The People You'll See After the Massacre

It feels like we do this too often, as in, we do this at all, right? Stay in some mode of attention after a horrific mass killing event looking for anything, anything at all, that helps us make sense of the senseless, that helps us frame this brutal chaos into an orderly worldview.

Of course, it doesn't help that some of the first people you see after the massacre are the hoaxers and conspiracy theorists. They bubble up from 4chan and fake news sites and get forwarded on by your halfwit news uncles like Gateway Pundit and Alex Jones. They aren't really interested in getting the story right--they basically are interested in clicks, chaos and creating zombie lies that never entirely die, even after being proven to be total bullshit. What they lack in character they make up for in industriousness. They spread lies before Truth even begins to pull her socks up.

Then there's the "Hopers". They hope you aren't going to politicize this thing (to the extent of this thing not being politicized counter to their own pet theory--you better not make this about guns when they want to make this about terrorism, or you better not make this about X privilege when they want to make it about Y social factors, like mental illness or economic anxiety). They usually prefer you wait until all the facts are in before counting the politicization they are already doing out. 

There's the people who greatly prefer you not blame the accessibility of guns for all this, because pea shooters and knives have also been used to kill people. To some extent. Or could. And it's too soon, anyway, to get into that subject. (Even if it isn't soon enough for the next shooting, which is almost certainly going to happen before we've the least opportunity to get any kind of effective gun regs ready for a vote.) 

We get to see the "thoughts and prayers" people--mostly harmless. Some of them legitimately just have thoughts and prayers at the ready and feel wrecked that an event like this happens and don't know anything else to do at this very second, and mean to give blood at the soonest opportunity, and will by all means contribute something to the Go Fund Me for the victims' medical bills and funerals. And some actually could be doing other stuff, but offer "thoughts and prayers" because if they did shit all about gun access, their campaign donations would get bricked. There's various layers of thoughts and varying qualities of prayers, and vice versa. 

There's the "call it terrorism" people and the "don't call it terrorism" people.  We hear from terrorists who want to claim the tragedy as their own, if it seems bloody enough, whether they even had anything to do with it.There's the "Thank fate this wasn't my political identity" people and the "Not all my political identity" people. There's "this random snippet about the shooter is conclusive" talk and "this random snippet about the shooter means nothing" discussions. There is even discussion about why the people getting shot were the people getting shot. Even though, in the days to come, we'll eventually hear about them, and from those that are living, and the family and friends of the deceased. And those people definitely matter, and it is great they get heard--

And then another of these things happen, and we hear from the hoaxers and the conspiracy theorists...