The author tries to take a correlation ("crazy people say crazy things online") and argue it's causation ("crazy things online make people go crazy in real life").

We've seen this argument a million times before with the boogeyman du jour. For example: heavy metal and video games caused Columbine.

The problem is that violent crime has dropped as internet use has gone up. And violent crime has also dropped since social media first became a thing. So even if this is "a thing" -- it's not a widespread trend.

Personally I don't think the medium matters. If Columbine or Ruby Ridge or Waco or Oklahoma City or 9/11 happened today, I'm sure all of these people would have some sort of social media trail for us to look at and say, "a ha, this is why this person was radicalized!" followed by, "Twitter and Facebook and Google need to do a better job censoring their platforms."

Charlie Warzel writing on Buzzfeed reacting to recent events he has read about online complete with a ridiculous click bait headline epitomizes everything that's wrong with the confusion between 'news', 'opinion' and even 'satire' in our blurred world of 'feeds' and information overload.

Free speech and investigative reporting and writing is essential in a functioning democracy. This is the former but just an inflammatory opinion piece. ('Why toxic online behavior is spilling into the streets').

Online is real life and there’s not a significant difference between someone making death threats online or over the phone or through the mail and I wish law enforcement would take it more seriously and start jailing people and not just laughing it off.

It’ll only take throwing a few obnoxious kids into big boy prison for making terroristic threats before the ‘pranksters’ stop doing it and we’re left with the real crazies.

BuzzFeed is part of the toxic behavior we see online.

Given the definition of crazy = someone who lost connection to the reality. If you don't agree with somebody on the reality, how do you tell who is the crazy one? Is it possible that the majority is crazy?

From buzzfeed “news”. The pot calling the kettle black.

A lot of this is because with the rise of the internet we've seen that it's become easier to push people into these conspiratorial narratives. Before it was largely limited to relatively local radio shows but now you have large media sources spreading not-so-subtle news about how the Jews are ruining America or the deep state controlling your lives.

We see these charlatans spreading vile bigotry and hatred, often directly resulting in the harm of innocent people. People spreading narratives that school shootings don't actually exist. The overall audience these people can reach has grown dramatically and the problem is that it's similar to cult behavior. You can't actually beat them with facts or through arguments. At a certain point we're going to need to face this problem head on and treat it as a proper cult.