Death in the Digital Age: When Hit List Go Viral

Recent news of the mur­ders of three Columbian teenagers listed on a Facebook hitlist has brought to light the chang­ing scenery of life in the dig­i­tal age. In the days of Al Capone and Bugsy Seagal dis­cov­er­ing a hitlist took sev­eral man hours of police work and the intel­li­gence of the FBI. Not any­more.

As fast as you can log in to Twitter crim­i­nals are engag­ing in forms of cyber-​terrorism. Making it known to tens, hun­dreds, or even thou­sands of fol­low­ers on social net­works exactly what their inten­tions are. All behind the per­ceived invis­i­bil­ity screen of the inter­net. Playing a game of Catch-​me-​if-​you-​can with offi­cials and intended vic­tims.

These actions have made a nat­ural pro­gres­sion and grown in inten­sity as social net­work­ing has become a more inte­grated part of soci­ety.

What began about wor­ries over cyber­bul­ly­ing to sex­ual deviants prey­ing on chil­dren has turned into another piece of turf in the world’s vio­lent land­scape.

While most stu­dents who tar­get other stu­dents lack the savvy to remove all traces of who they are in their attacks on other kids some of the most vio­lent offend­ers now have the tech­no­log­i­cal know how to make threats with­out leav­ing a dig­i­tal trail. So when threats are made it is unknown if they are legit or purely hoaxes.

This not only applies to indi­vid­u­als seek­ing to hurt oth­ers. In greater num­bers peo­ple who com­mit sui­cide have left their final state­ment to friends, fam­ily and fol­low­ers on social net­works that have even­tu­ally gone on to be tweeted, shared and posted all around the web.

Cries for help have been echoed through the key­boards of pop­u­lar sites have been treated as jokes even to the point of read­ers of such notes egging on the sui­ci­dal to carry out the act.

Some have even gone as far as com­mit­ting sui­cide before a live audi­ence.

Yes indeed, death in the dig­i­tal age has trans­formed into a pub­lic spec­ta­cle on all lev­els. The purely unmanned nature of the web has allowed for it. Media out­lets thrive on the sto­ries that come out of it and crim­i­nals etch a place in infamy just like in the days of the old mob­sters.

Technology has brought many pos­i­tive changes to soci­ety along with the neg­a­tives. What will be done to stop the internet’s evo­lu­tion into the world’s global hos­tile envi­ron­ment?

Thanks for read­ing,