Have a read of this one from the Washington Post. It’s an excellent example of how the medium of text messaging is truly taking root in the United States. If anyone ever tells you that America ‘is really far behind’, you would do well to point them to this article about small-town Augusta, Arkansas.
The reporter Jon Gambrell has done a good job of summarising the action in the first two paragraphs:
Rumors spread by cell phone text-messaging flew through a school after a student’s suicide, rumors that other kids planned to kill themselves, that students planned to bring weapons to school, that there was going to be “a shoot ’em up.” Panicked parents rushed to take their children home.
Jon goes on to explain that there had been a teenage suicide a few weeks previously — which some enterprising (?) student used apparently as an excuse to generate some panic and thus get out of the end of term exams. The captain of the Augusta Police Department was understandably less than impressed. Especially when he started getting phone calls from neighbouring police chiefs, who, having got wind of the ‘shooting’ asking if he needed assistance.
Blevins said the panic was initially spread by students who claimed said they had received threatening text messages.
“Of course, this never happened. It’s just more damn rumors,” Moore said. “Every kid down there has a cell phone and they just jibber-jabber, jibber-jabber.”
The article doesn’t say how the students’ parents got wind of the issue — one imagines they also received related text messages with similar messages. They didn’t hang about though..
Panicked parents headed to the campus, and by 10 a.m. only 25 students remained at the 335-pupil elementary school.
Incidents like these will lead to legislation criminalizing texting behavior intended to cause a panic. Is there a difference between a text rumor and yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater?