How Threatening Airlines Became the Latest Twitter Trend
It’s not exactly breaking news, but here's something that current events have recently proven: teenagers do stupid things. Though not entirely their fault — considering their brains aren’t yet developed for impulse control — the Internet doesn’t help. For young people who act without thinking of the consequences, social media is a gingerbread house in the forest of bad ideas, as we’ve discussed on the site before. It only takes a few seconds for kids to do something online that they might regret for years to come. That includes making terrorist threats to airlines...which is the hottest social media craze with kids.
It all started on Sunday where a user with the handle @QueenDemetriax_ (the account is currently suspended) sent a threatening tweet to the American Airlines account: “Hello my name’s Ibrahim and I’m from Afghanistan. I’m part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I’m gonna do something really big bye.” The social media savvy might recognize this as a prank immediately, but if you haven’t heard, airlines don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to terrorism. All potential threats are taken seriously, and this young friend is no exception. If anything, an example was made of her. The user (only identified as “Sarah”) was told that her IP address was being sent to the FBI. She immediately started back peddling hard enough to start a fire, but it didn’t help.
Sarah turned out to be a 14-year-old from Rotterdam, Netherlands. Monday morning, her arrest was confirmed by Dutch police, with further investigation pending.
Since then, the “fun” hasn’t stopped. While many other Twitter users have sent similar tweets to American Airlines as a form of protest of what they feel was an inappropriate response, more still have sent threats just for laughs - and to other airlines. Perhaps they’re banking on the notion of “They can’t arrest all of us” (which is decidedly untrue), or that they’re still ignorant as to how very easy it is to track down an anonymous user online if given good cause. Either way, this annoying trend is sure to make the social media space more difficult for the rest of us in the months to come.
The fake bomb threat isn’t a new phenomenon — back in the days where one might actually find and use a payphone, many sunny spring days had been spent on high school quads waiting for local police to do a full sweep of classrooms and lockers after a bogus call. But as technology has been more ubiquitous those ‘hilarious’ pranksters and their dangerous, time-wasting hobbies have been that much easier to find.
There have been other cases, where off-hand remarks, that were much more clearly meant as a joke, were greeted with a similar show of force by security officials. An English man named Paul Chambers was arrested on terrorism charges back in 2010 for tweeting out of frustration during inclement weather: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Is the response to these kinds of online comments uncalled for, or is it better to be safe than sorry when it comes to potential threats? How can we gauge who to take seriously when we’re dealing with strangers speaking without context, in a forum that moves so quickly? If you have trouble answering these questions, imagine being American Airlines’ social media manager. The takeaway here? No matter who you are, or what age you are, be very, very thoughtful of what you say online.
[Top pic via Flickr - Aero Icarus]
