Stop buying this bullshit, people, and start asking the hard questions.
I’m writing this in the middle of a deadline-infused week, so this will probably be the shortest piece I ever write.
Yes, Sunil Tripathi was just found dead in the Providence River. Yes, he was horribly misidentified as the Boston bomber. But he disappeared on March 16, and the bombing occurred on April 15. Already, social media, including my Facebook feed are full of updates and tweets blaming Reddit for the death. I realise, yes, updates and tweets don’t exactly constitute scientific evidence, but they do indicate some sense of where conversations are going.
I realise there’s much hay to be made here, linking his death directly to the mis-identification, and that there are all kinds of neat and tidy little pieces to be written about race, ethnicity, and all the rest. But may I gently remind everyone that while all that may well have contributed to his death, there’s no proof that it did, and his body had been in the river for a long time.
May I also gently remind everyone that making the misidentification the exact cause of his death, when there’s no proof of anything, erases the complex reasons for his ongoing depression and mental state. Including, may I add, those that might well be related to his family. I have no proof that his family was un-supportive, and this is not an effort to malign it or his friends or his larger community. But could we please stop and ask why a seemingly successful young man should be driven to leave his life behind?
Stop buying this bullshit, people, and start asking the hard questions.
I’m seeing a lot of “the media killed Tripathi” posts: adding to that bullshit only compounds and gives more credibility to tenuous and facile, never-proven arguments.
Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, or perhaps these suppositions are half-right. Perhaps, tragically, the mis-identification somehow contributed to his death. But in our haste to make quick and easy and politically temperate and popular judgements about, ironically, an earlier rush to judge, let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture here.
Let’s not turn this into yet another Tyler Clementi equation. Clementi wasn’t killed by Dharun Ravi, and chances are whatever drove Tripathi to his death had less to do with the mis-identification and more to do with a host of issues unrelated to all that.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
