Something happened last week on The Star’s Facebook account that, in my opinion, illustrates the disturbing place we now are as a country and community.
Not long after a small gathering at Hook Mill marking Renee Nicole Good’s death at the barrel of a federal agent’s handgun, we published a story online and posted it on Instagram and Facebook. Responses came quickly.
The posts were suddenly filled with comments from a combination of apparently actual people and automated posters. One Samuel Felle had all the red flags of a bot. Debbie Whalen, who posted “I stand with ice!!,” had enough detail on her profile to seem real.
Others had large numbers of “friends,” but when I looked at their profiles, there were few to no individuals, instead, they were entirely ones that automatically approved friend requests: Alfred Hitchcock, “The Roseanne Show,” or Old Spice.
Among the fake accounts, public posts often were spaced far apart: a profile photo updated in 2021 and next something about Senator Chuck Schumer on Jan. 4 of this year. Some posters had account names that did not match or line up with their genders or contained what seemed to be a string of random numbers. But one sketchy poster’s account name was so amusing that it had to be real: Fic Ticious.
As of earlier this week, there were more than 800 comments; usually we get fewer than 50. Something more was going on. Posters had things to say from Indiana and Indonesia.
Posts flooded in with repetitive what-about-ism comparisons to Charlie Kirk, Laken Riley, and Iryna Zarutska, whose deaths have become part of the Make America Great Again’s array of martyrs. Others referred to Ashli Babbitt, who became a hero to the right after she was shot and killed by a Capitol Hill officer as she climbed through a broken window with a raging mob behind her on Jan. 6, 2021.
I sent messages to a few accounts; so far I have not heard back.
But quite a few of the accounts that attacked Ms. Good, The Star, or liberals in general I knew from around town. Their anger surprised me in its intensity. How did they get swept up in the online storm, the absence of compassion? Did they see posts by others and repeat the sentiment? I wondered if they would cheer on the violence if someone also not like them were shot and killed on Main Street.
I think the answer is yes and that makes me worried for our country — and sad, most of all.