A mentally ill homeless guy walked onto a high school campus in my suburb, wearing all black, carrying a big duffel bag. Now, it’s reasonable to be concerned about that and want to identify who it is, assure he’s not carrying weapons onto the campus, and so forth.
But the community (as, perhaps, poorly represented on Facebook) is coming completely unhinged.
/1
/2 The cops found him at a local Starbucks, identified him, determined he had no weapons, and gave him a trespassing ticket. The community is OUTRAGED. They’re stalking him around the community and taking pictures of him at Starbucks and McDonald’s and demanding that he be kicked out. They want him jailed or institutionalized.
/3 They’ve found his Twitter and Facebook accounts and are printing out the stuff there - kind of crazy, not notably crazy on Twitter — taking it to the police demanding he be arrested. They’re keeping meticulous logs of his activities.
I am considerably more afraid of my neighbors than I am of this mentally ill homeless guy.
/4 The real question is .. will I keep my mouth shut and stay out of the neighborhood group where people are wigging out? Or will I comment?
/5 It is … not going well.
"Local" social media, whether Facebook or NextDoor, is the worst of all possible media.
With non-local media, you might be able to convince yourself that the unhinged racist sexist homophobic people who hate the poor are at least people you don't have to interact with on a regular basis. You can stop loading the page or app and retreat into the warm embrace of the kind-hearted people you interact with in the real world.
With local media, you are forced to confront the reality: it is your neighbors, people who live near you, who are hateful. When you are putting out the trash bin on trash day, and wave to your neighbor, they're the one calling the police because someone "undesirable" was walking down the street minding their own business.
Maybe it would be better to know, except what are you going to do with that information? It's not like anywhere else is any better!
The only way to win the game is not to play.
