PADUCAH, Ky. — Self-proclaimed internet detective Ralph “RurualSherlock” Jenkins managed to only wreak havoc on the lives of three completely innocent individuals before promptly abandoning…
For years whenever my coworker or I fucked up really bad, we’d reference that. “We did it, reddit!” when it was our own fuckup or “Look at this backpack” with a picture of theirs. Man, what a fiasco that whole thing was.
It’s been so long, can someone remind me how this fiasco turned out? You can ELI5 if that makes it easier. I remember it having to do something with a bombing during, was it the Boston marathon? And then this blurry picture of a guy’s face kept popping up in threads for years.
Yes the Boston Marathon bombings. The police found the backpack(s) and reddit went on a crusade looking at footage and photos from before the explosion…identifying at least one person who had a similar backpack and declaring them the bomber. Then, of course, came trying to ID them. I’m pretty sure they figured out who one of them was but - shocker - it wasn’t him. Neither of the actual bombers were even on reddit’s suspect list.
As much as I like to make fun of it, at the time I was really hyped on the idea of a thousand strangers coming together to help. It would have been a really cool ending to the store if reddit actually helped but the whole thing was soured by people taking it too far by putting names to their “suspects”
The guy who Reddit suspected was a guy who had committed suicide before the bombing happened. The sad thing is that people were harassing his family after Reddit accused the guy until the FBI revealed who actually did it.
They harassed the guy’s family on the Facebook page they had set up to look for him because he had gone missing.
EDIT: Also, once the actual perpetrators were identified, some users tried to excuse their appalling behaviour by blaming the innocent man for “acting suspicious.”
For years whenever my coworker or I fucked up really bad, we’d reference that. “We did it, reddit!” when it was our own fuckup or “Look at this backpack” with a picture of theirs. Man, what a fiasco that whole thing was.
It’s been so long, can someone remind me how this fiasco turned out? You can ELI5 if that makes it easier. I remember it having to do something with a bombing during, was it the Boston marathon? And then this blurry picture of a guy’s face kept popping up in threads for years.
Yes the Boston Marathon bombings. The police found the backpack(s) and reddit went on a crusade looking at footage and photos from before the explosion…identifying at least one person who had a similar backpack and declaring them the bomber. Then, of course, came trying to ID them. I’m pretty sure they figured out who one of them was but - shocker - it wasn’t him. Neither of the actual bombers were even on reddit’s suspect list.
As much as I like to make fun of it, at the time I was really hyped on the idea of a thousand strangers coming together to help. It would have been a really cool ending to the store if reddit actually helped but the whole thing was soured by people taking it too far by putting names to their “suspects”
The guy who Reddit suspected was a guy who had committed suicide before the bombing happened. The sad thing is that people were harassing his family after Reddit accused the guy until the FBI revealed who actually did it.
They harassed the guy’s family on the Facebook page they had set up to look for him because he had gone missing.
EDIT: Also, once the actual perpetrators were identified, some users tried to excuse their appalling behaviour by blaming the innocent man for “acting suspicious.”