The Arizona Killer Prank That Caused Ridiculous Controversy & Website Shutdowns

January 15, 2011 :Oh boy, where to begin with this one…

Above are screen shots of the prank that will give you an idea of what went down over at Facebook. I’ll dive into that in a moment, but I’m first going to go in a few directions that was inspired from things I saw online this past week. Being locked out of my Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & this website gave me extra time to come across some interesting things – the latter will tie into my final points.

Just an observation. How do you go from being a harmless & innocent looking kid to a few years later having your name on google images produce this bone chilling goosebumps popping result? Just thought this was worth sharing.

Wait. Seriously. I’m not even going to begin to try & analyze WTF is going on with that transformation. It seems beyond complex. Let’s just let this picture evolution I diagrammed do the talking:

 

The 6 Victims That Died

Alright, enough light material. No more laughing at the visuals. I’m putting my thoughts together as I reflect on my actions of a week ago. A 9 year old girl who was born into terror on 9/11/2001 died in terror on 1/8/2011 by the hands of a crazed gunman, who also killed 4 others including a federal judge, as well as seriously wounding Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by shooting her in the head.

What did I do? Look, I didn’t sit & plan the prank. It wasn’t premeditated. It was an in the moment, seize an opportunity instinct that was as natural for a highly motivated & always business minded individual like myself as it was for the “heroes” that tackled the psycho path as he reloaded to kill more people. I happened to be sitting at home, watching the Seahawks/Bears NFL pregame show, & seeing the name “Jared Loughner” released as the name of the gunman. I knew a handful of sentences worth of what was going on – literally had only briefly scanned an article – when I simply thought “Peeps are going to look for this idiot online” so without thinking any further – I made a facebook page for the dude. I actually tried to make a second one for him a few minutes later, but by then the facebook system had already caught on to the media’s release (something new to me that FB does that) & it said “Jared Loughner” name was not a permitted name LOL. So with the one that did get through (that’s how fast I jumped on the news release about his name) I made everything private except linking myself as a relative, & listed DollarScholar.com as a website on the page so that that was all there was to see. Within the hour, reporters were messaging me. I found the NY Times message amusing because they didn’t remember who I was, like seriously!? My name should ring a bell. I only made national news back in the day, & the NY Times did a few front page stories, & my cousin is Maria Bartiromo & the NY Times reports on the financial industry that she’s a player of!!! So I took their message & posted it on my Facebook Wall. Two things were happening. First the Jared Loughner page was sparking reactions from all sorts of people finding it necessary to send him personal messages all of intense extreme nature. I mean, even a week after the shooting people were still sending messages to Jared as if he were actually going to read them. There is one disturbing message from a girl who praises Jared’s actions. There are a few very strange ones. Then there were the messages I got either from peeps thinking I really was his cousin – so they were saying to die, and threatening me every which way, texting & calling with death threats – & there were the peeps knowing I was tricking them after seeing my wall & also telling me I deserve to die for the pathetic, disgusting, shameful joke. Well some of those messages to Jared or to me are HERE. As for my facebook wall, an ensuing war of words broke out as strangers from around the world came to my page from Jared’s page (cuz they thought they were such smart little detectives clicking the only profile on Jared’s friend list) & all excited that they were onto something big like tracking down the killer’s family to talk shit, threaten, make death threats, harass, etc ONLY to be disappointed by seeing my brand new wall posting mocking the NY Times. What followed was half the world spewing venom fueled purely on their disappointment that they weren’t so clever after all to find Jared Loughner or his family so they threw their pent up anger at me with “disgusting“, “reprehensible“, trying to capitalize off this tragedy“, “shame on you“, etc. You seriously would have thought I was the killer at that point. The other half gave praise & compliments saying the little stunt was clever, amusing, funny, whatever. See, my network appreciates the different ways I go about entertaining & informing them of the news. Oh no, I can hear it now “you get entertainment out of this tragedy!?”NO, but what do you call it when you read articles or watch news stories of crimes, trials, natural disasters? What is that motivation your feeling that compels you to continue being informed by it? Your intrigued, interested, “entertained”, getting “enjoyment” out of it? We all do things we don’t enjoy doing, but I don’t think reading articles or watching news stories falls into that category, so if your doing it then it’s a hobby, and we don’t do hobbies unless we are getting “enjoyment” or “entertainment” out of it, right? This whole topic is totally taboo, but you will admit I’m right. We don’t wish tragedy, but we all have a morbid curiosity of this stuff like a crash scene that causes traffic because everyone is slowing down to look. You want your 3 seconds money’s worth for putting up with the delay by seeing a scene. Don’t deny it.

Point is, I capitalized from it no more then everyone else involved did. The media who reported on it got higher ratings, sold higher valued advertisement time slots & changed the headline of the same damn article 10 times just to get the same people clicking again & again to fool their advertisers for double, triple the hits. All parties from the conservatives, liberals, democrats, republicans & independents took advantage of the tragedy to capitalize on public support, opinion, & financially by accusing each other with attacks of blame. Before the 6 dead victims were even laid to rest – literally 2 days after the shooting – “the conservative Tea Party Express issued a fundraising appeal that said the accused gunman’s actions in the months leading to the shooting were “more consistent with Blame America First Liberals, not the tea party movement.” A day later, Senate Democrat Bernie Sanders started fundraising off of the shooting by citing it for sympathy in his email blast with a DONATE NOW box at the top of it, then accusing Sara Palin & Congresswoman Gifford’s opponents. Of course, Palin’s irresponsible map of her political targets shown with cross hairs over them, compounded by Congresswoman Gifford’s own premonitions about her safety because of them, drew the wrath of the blame from opposing parties in efforts to gain momentum & power for themselves &/or their groups.

I’m beginning to realize the fact that I’m a felon just puts a big target on my head for ignorant hater’s wrath to just say the same mindless comments to me over & over whenever they need to put down whatever it is I’m doing. In this case it was “Your just back to your old scamming again aren’t you.” What!? How!? Ugh. From now on I’m just going to shake my head & smile if I can resist the temptation to argue back. I could have been one of the two men that tackled Jared Loughner, & done some interviews like they did, but if it was me – “Oh he’s capitalizing from the tragedy“. Yeaaaa, capitalizing from being a hero. I must have intentionally set out to become a hero. “He planned the tackle“. I can totally see my haters saying that. LOL. It’s a lose lose for me. Yea the prank was in bad taste, maybe classless, but as I’ve made my case, plenty more higher ups to say the same damn things about x 1000 so it in no way deserved the attacks & hate it got from half, but thanks to the supports who continue to have my back.

Last noteworthy example & visual…So first, look at this screen shot:

ESPN Streak Contest offering Iran vs Iraq

Tuesday morning (3 days after the shooting) I was on the ESPN Streak Contest website & some material I stumbled across inspired me for the final point of this entry. On this particular day, the first sports option to pick was a Soccer game between Iran & Iraq. Now I don’t think ESPN realized the political sensitivity & undertones this friggn’ soccer game involved to so many to incite such an outrageous backlash of both comical jokes & disgusting prejudice (depending on your view & sense of humor). Usually ESPN offers regular games like Celtics vs Lakers, oh I don’t know, Blackhawks vs Panthers, hmmm Patriots vs Raiders, umm Who will score more points – Kobe Bryant or Lebron James. Get the point? So what you end up having is a sports related uneventful discussion of postings for each game, but oh MY GOSH not for this one. You just have to see it to believe what transpired on the discussion for this game. I seriously felt the way ESPN moderators must have felt when they became under attack for offering the Iran/Iraq soccer game as an option to pick for your streak contest. Its-a-soccer-game lol and yet people swore ESPN was capitalizing off of the tragedy & lost lives of our men & women serving our country BY OFFERING THIS GAME AS A FU@#*!%& OPTION!

A sample of the ridiculous accusations is the box to the left, & to the right is the entire discussion thread which is the greatest non sports thread for a sports game ever.

Pure entertainment. Oops, “entertainment”. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I “enjoy” reading jokes about Iran/Iraq as terrorists running around dodging landmines & the losing goalie getting beheaded or I’d be “capitalizing” off of the tragedies that are going on over there with our soldiers. Oh & FYI, if your curious, DollarScholar.com got a 8000% spike in traffic from normal activity the Saturday the fake Jared Loughner page was made with a link to here, & a 6000% on Sunday. It then slowly dwindled back down to normal levels…

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