SO – you probably know we’re local to the Columbia Mall shootings – and I’m disgusted and horrified. It’s where we go to see our movies generally.
They’ve identified the gunman, coincidentally Kristy (Rowan’s wife) came home to find THEIR street all blocked off because the shooter Lived down the street from them. Out of morbid curiosity I look to see if there’s a Darion Aguilar on Facebook with some sort of manifesto based out of College Park… and what do I find? A recently created profile (today) who’s changed his banner photo to “thug Life” bling in the last five minutes who transferred his home town to College Park two minutes before my viewing (at around 1 in the afternoon, just a couple of minutes after it started trending on Facebook).
Not much else there yet – though in the last hour the profile’s added lots of bands and sports teams and things… now… wtf? It seems someone’s created this profile to capitalize on the shooting in SOME way – what do you think the motive here is? Just bad taste? Someone trying to create a narrative? Coincidence? I haven’t seen anything to confirm that it’s a picture of the shooter or anything or just a randomly snagged smug-looking African-Americanish male – I’m sort of beginning to assume that anything trending on FB is going to get a LOT of pageviews and thousands (if not tens of thousands) of people are going to do EXACTLY what I just did and plug the name into the nearest search engine… on that theory this freshly-minted profile is going to get a LOT of impressions very, very quickly. So – does it make fiscal sense for someone to create a false profile in order to capitalize on this ASAP? And will it work? I also think you only get paid for click-throughs of your OWN ads, not mere impressions – so it’d be a long-game of percentages… I guess it could be a white supremacist or hater-of-rap trying to create a false narrative?
I’m being a paranoid social media busy body at this moment. I know this.
I’ve reported the account, unfortunately there’s no way to get into too much detail on Facebook – I’d imagine that there MUST be algorithms of some sort to weed this sort of thing out – probably… maybe… and Hell, it could totally be the new guy in College Park moving in and setting up his Facebook account on just the wrong day at just the wrong time with just the wrong name – but I think I’m sort of cynical about that possibility.
Social media is weird – and lest I sound too much like the most unsympathetic individual ever – my heart DOES go out to those touched by this shooting – and I continue to be horrified by just how common this has become – I hate that it’s close to home in so many different ways – geographically obviously and socially…
Not only did the alleged shooter apparently Live down the street from our drummer’s house, but a friend of ours and her child have become the “poster child” photo of “emotional woman carrying child from the scene” – THIS is a whole OTHER social aspect – it USED to be that if your picture was taken it just showed up in tomorrow’s newspaper – but here it’s circulated and reposted and you get every person you know asking “OH MY GOD – is that YOU!?!?!” and rehashing and rehashing… she’s going through something of a nightmare right now… there’s simply no psychological shield for social media other than getting OFF – slowly we’re becoming a little more socially aware on Facebook and Twitter – but it only takes one person to start the cycle again – it’s like a virus of rude and inconsiderate behaviour.
Okay – enough out of me. I’m just rambling at this point. I’m home. I’m showered, I’ve managed to get my car to start. I’ve taken out the trash and the recycling that’s piled up around the house, I’ve patted the cats and soon it’ll be time to go our and restock our pantries… and slowly it’ll be like we were never gone, except now both Kristen and I have a voracious desire for breakfast tacos….
FINALLY – it’s ALMOST like the pics and the text align… our Love of breakfast tacos DEFNITELY sprang from our
