Clockwork
Always running.
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2023
- Messages
- 36
- Reaction score
- 108
- Awards
- 27
Well come and sit on old uncle Clockwork's lap and he'll tell you a classic.No, please tell me more.
Plebbit Cringe: A tale in three parts.
ACT THE FIRST: WE DID IT, REDDÍT!
Almost ten years ago to the day, on 15/04/2013, two explosives devices were detonated near the finish line of the Patriot Day Race in Boston. The ensuing explosion among the throng of people killed three immediately, injuring hundreds and causing at least seventeen people to lose a limb. With updates coming in slowly through traditional media a reddít user by the name of /u/_supernovasky_ created a thread in /r/news about the bombing which you can find right here. This thread was for live updates on the bombing and for identifying victims or to try and find info on missing friends/family and there were a few donation links and stuff, all pretty helpful stuff. Very positive, very benevolent. It was actually a massive win for alternative media and showed just how amazing the internet could be when utilised during an emergency. Good job reddít, give yourself a pat on the back.
ACT THE SECOND: WE DID WHAT, REDDÍT?!
With the lack of updates from traditional media and reddít being how they are things started to sour a little. There had yet to be any official releases of pictures of suspects and reddít users were beginning to offer up their own theories and accusations. Eventually a subreddit was created by a user going by /u/oops777 called /r/findbostonbombers. This is an archive of the sub after two days of existence and unfortunately the oldest one I can find right now. Obviously a sub dedicated to identifying members of the public could be misused quite easily and thus some rules were put in place.
Those rules? Forget 'em. Cause the mods sure a fuck did. For about half a day it all seemed good in the 'hood. It was hub of aggregated information with resources pooled from other sites, from people at the scene and even from people listening to police scanners. The issue came when someone noted that one of the devices seemed to have been inside a black backpack. Suddenly anyone with a black backpack in any image was a suspect. Especially if they wouldn't pass the paper bag test.... Then it was anyone acting 'suspiciously, ie not looking at the race or texting or looking nervous or stressed. Then it was anyone who didn't react to the bombing in a way that redditors determined to be 'normal'. What exactly does the average redditor think is normal? No fucking clue, mate. I was there reading those threads and it was anything from people sweating a lot (in spring, in packed crowds) or people acting excited or people who were just wandering through the crowds.
Eventually this image was released showing two men, one of which has a black backpack. Especially when a second photo was released which showed him without the backpack. The issue here being that he could still be holding it in this image or he could even have given it to someone or it could be at his feet. We don't know. And neither did reddít.
Three days later the New York Post released this headline:
At this point there was, in fact, no indication that the Feds were seeking these two men at all. This entire article was sourced from reddít as an attempt for the old relic of traditional media to maintain it's hold on the news. This also led to a massive defamation suit against the New York Post because those guys in the image? That's 16 year old Salaheddin Barhoum and 24 year old Yassine Zaimi, two American gentleman who were track runners and were there to run part of the course. They later sued NYP and won (Well, settled out of court) for defamation because at NO POINT were they ever wanted by the police or suspected of any wrongdoing at all. Not until reddít started pointing fingers at them and the NYP jumped the gun by erroneously reporting them as suspects with info mined from reddít.
At this point the FBI was forced to step in as the rampant speculation was doing more harm than good. They released this image which they had previously withheld so as to not cause their suspects to rabbit.
The name Sunil Tripathi was quickly linked to one of these men. How? Allegedly it was heard on a police scanner however none of the logs from that night show that name ever being discussed via police radio. This is Sunil. He was a student at Brown University and had been dealing with very powerful bouts of depression. He vanished a month before the marathon. During this time his family had been trying to reach out via facebook and youtube to get him to come home.
However the sub took this image of Sunil and began comparing this poor victim of circumstance to one of the released images of the alleged bombers. They kind of look alike. Sort of. Anyway the mods actually showed an ounce of self control and began deleting any references to Sunil but the sub had thousands of users and only about five mods so they were quickly overwhelmed.
ACT THE THIRD: WHAT HAVE WE DONE, REDDÍT?!
The suspects are actually a radicalised pair of Chechen Kyrgyzstani-American brothers named Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev who had learned how to make explosive devices out of pressure cookers. They see their faces on the news and know that the game is up. Why are they on the news? Because the feds were forced to release their images to clear the names of Salaheddin and Yassine as mentioned earlier after they had been fingered by the subreddit as the guilty parties. The suspects then do the very thing the police didn't want them to do to. They panic and try to run.
First they ambush and murder Sean Collier, a police officer, in an attempt to steal his weapon. They kill him but do not manage to take the gun due to the in-built safety locks on police issue holsters. They fled the scene and hijacked Dun "Danny" Meng's vehicle and took him hostage. They forced Danny to withdraw almost a $1000 and decide to head to New York to bomb Times Square. Tamerlan drove the Merc while Dzhokhar followed in their own car. When they pulled over for fuel Danny leapt out of the Merc and fled into a nearby store and got the clerk to call 911. Because Danny left his phone in the car the police were able to track it to find the two brothers.
Around midnight two officers. Officer Joseph Reynolds and Segeant John MacLellan, followed a 'ping' from the tracked phone and found the green Honda and the Mercedes parked up on a side street. Upon approach Tamerlan stepped out of the Merc and opened fire on the two officers who returned fire. In the ensuing firefight around 300 shots were fired and another pressure cooker bomb and five homemade grenades were thrown at the officers. Eventually Tamerlan ran out of ammo and was tackled and arrested by the officers. Dzhokhar who had remained in the Honda floored it and tried to run over the officers who were arresting his brother. Instead he accidentally ran over Tamerlan. Tamerlan died from his injuries in police custody. Around fifteen other officers were injured in the firefight after they arrived as back-up. A few lost limbs to the grenades and bombs.
Redditors using police scanners listened to the whole thing and were trying to piece together just what the fuck had happened as no names had been released or broadcast over the radio. It was all speculation until around 2:30AM when it was 'confirmed' that the men involved in the shootout and bombing were Sunil Tripathi and Mike Mulugeta.
This is just some random guy mouthing off here, there is no reason for anyone to believe it. But....
The names get picked up and repeated by blue checkmarks. Here's Luke Russert of NBC repeating the name for example.
Kevin Galliford, a journalist for a TV station in Hartford, relayed the same information to his own followers; Galliford's tweet was retweeted more than 1,000 times in a matter of minutes. The next multiplier came from Andrew Kaczynski, another journalist at BuzzFeed, who sent out the police-scanner misinformation to his 90,000 followers and quickly followed up with: 'Wow reddít was right about the missing Brown student per the police scanner. Suspect identified as Sunil Tripathi.' On top of now trying to find their missing son the Tripathi family was now subject to non-stop harassment and accusations against them.
It wasn't long until the actual names of the domestic terrorist brothers was released. In the ensuing mass humbling the subreddit was made private, apologies were offered to the Tripathi family and a new sub was made to try and help find Sunil Tripathi. All of this was probably little compensation to family of a kid who was being smeared as a terrorist. Sunil was found dead a week later.
And this is where I was wrong about reddít causing this suicide because Sunil was probably already dead before being accused of the bombing. Probably. There's no certainty, though. So reddít may or may not have his blood on their hands. They certainly have the blood of Sean Collier and the fifteen other injured officers on their hands. Their disruption of the investigation forced the hands of the police and the FBI leading to the Tsarnaev brothers attempt to flee instead of letting the police quickly and quietly arrest them in their home.
Last edited: