Darkness on the Edge of (Online) Town

I'm doing my project on internet forums, so I naturally read the wikipedia page about them that was linked from the social software article that we were assigned. The main example that I'll be drawing from is the forums at somethingawful.com. As I browsed through wikipedia, I came across this article about a former poster on that forum who killed two people and then himself over what most of us would deem a trivial slight. Apparently, he had posted on somethingawful and other forums about the incident and his plans for revenge, even asking for and receiving information about where to buy ammunition on the forums.

What I find most disturbing about this story is that it indicates that "social" software is only really social in a limited way. What I've been able to read about the case indicates that William Freund's online expressions of his various problems and his plans to take violent action were not taken seriously and he was the subject of some fierce derision. A user (lowfreq50) on one of the forums (Wrong Planet) that he frequented writes "Did anyone here realize how bad he really was? I didn't pay much attention to his posts. I think a re-read is in order. There were some signs, him talking about guns and how much damage he could do." This post points to a basic disconnection that is endemic to this particular form of social software. The thoughts that someone expresses on a forum seem not to be seen as connected to the real world, and often they are not. The very anonymity of this sort of communication encourages people to express their most personal feelings, and it also encourages people to respond in the most vicious of ways. I doubt that William Freund's online tormenters would have reacted to him in the same way if they were communicating with him with face to face. Having spent considerable time browsing forums as research for my project, I am struck by the degree to which online discourse is divorced from the real emotional consequences that form the basis of fully social communication.

William Freund apparently felt no qualms about premeditating his crime online, and those that he was interacting with felt no qualms about dismissing him. According to the articles I've found about his case, Freund had Asperger's Syndrome and therefore great diffficulty with social interaction, which extended into his online interactions as well. To me this, along with Freund's ultimate actions illustrates the fallacy of the notion that online discourse can outrun the real lives of its participants. It may create an alternative social scene, but every now and then, something like this happens and punctures the online bubble.