Just for the Clicks

I didn’t have this on my writing agenda this morning but it feels ridiculous to ignore it.

One dead after shooting inside Columbia mall, police say, Rafael Escalera Montoto, Baltimore Banner

There was a shooting at the Mall yesterday. If you are reading this and you or someone you know was there your response is a personal one. Even those who are not physically harmed in these situations come away with a more invisible sort of trauma. My heart goes out to you.

But even if you were not there you probably already know. Shootings dominate news coverage and drive social media posts. They are more than frightening and upsetting: they generate more clicks. Clicks mean money. I’ve been watching the story wash through social media like a tidal wave.

Click, click, click.

In addition, shootings seem to open the door for people who wish to launch conspiracy theories, place blame, create spurious causal connections, or make predictions of doom. I find these to be unhelpful at best, outright destructive at worst. There’s so often a thread of “These bad things happen because of people that I don’t like” that runs throughout.

This means…

Everyone’s an armchair analyst.

I find myself feeling such gratitude for those who respond purely with sadness at the violence and goodwill towards those harmed or in danger.

Having an emotional response to a shooting is normal. Expressing feelings of fear, or sadness, or confusion is human and understandable. But using an act of violence in our community to forward personal animus is just a continuation of the violence.

What we know: there was a shooting at the mall. Someone died. There was a gun, a shooter, and a killing. We also know that shootings happen in every U.S. community. Most of them experience far more than we do. Those are facts.

Do we want to make that better? How? That would be a helpful conversation to have. Apparently that’s not the conversation some folks want to be a part of. Others are just making money off the clicks.

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