Virtual Behavior Can Predict Real Life Behavior

The more I explore the online behaviors of extremists, the more I am reassured that my work has some meaning. Yesterday, a young boy shot and killed three high school students and injured two others at Chardon High School, incidentally a school very close to where I grew up. Thomas "TJ" Lane, 17, the alleged shooter, reportedly tweeted prior to the attack that he would be bringing a gun to school that day. Furthermore, he has also made some questionable remarks on Facebook. In December 2011, for instance, Lane reportedly wrote a poem on Facebook about a lonely man who nobody paid attention to. In the middle of the poem he declares:

I'm on the lamb but I ain't no sheep. I am Death. And you have always been the sod. So repulsive and so odd. 

He then ends the poem by saying:

Now! Feel death, not just mocking you. Not just stalking you but inside of you. Wriggle and writhe. Feel smaller beneath my might. Seizure in the Pestilence that is my scythe. Die, all of you. 

Lane clearly had some troubling thoughts, but what is more important is that fact that he posted these thoughts publicly on Facebook. An article in the New York Times last week discusses the issue of posting intimate thoughts on Facebook. The article, Trying to Find a Cry of Desperation Amid the Facebook Drama, explains that people who publicly post troubling thoughts on Facebook are looking for an intervention of some sort.


The reality is, it is often difficult to know when someone is actually looking for help, or when someone just really had a bad day and needed to vent a little. But perhaps in this era where outsourcing safety procedures to citizens is the norm (i.e. the "See Something, Say Something" campaign or the recent DARPA challenge to track down signs and post them on a social networking site), maybe it is time for citizens - particularly parents and teachers - to be educated on spotting problem posts on social media. In light of Lane's tweet that he was bringing a gun to school, I think the "See Something, Say Something" campaign should be applied to more than just a suspicious package. Suspicious posts must be taken more seriously. Of course some will inevitably sneak through the cracks, but concerned citizens can play a bigger role in policing social media, not just by reporting problematic videos, but individual behaviors as well.