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Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Death threats over the Internet?

Death threats by Facebook? By Twitter? By e-mail? By comments on blogs and videos? Unfortunately, yes. Fortunately, they haven't come to me -- yet.

Leonard Pitts, a fine newspaper columnist, points out, in one of his many good pieces of writing, that there have been at least four cases of death threats, delivered by the Internet, to people who should have had no fear of such, within the last couple of weeks.

The newest technology, he eloquently reminds us, doesn't necessarily make communication any better. Instead, it brings out the worst in some of us. What we need to do is to use wisdom. And, as he says, "There is no app for that."

Thanks for reading. Read Pitts.

2 comments:

atlibertytosay said...

Unfortunately, as the town news source that occasionally reports things that some people don't want to hear, refuse to believe, or arrogantly deny … I have had a death threat lodged against me.

While it affected me, I know that 99.9% of the time it's just hot air.

Martin LaBar said...

Yes, most of these are hot air, but there's always the real possibility that sometime it won't be, and scaring people like that, because you don't agree with them, is a reprehensible thing, even if it's just hot air.