In February of this year, Justin Carter made a joke. It was a bad joke, in exceptionally poor taste, as the then 18-year-old made a comment about shooting up a school in a Facebook comment, replying to someone who said he was "messed up in the head." Now, the Texas teenager is charged with making a "terroristic threat" and could face up to ten years in jail for the comment.
Let it be known that what Carter did was incredibly stupid. The comment would be in poor taste at any point, but this was very soon after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which meant that people were still on edge about the subject. He was trying to shock through the comment, part of a larger online argument, and those tend to get quite stupid quite quickly. He likely didn't realize just how much he could shock, and he has been in prison since.
On one hand, it's easy to see why he was being investigated. It was a time when people took such threats seriously, and nobody wanted another Sandy Hook. Then again, no weapons were found in his home, and in context it's clear that it's just a teenager saying stupid things on the internet, seemingly oblivious to the fact that what he types might have consequences. Now, he's in jail, for making a bad joke.
Which is not to say that what Carter did was okay, he did the online equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theatre. But, he's not the only one to make tasteless comments online. Take a trip to a popular site like Youtube and you get hundreds, if not thousands, of comments which are of similarly poor taste. It makes one think that a case like Carter's was inevitable, as people seemingly say things with no realization that there is someone on the other end of the line, and that person might honestly believe he intended to do what his comment said. There's this sense that people don't realize that their words could have consequences, or that people are simply unaware of how people could interpret their words.
The issue here is that people don't realize the impact of what they're actually saying. A joke that might play in a certain group of people could be easily misinterpreted. The problem is, in the online space, there are not as many social cues to indicate when people have gone too far. Many people will break out their most offensive material because they think they can get away with it, the relative anonymity and the lack of direct feedback making it feel safe to be as offensive as possible. That is why you see people who are normally calm and sane often become terrible people online, the social environment that filters out their bad ideas is removed, and they say things without thought to the way people react.
While I don't think Carter should be in prison for a bad joke, as I do not believe he had any intent on harming an elementary school, I think he does remind us of the importance of choosing our words carefully. Jokes that would fly in some contexts don't work in all of them, and provoking people who are already on edge often does not end well. If there's a lesson to be taken from this case, it's that we must consider our words online just like we would in any other public space, because it's easy for others to hear what they're saying. Like our regular life, we need to consider what everyone else thinks too.
