9/11 isn’t the same for them: Why the next generation’s view of the national security state will be radically different
Reading too deeply into the habits of teenagers on Twitter will only lead to disastrously misguided “trend pieces” about the Youth Today that, like the infamous, almost entirely false New York Times piece on “grunge” circa 1992, completely misinterpret the latest craze or fashion. But when the “trend” in question is, say, tweeting jokey bomb threats at American Airlines, it may be a development worth considering more closely.In case you missed it, last week a strange news story quickly rocketed through the “twitterverse” — and soon cable news and elsewhere — when a 14-year-old Dutch girl named Sarah tweeted a “joke” at American Airlines, and quickly got the reply that anyone who still vividly remembers the tragic attacks of 9/11 would entirely expect:
Reading too deeply into the habits of teenagers on Twitter will only lead to disastrously misguided “trend pieces” about the Youth Today that, like the infamous, almost entirely false New York Times piece on “grunge” circa 1992, completely misinterpret the latest craze or fashion. But when the “trend” in question is, say, tweeting jokey bomb threats at American Airlines, it may be a development worth considering more closely.
In case you missed it, last week a strange news story quickly rocketed through the “twitterverse” — and soon cable news and elsewhere — when a 14-year-old Dutch girl named Sarah tweeted a “joke” at American Airlines, and quickly got the reply that anyone who still vividly remembers the tragic attacks of 9/11 would entirely expect:
The main legal distinction between a joke and a “true threat” is objective, i.e., “whether a reasonable observer would perceive the communication to communicate a genuine threat.” Of course, this is a fairly broad definition, and problems can quickly arise when people from different generations — with completely difference relationships with (and understanding of) social media — come into conflict.
“The problem with social media is that cops, prosecutors and judges are not as familiar with the context, and therefore don’t follow the cultural cues. They’re not equipped to figure out whether a reasonable person familiar with the particular subculture (like the subculture of trash-talking teens in the League of Legends case involving Justin Carter) would take the threats as serious or not. In other words, there’s a gulf between what reasonable people in the online culture understand the words to mean, and what (somewhat, sometimes) reasonable people outside the online culture understand the words to mean.
If we don’t want people arrested or brutalized for common online trash talk that is not taken seriously by people familiar with the context, then we need cops, prosecutors, and judges more familiar with that context.”
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