# Conspiracy theorists who target survivors of gun massacres. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 20, 2016, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891 "2016-06-20T15:41:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Azeotrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/0ea827/32.png) [@Azeotrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Azeotrope)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/21 "2016-06-22T14:24:19Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Also when are we as a people going to quit judging people’s grief? Everyone grieves in certain ways but if we don’t prostrate ourselves sobbing before the cameras every moment we are instantly judged. Husbands and wives who don’t cry and try to have some modicum of dignity are judged to be guilty immediately. If you have a moment of laughter you are clearly a crisis actor. If you hire a lawyer immediately - even though that is absolutely the prudent thing to do, and the smartest - you are judged to be guilty. Yep, It’s like compassion is dead. Look at the mother of the kid who got into the gorilla enclosure, getting fucking death threats online, or the parents of the kid who was killed by the alligator. The internet queefed out countless variations of “you should have done something. It’s your fault for not watching your kids. You’re a bad parent. That’d never happen to MY kids.” Besides making the victims of a tragedy available to every whacko in the world, the internet makes it way too easy for these cruel, judgemental people to find a voice. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/22 "2016-06-22T14:29:33Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > It’s denial. One of the things that the dad posted about in that Cracked article was most of the people who were harassing him were parents of children themselves, and it was a sort of desperate denial that someone could look a six year old child in the eyes and murder him. So if it never happened, if it was fake, they didn’t have to worry about it. > > Also when are we as a people going to quit judging people’s grief? Everyone grieves in certain ways but if we don’t prostrate ourselves sobbing before the cameras every moment we are instantly judged. Husbands and wives who don’t cry and try to have some modicum of dignity are judged to be guilty immediately. If you have a moment of laughter you are clearly a crisis actor. If you hire a lawyer immediately - even though that is absolutely the prudent thing to do, and the smartest - you are judged to be guilty. > > I read Gone Girl as an indictment on our society, that we all rush to judgment as soon as we hear anything. I wish loss on no one, but I don’t think you can guarantee how you will act when you have something completely heartrending and terrifying happen to you. And I don’t begrudge that guy for a moment for finding something to laugh at at such a horrible tragedy. Your first paragraph. Yes, there’s that too, the need to control the situation. The idea of a seemingly random act of violence like that is terrifying, if anyone can be the victim of that _they_ could be next; in a twisted way, concocting elaborate narratives of vague but nefarious plots to do some evil act makes things seem less scary, the good thing about taking the reins of the narrative of an event is that it gives them some sort of control over it. ---
**Author:** ![mtomm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@mtomm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mtomm)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/23 "2016-06-22T15:01:42Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > For those unaware, [this](https://youtu.be/1EArjNnrpbk) is a crisis actor. I know people who know this family and attended the funeral of their daughter. To claim otherwise about their loss is sadistic. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/24 "2016-06-22T15:54:53Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > It’s denial. One of the things that the dad posted about in that Cracked article was most of the people who were harassing him were parents of children themselves, and it was a sort of desperate denial that someone could look a six year old child in the eyes and murder him. So if it never happened, if it was fake, they didn’t have to worry about it. It’s also one of the reasons for things like **Urbanredneck** ’s display on the vaxxed thread. For him, having a target to blame for his son’s autism (and one that’s a shapeless blob, one that doesn’t have first and last names, but which has a name) makes it somewhat less scary than accepting that sometimes shit goes and happens and that no parent can protect his child from every single evil thing out there. There are people who read Biblical admonitions about “the consequences of sin being paid for seven generations” (heavily paraphrased) not as a warning to be careful about the unexpected consequences of your choices, but as an excuse to decide that when anything bad happens to someone (someone who is not themselves or their own child) it’s because their great-great-aunt-by-marriage once looked at the postman with lust in her heart. It’s a very unhealthy mental mechanism, specially when it’s then used to hurt those who cannot defend themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/25 "2016-06-22T15:58:17Z")
> [@Azeotrope](#): > > Yep, It’s like compassion is dead. Look at the mother of the kid who got into the gorilla enclosure, getting fucking death threats online, or the parents of the kid who was killed by the alligator. The internet queefed out countless variations of “you should have done something. It’s your fault for not watching your kids. You’re a bad parent. That’d never happen to MY kids.” > > Besides making the victims of a tragedy available to every whacko in the world, the internet makes it way too easy for these cruel, judgemental people to find a voice. In the past if you wanted to be a bully you at least had to be big and tough enough to physically hurt someone and risk the chance of running into someone who could take care of themselves. Now all it takes in a keyboard and an internet connection. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/26 "2016-06-23T22:00:06Z")
> [@Azeotrope](#): > > Yep, It’s like compassion is dead. Look at the mother of the kid who got into the gorilla enclosure, getting fucking death threats online, or the parents of the kid who was killed by the alligator. The internet queefed out countless variations of “you should have done something. It’s your fault for not watching your kids. You’re a bad parent. That’d never happen to MY kids.” > > Besides making the victims of a tragedy available to every whacko in the world, the internet makes it way too easy for these cruel, judgemental people to find a voice. > **[Just-world fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)** > > The just-world fallacy, or just-world hypothesis, is the cognitive bias that assumes that "people get what they deserve" – that actions will necessarily have morally fair and fitting consequences for the actor. For example, the assumptions that noble actions will eventually be rewarded and evil actions will eventually be punished fall under this fallacy. In other words, the just-world fallacy is the tendency to attribute consequences to—or expect consequences as the result of— either a universal ... Lots of people delude themselves that as long as they are morally upright, the bad things in life will not befall them. Hence victim blaming. However that was always an issue, it is just that now people have an outlet for it. ---
**Author:** ![eulalia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eulalia/32/457_2.png) [@eulalia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eulalia)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/27 "2016-06-24T07:40:40Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > For those unaware, [this](https://youtu.be/1EArjNnrpbk) is a crisis actor. My Dad died Sunday. The memorial service was today, and our huge family were all alternately laughing and crying all day. Would you say we were acting? ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/28 "2016-06-24T07:45:58Z")
As I asked in another thread, do any of these people acknowledge ANY modern mass shooting as real? ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/29 "2016-06-24T11:03:06Z")
> [@eulalia](#): > > My Dad died Sunday. The memorial service was today, and our huge family were all alternately laughing and crying all day. Would you say we were acting? Where’s your Facebook donation fund? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/30 "2016-06-24T11:45:14Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Where’s your Facebook donation fund? So, do you believe all the families of massacre victims are faking it, or just those with donation funds? Reprehensible. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/31 "2016-06-24T15:14:04Z")
Honestly, I didn’t think that anyone on here would try to defend this kind of behavior. Apparently I was mistaken. ---
**Author:** ![Uncle\_Jocko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uncle_jocko/32/2932_2.png) [@Uncle\_Jocko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncle_Jocko)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/32 "2016-06-24T15:31:00Z")
Forget it, Jake … it’s **Stringbean** -town. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/33 "2016-06-24T15:31:18Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Honestly, I didn’t think that anyone on here would try to defend this kind of behavior. Apparently I was mistaken. And we Dopers are practically an intellectual elite compared to the general population. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/34 "2016-06-24T17:06:51Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > For those unaware, [this](https://youtu.be/1EArjNnrpbk) is a crisis actor. So he’s a “crisis actor” because you don’t believe in his grief, or he doesn’t react in a way believable to you? Take a minute to think about it \_ a full minute. If you’re right, then “truthers” are exposing fraud or political scams or whatever. \* But what if you’re wrong?\* If this is just an example of human behavior you don’t understand in the face of tremendous, overwhelming tragedy, then the truthers are attacking a person who just lost a loved one. They’re attacking grieving parents who had to bury a 6 year old child. For absolutely no reason. It’s disgusting. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/35 "2016-06-24T18:24:44Z")
I don’t see how any of them can think that their theories make any sense. They’ve harassed people on the phone and at their homes. That means that it’s known where they live. Surely their neighbors would know that they had a child living with them for years and that child is no longer there. If the child never existed, someone would have said something by now. Do they pay off or threaten entire neighborhoods and extended families? What about school districts, and tax authorities? They claim that the same people appear in videos of different incidents. Wouldn’t the perpetrators use different people or at least change their appearance (hair color, beards, glasses, makeup, etc.). We’re supposedly talking about a government or group that has almost total control of the media and yet continually makes the same mistakes, even after they’ve been called on it. How does that make any sense? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/36 "2016-06-24T19:05:01Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > For those unaware, [this](https://youtu.be/1EArjNnrpbk) is a crisis actor. If this were the Pit I would… Oh, it is. You are the most loathsome piece of shit I have seen on this board who wasn’t banned on his first day. You sicken me. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/37 "2016-06-24T19:48:37Z")
BTW, this “crisis actor” bullshit has been going on long enough that both [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_actor) and [RationalWiki](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crisis_actor) have pages on it. From the latter: “Although “crisis actors” are a real thing used for disaster drills, and there are real companies that supply them, the use by conspiracy theorists is significantly different.[1][2]” From the former: > [@](#): > > Robbie Parker, the father of Sandy Hook shooting victim Emilie Parker – after doing a CNN interview on the day after the shooting – became the target of conspiracy theorists, who claimed the interview was staged.[1] Parker has been attacked by theorists who believe he is a “crisis actor” and was “getting into character” before going on CNN to grieve over the loss of his child.[2][3] So **Stringbean’s** choice of Robbie Parker as an example is not original. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/38 "2016-06-24T19:51:03Z")
Also from the RationalWiki page: > [@](#): > > Disturbingly, some of these assholes took to naming and harassing individuals whom they perceived as possible crisis actors. Ordinary citizens who had been interviewed at Sandy Hook, or done what they could to help survivors and the distraught community, found not only their media interviews but their private lives and Facebook profiles under hostile scrutiny and their privacy invaded with aggressive telephone calls and hate mail. Most famous is the case of Gene Rosen, a local resident who, on the day of the Sandy Hook massacre, had looked after six children who fled the school. He was interviewed many times during the media coverage of the shootings. As the Sandy Hook “truther” movement picked up momentum, Rosen quickly became identified by various bloggers and conspiracy pundits as a crisis actor, and suffered sustained campaigns of online and real life harassment.[6] I remember reading about Rosen being harrassed in this way not long after the massacre. And all the dude did was give shelter to some small terrified children who knocked on his door. ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/39 "2016-06-24T21:16:04Z")
> [@eulalia](#): > > My Dad died Sunday. The memorial service was today, and our huge family were all alternately laughing and crying all day. Would you say we were acting? I’m sorry for your loss. My dad died last week as well. /hijack ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891/40 "2016-06-24T21:34:27Z")
> [@eulalia](#): > > My Dad died Sunday. The memorial service was today, and our huge family were all alternately laughing and crying all day. Would you say we were acting? I don’t think I’ve ever been to a funeral or memorial service where people didn’t laugh at some point. In another thread I shared the story of my grandmother’s funeral during which her coffin broke open when it dropped to the bottom of the grave and her body (in a shroud, it wasn’t awful) fell partway out. My dad’s cousin looked down and said “She just had to come see what everybody’s making a fuss about”. “Crisis actors” my ass. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theorists-who-target-survivors-of-gun-massacres/757891.md?page=3)