyota driving around kidnapping babies, children etc. Sometimes straight from their mothers. This was circulated on the 25th of October roughly I think. Within three days the stories had spread from 1 person being kidnapped to 8 in one area, one right outside a school 2 right from under their mothers' noses. Okay, so that sounds serious right? I mean no one wants their children taken from them, or younger siblings, because of that, everyone was in a mad panic. My uncle was sceptical however, a long with my mom and I, the both of them checked with their friends in the police force. Lo and behold what did they find? The police were swamped with calls and emails asking them about these kidnappers, but funnily enough, no one had filed a single report that their child had been kidnapped, no eye witnesses were found either. Funny isn't it? The worst part was despite this information being put on facebook and other social media, people still believed the chain messages, without even checking the credibility. So what is my point? Well 5 days after the first message was circulated, two men, who owned a blue toyota were attacked by an angry mob, who thought, because they have the car that matches the description and they have been seen driving past schools, that they are the kidnappers. Those two men were beaten and stabbed by the members of the community, and one died of his wounds. I might add, they were completely innocent as the stories were proven bogus. It bothers me...a lot, that people will blindly follow a random story because it looks credible, and not do any form of investigation to see if it's true or not. Someone out there thought it would be funny to send a chain message around and because of that, an innocent person has been killed. I dunno I'm just venting at this point, I can;t even remember why I wrote this, but please, don't spread rumours if you hear one (I'm probably preaching to the converted anyway) I just wish there were a way to prevent this from ever happening again.
Sadly, there is no way to to prevent this kind of thing from happening. An individual person may be reasonable and intelligent, but when you get enough of them together and add something for them to fear, they become mindless, panicky sheep. As long as this remains true, there will always be people willing to exploit their panic for personal gain, be it political, financial, or simply for their own amusement.
This pretty much sounds like typical american behavior, just follow what you hear, I just have to assume that if someone were to be all like "that story is bogus" then they'd be labeled heartless or uncaring or something stupid like that. This is what you get when a group is to stupid to think for it's self and latches on to a mob of people.
Tomorrow's new major chain message? Two guys got wrongfully attacked because of a Tumblr chain post. Reblog so that this never happens again. Sent from my SGH-T899M using Tapatalk
Hate this sort of thing. Rumors are the absolute worst. This happens all over the world. Anybody hear about that guy in the UK? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-vigilante-neighbours-mistook-paedophile.html
It's crap like this which prevents us from legalizing Vigilante and/or Frontier style justice! While I'm sure most people would be thrilled to see Casey Anthony brought to civilian justice, the problem is too many people would be pulling out people they THOUGHT were Casey; and your left being forced to live with a heart that aches for justice just to make sure lynch mobs are kept in check. Can we just love the batman wannabes in New York bringing vigilante justice to streets and condemn those that act out of group-think fear? I'm not the written law so I think I'm okay in feeling this way. Wish we had real Batman all his targets we know to be guilty and he stops the crazies from lashing out himself!
If you wanna fight for the law, become a cop. If every idiot with a vigilante deathwish went out and did something stupid, we'd be a whole lot worse off. We have laws for a reason, we have police for a reason, we have courts for a reason. Granted, some of the rules for courts are crappy, but thems the works.
Horrific reading, that. How does the person who started the rumour live with themselves after that? I don't know what the police were thinking sending him back there without informing neighbours he is an innocent man. Remember the Joanna Yeates case too? Her landlord was made a suspect purely based on looking a bit odd to some people. Despite being found completely innocent, I doubt his life can ever be totally the same after having to deal with such allegations and newspapers printing all sorts of disgusting rumours about him on the front pages.
Spoken just like Bullock would say! View attachment 7569 I am the night! I see your point but I don't trust cops, because they killed a friend of mine and lied about him being armed at the time; a fact that I confirmed with a neighbor who witnessed the event. And the justice system is deteriorating changes laws on its own whim with just the say a few judges on some panels says so. It won't surprise me if we do end up like Robocop society having to rely on private corporate security over the real police force. How about a civilian defense force led by Dog the Bounty Hunter he seems responsible enough. But I still agree with partially, for the moment I think what you're saying is mostly right; but New York and Detroit needs vigilantes because the police there aren't able to do the job, and the citizens at least in New York have been heralding these young vigilantes as heroes. for the most part though, yeah leave it to the cops when you can if you can!
What police officers are doing wrong is they are promoting The Buddy System; they treat precincts like one big family. Therefore they think its wrong to rat a fellow police officer out. New York practically screams corruption, Detroit just has a terrible chief.
I see stupid chain garbage posted on facebook all the time, and no matter how ludicrous it is, they always seem to fall for it. I think it's mostly those idiots whose sole interaction with the internet is using facebook or twitter, who aren't very well acquainted with the internets. Probably have never even heard the term "troll" before.
I don't really use social networking, but the last chain message I've ever seen was through email years ago. I figured they just stopped appearing, but this is just insane...What is wrong with people.
You haven't seen the worst of it though. On Facebook you get people trying to send you on guilt trips, sharing photos with things such as "Like if you care, keep scrolling down if you don't", with the photo in question being about hungry children in Africa, victims of a recent, terrible tragedy or a child with a rare medical condition. I just look at these things and think people obviously care, but liking your photo to appease your attention seeking isn't to help anybody or anything other than your massive ego.
The Irony of it is that those likes do absolutely nothing. It just makes one feel a bit better about themselves because they "Care"
