April 21, 2013
"On Reddit, the Tripathi speculation... soon received its own, massive thread... full of the worst of crowd-sourced message board investigations...."
"... from ridiculous total certainty ('The facial structure is almost exactly the same') to incredibly irresponsible mistakes ('Except that isn't Sunil, it's his brother').... The entire case was based on vague physical resemblance in low-quality photos, bolstered by the fact that one Twitter user claiming to have gone to school with Tripathi said she thought it looked like him."
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13 comments:
They all look alike to me...
The media voted who they wanted for suspects and so did the people.
Funny that.
The best thing to do, IMO, when something like this (the bombing) is to turn off your computer and turn off your TV. All you hear on TV or the internet is misinformation and speculation.
I checked back periodically (every four hours or so) to see what was happening. Maybe if I lived in Boston I'd be more attentive. But really: What good does it do to stay so focused on it? Is it a processing mechanism? If so, find another way.
Interesting that the writer rather casually tries to pin some of the blame for the misidentifications on conservative blogs.
Mistakes are made by the authorities, too, witness the recent LA rogue cop incident. At least the armchair internet sleuths didn't shoot anybody. Perhaps the missing Indian kid will be found as a result of this.
FYI, Tripathi is a Hindu name.
Yeah, I saw ridiculous speculation of this on a Hillary site I visit with the Admin of that site party to propagating this misinformation. And one xenophobic commenter commenting that India has many Muslims not realizing Tripathi is a Hindu name and that India is a victim of this type terror not a perpetrator.
I would be thankful to get my missing son the needed publicity. His missing was obscure before.
@bagoh20, no, this is not kind of publicity you want as a parent, this guy already suffers from depression, and this kind of false attribution (may be from people he once trusted and counted as friends) for an act as harmful as Boston bombings would drive him over the edge, if it has not already.
MadisonMan said...
The best thing to do, IMO, when something like this (the bombing) is to turn off your computer and turn off your TV. All you hear on TV or the internet is misinformation and speculation.
The best thing to do is go about your normal business and notice things out of place. Like the boat owner in Boston. The worst thing is to ignore it.
PM317,
You could turn out to be right, but the son has been missing over a month. The most dangerous thing is he's alone and in his own head. I would want him found by any means, besides the bad publicity is only part of the publicity which now includes his exoneration. If I was family, I would still want this high profile mistake, and would be hoping that one of the additional millions who now know his story will find him. If he's alive, he's around others, and now someone might notice him. After a month, I would be willing to try anything, even risky things.
Well, let's see here. Purely hypothetically speaking, the parents could claim that their son had converted to Islam and joined a radical sect, had recently gone missing and taken the pressure cooker with him. The FBI would be all over that and have the lad in no time. The fastest way would be to claim that he had joined the Aryan Brotherhood, but given his skin tone, that story might not do the trick. Even with Eric Holder at DOJ.
We have a plague of stupid.
Well, now people are looking for and more aware that the young man is still missing.
What's the adage? There's no such thing as bad PR?
(The author also conveniently omits the barrage of counter-opinions on Reddit simultaneously ... a horde of people saying the exact opposite and that the speculation was not justified.)
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