Is Everything Broken?

Internet Fraud, Raging Teens, Fake Shooters, and Real Shooters

Apr 17, 2023

When I rang the doorbell outside the police department on the second floor of Borough Hall to file a fraud report, a middle aged woman eventually emerged to say that the police were all busy with an emergency and that I had to come back later.

Five minutes later, my mom chat group exploded. They reported that cops were frisking students and searching lockers at our high school, after a phone call reported a threat. In the end, there were no guns or shooters, but the school and community were traumatized for the afternoon.

Still downtown, I scrolled through the texts and Facebook conversations with shock. Some students shared videos of themselves hiding under desks, as cops holding machine guns swept the room. (I posted the videos here.)

Real shooting incidents get tons of attention, which is appropriate. Kids die, and we need better gun laws. But how many fake shooting events happen in our country? Yes, nobody died today, but this event was frightening to teachers, students, and families. Every day, schools across the country must be dealing with these traumatic events, which never make the news.

Because I knew the crisis was over, I went back to police department to file a fraud complaint. For my weekend Etsy book business, I sold $1,400 books to a guy, who later came to my house and loaded up his van with hundreds of my books. One month later, he told Etsy that I never gave him any books, and they removed $1,400 from my bank account.

While waiting for the police to make copies of my records, I talked with a woman, who was victimized by a scumbag that she met on Tinder. After dating for a few months, he almost convinced her elderly mother to buy him a house. The woman figured out his hustle before that transaction took place, but she still lost thousands of dollars to him.

Every day, I hear some new horror story involving teens with mental health or behavioral issues. They are trashing the local mall, calling in false reports of shooters, and kicking in doors on my block for some TikTok challenge.

The Internet is a swamp with sharks looking for suckers. My parents are afraid to open their emails and respond to phone calls. We give them instructions about how to keep themselves safe, but even we fall prey to scammers from time to time. I had to change all my passwords this weekend after I accidentally called a service camouflaging as the Etsy Helpdesk.

AOL, Gmail, Facebook, Blogger, Instagram, Twitter — I’ve always been the first person to sign up for accounts and to figure out all all the features. I’m not walking away after my recent scam, but I’m being more thoughtful about the time that I spend online. I might prefer the calmer version of Twitter that Substack just set up; the Russian bots haven’t found it yet.

All that chaos on the Internet and in our schools feels very end-of-the-world-y. Should we start prepping?

We all did a little food hording and gardening during the pandemic, but maybe the crisis isn’t entirely over. Sure, nobody is wearing masks anymore or checking the local death numbers, but there’s a new toxic virus in the air. Should we go back to our country cabins with cans of beans and stacks of toilet paper? Tempting, but probably not the best plan.

Instead, we need to go back to maintaining laws of behavior on the Internet and in our neighborhoods. Rules, behavior, and consequences are seen as right-wing concepts, but they’re not. No democracy or healthy civilization can exist without laws and mutually agreed upon standards of behavior. The left needs laws, too. Without some bipartisan support for good behavior, it’s all going to fall apart.