lafergar
For God's sake many , many people suffer hideous trauma, including the loss of a child.
Does that make them incite violence against people in shared accomodation? At a time when a cool head was needed.
Its insane.
It is. I think most people who post on SM a lot will have said things they've regretted. I know I have. Sometimes people have had a few drinks, sometimes they are in a bad mood, sometimes the person they are replying to has rubbed them up the wrong way, and there are some extremely antagonistic people in some parts of the internet.
If the forum they are posting on allows, they can delete or edit their posts, and if not, depending on their personality they might apologise, or lie low for a while. Some double down and insist they are right, and others reinvent themselves and come back under a new name.
If the site is moderated, people get suspended, or, if they sail close to the legal wind might even get banned if they ignore warnings.
I have been round the block a few times when it comes to discussion boards. I've posted, moderated and been admin, but I have never come even slightly close to seeing someone advocate burning people alive in their place of refuge. This wasn't 'just' a distressed woman mourning her lost child. It wasn't 'just' a maudlin or argumentative drunk, or someone with some sort of personality disorder (although all of those things may have also applied). It was a vicious, racist incitement to violence and murder, and it was rightly dealt with by the law.
The fact that LC was a mother is not relevant, and the fact that she is a councillor's wife is even less so. She knew her post was racist, and said she didn't care. She knew she could be prosecuted, and said she would 'play the MH card'. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was doing it at a time when emotions were running high already, because of misinformation about the man who murdered those poor little girls.
Suggesting that mothers who lose children are prone to that sort of behaviour is an insult to the many women who suffer their losses without inciting others to murder. Luckily, the ones who manage not to behave as LC did form the vast majority of bereaved mothers.