Forget all those pleas
for civility based on simple respect for other human beings. There's an even better reason to watch what you say about other people online: one of them might just snap and try to kill you. And
don't assume simple things like distance or sanity will protect you.
These are the lessons of the saga of Breana Greathouse, 25, who drove several hundred miles from Kansas City, Missouri
to Ottumwa, Iowa, to shoot a certain Forrest Jamison, whom she blamed for posting derogatory comments about her on the Internet. Fortunately her Midwestern odyssey, which the Coen Bros. might want to
consider adapting for the screen, ended in failure when she was arrested by Ottumwa police for waving her gun around like the unhinged maniac she is.
Also, they arrested her mom, Susan
Greathouse, 50, for threatening Jamison over the phone.
It's not clear just what Jamison said to provoke Greathouse to look up his address, arm herself, get in a car, and drive five
hours to kill him, but it must have been pretty bad. I searched for her name on Google and came up with a bunch of links to videos with unflattering titles, like "Breanna Greathouse of Kansas
City Gets Dissed UGHH," but the videos themselves had all been taken down.
Then I found what I believe may be the offending document -- a post on an online forum called
UndergroundHipHop.com, dated September 23, 2010, insulting "Breanna Greathouse" in terms so vile I can't bring myself to even allude to them in circumlocutory fashion. Needless to say,
this is just a hunch. But if you were looking for online comments that could plausibly make someone want to kill someone else, these fit the bill.
I'm not saying the murder attempt
was justified, of course, and there's clearly more to the story: Greathouse's brother told one local news station that his sister had endured years of teasing, and one of the links to an
insulting video (which had been taken down) alluded to supposed mental illness. Meanwhile the pacifist in me says "living well is the best revenge," but since this didn't seem to be
possible in this case, Greathouse opted for the next best thing: shoot the sumbitch.