Phone texts in Nigeria urged mass murder

"War, war, war. Stand up and defend yourselves. Kill before they kill you. Slaughter before they slaughter you. Dump them in a pit before they dump you." — One of many mass-text-messages sent last week in Nigeria, inciting people to murder. And they did: some 350 were killed in Christian/Muslim violence. (textually via Bruce Sterling)

• [Anonymous]

  @anonymous #7:

  Using binaries of “advanced (i.e. Western) cultures” vs. “primitives” in divvying up societies is cringe-worth neocolonialism. This isn’t the 1860s. Nigerians own iphones, blog, and – dare I say it – even contribute to global innovation instead of passively receiving all advanced technology from the West. They aren’t sitting around a campfire using iPads to bludgeon their prey over the heads. That text quote could come from anywhere on the planet suffering from ethnic tension.

  And check out Youtube’s comment section if you really want to see globalized hate proliferated through technology!

• [Anonymous]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitaph_One

• [adamnvillani]

  Uncle Larry shouting at the birthday party that they should bomb the Hell out of Iran?

  Or John McCain doing the same?

• [Anonymous]

  #5
  Eh.. i fucked up my analogy totally, but still can reach my point.

  Anyway, technology from a different and dare i say more advanced culture introduced into a less civilized one is used to advance a war based in primitive thought.

  i thought the post was less about the mass text than it was about the fact that someone in a culture like that could recieve an anonymous text saying kill and be incited to kill!

  • [Anonymous]

    In advanced cultures we kill everyday. No need for SMS messages or religion. We go to work 9-6 designing the bombs, managing the logistics of the troops, marketing the justifications. We’re just doing our jobs. The banality of evil.

• [Anonymous]

  #5

  oh and my desire to rip on avatar for the stupid plot tragedies i mentioned earlier might have muddied my ability to articulate my original thought. sorry my misinterpretation made it seem a little troll-y.

  sorry.

• [jweedy]

  So, I got a text message the other day saying my credit card account had been put on hold, and to call a number that I had never seen before to get it reactivated. Granted, I don’t have a Mastercard, but I still knew not to call the number. Why would anyone in ANY culture take instruction so extreme from a text message and actually follow through? And is this the message I am supposed to get? Woe unto the Africans, superstitious, backwards and foolish?

• [Anonymous]

  Today’s Golden Rule …
  Do Uto Others Before They Do You

• [Oren Beck]

  My Grandmother told us of people getting phone calls telling them to kill either themselves- or a family member- or many other random people. Back then, Common Sense prevailed. They used to laugh- hang the phone up- or call the police. This was way before Caller ID etc.. Do note: We never heard of anyone killed that way.

  Common Sense seems to have become nearly extinct.

  • [Brainspore]

    Common Sense seems to have become nearly extinct.

    Oren: Don’t kid yourself, the people in your grandmother’s time were just as stupid and suggestible as people today. The Spanish-American War was waged on grounds just as shaky as our rationale for invading Iraq and the “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast convinced many thousands of Americans than an alien armada was at hand.

    This latest Nigerian text message phenomenon makes me think about how local talk radio stations were able to incite an entire genocide in Rwanda. Same murderous assholes, different media.

• [benher]

  Those are some of the most truly brutal metal lyrics I’ve ever seen.

  • [Mark Temporis]

    Sounds like nearly every song Manowar has ever written.

• [Anonymous]

  If avatar taught me anything it’s that the more advanced the society and technology you have the more petty, ruthless, and violent you are, and the more primitive the more peacefu..and wait whaa?

  • [gollux]

    As someone pointed out, we fear weapons of mass destruction, but Rwanda shows us that sharp edges and pointed sticks are just as efficient.

  • [Anonymous]

    @anonymous #1 Not sure what the point of your comment is. It seems like you’re implying that Nigerians are somehow savage, backwards, low tech, uncivilized, which is odd given that this is a post about massively distributed wireless communications.

    • [phisrow]

      The mere possession of technological artefacts doesn’t make a society advanced. If anything, a lot of work has been done with modern technology to make sure that it will keep running with a shrinking pool of actual technocrats, a stable pool of technicians, and an ever widening pool of the slack-jawed and ignorant.

      (Please note, this observation applies in no way only to Nigeria. At a population level, even the “technological” west is in a pretty ghastly state. Having a cellphone in a demon-haunted world is still barbaric and premodern, even though the cellphone depends on advanced digital signalling, packet radio, and compression techniques.)

• [caseyd]

  as per #13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua3nLmE7Kow explain that to a less advanced culture. as the image assessment uplifts…

• [The Chemist]

  “War, war, war. Stand up and defend yourselves. Kill before they kill you. Slaughter before they slaughter you. Dump them in a pit before they dump you.”

  This is the singular sentiment that escalates intragroup tension to violence: Reflexive fear of violence. This acts in conjunction with the very human tendencies to evaluate threats and generalize based on pattern-recognition. Meanwhile, people really cannot avoid creating the very in-group and out-group categories that are so frequently the very cause of enmity- between groups. Our tendency to create these strong associations is so overpowering that we cannot even speak in terms that exclude them.

  Oh, I’m sorry, I’m supposed to say something simple and contemptuous and thoughtless like, “*Sigh*…religion”

• [Tdawwg]

  The soul of tribalism. Should come in handy for tomorrow’s Beowulf lecture, thanks!

• [Anonymous]

  God bless modern technology. Never before has there been the potential for civilizations to be overthrown in 160 characters or less. God bless humanity, whose hair trigger reactive nature can be swayed by a text message.

  Oh wait, did I say “bless”? I meant “help us all”.

• [jphilby]

  Any simple tool can be used as a weapon. The barbarity is in the mind of the barbarian.

  We of the US can now kill indiscriminately from 7500 miles away using drones. This technological feat is not an indicator of superior humanity.

  Most human beings don’t think up things like this. But so long as they can be manipulated into consenting to trade their humanity for mere survival, or the illusion of power, they will never be allowed to be free, and none of us will ever know peace.

• [Marcel]

  And how is this a different attitude from Uncle Larry shouting at the birthday party that they should bomb the Hell out of Iran?