Over at Tweetage Wasteland, Dave Pell considers the firehouse of misinformation, theories, and bullshit that was instantly unleashed online and erroneously "confirmed" by the mainstream media after the Newtown massacre:
Did you hear the shooter's name was Ryan? Isn't it shocking that his mother worked at the school where the shootings took place? Can you believe that she was the teacher in the classroom where all those kids were killed?
Things get emotional on that stoop. Guesses become facts. Hunches become certainties. Details are shared with such adamance that they are accompanied by proclamations of their broader meaning in the grand scheme of things. We're well on to metaphors before we know what actually happened.
It's always been that way out here on the stoop. We need a place to be together now and we can worry about being right later. Our digital gathering is more crowded than its analog precursor, but it's still, at the core, the same basic conversation
