One day the police came over and the neighborhood stood still.
It's a bit usual to see the police outside, so everyone just ignored it and walked away assuming it was like an accident or something not involving themselves.
10 minutes after the police entered, a Tweet appeared.
"OMG!!!!!! CHRIS MURDERED HIS NEIGHBOR #ICantBelieve #MessedUp"
That one tweet was retweeted by a news network's station.
That tweet was retweeted by the neighbor hood.
That tweet was replied over hundreds of times with:
"I knew Chris was weird, but not like this"
"Chris should go to hell, and burn!"
"Murdering isn't right, god would punish him"
"@#$@$@# Our society is messed up, Chris should be shot"
" F*ck I knew him in school, I knew he was crazy"
Now let's take a step back... did the police say anything? Why are the tweets going rampaged?
So the story right now is, Chris murdered his neighbor. The neighbor's name was Brock.
Brock was Chris's neighbor for 5 years ever since chris moved into the area with his first child.
Now you know Brock, did Chris murder Brock?
A while after the storm of tweets of bashing Chris, everyone retweeting that Chris should be sent to jail and never leave for being psycho, a report on the news network came on.
"Police, The victim Brock was found inside chris's home when Chris entered. No one knew why Brock was within his home, and this might have been a self defence.
Twitter went mad again. The tweets went:
"I knew it, you people were wrong! Chris is innocent"
"Man WTF kind of creepy guy... I would have shot Brock"
"Brock was psycho when he moved into the hood"
"My kids knew Brock, but thank god we stopped talking"
"This city is messed up, stupid psychos breaking into homes"
Now the news station stands by Chris for attacking his intruder. 24 hours later investigators reveal why Brock was inside his home. Brock was intoxicated at the present time, within the home Brock was Drunk in the afternoon before his death. The evidence showed Brock held the knife with his own hands and stabbed himself, which lead his death from blood lost. The information was announced on several news stations. The headlines on all of the newspapers were changed to quirky titles like, "Alcohol Does Kill", or "Watch me Suicide"
Now Brock was the victim of self infliction. However there is another twist to this story. The court case had been set for 6 months from legal understandings. In this time a few news reporters have followed Chris home, and took photos of himself. He has now become infamous in his community from all these reporters. Everything Chris has done was being watched, from his walks around his neighborhood, to his coffee shop, even at his dinner table with his family, someone was watching them and taking a photo for a story to add to their reputation like the paparazzi for TMZ. Though some of the neighbors and a lot of the online community agrees, the media has the right to uncover the true story since "alcohol suicide sounds like a suspicious story" they all agreed the story was far from the truth. Though having constant eyes were creepy enough, having a twitter feed about yourself is more scarier. This was the spark of the Hashtag #ChrisSuicideLine
Rather than blame the cause of alcohol, everyone wanted to look into the case more... why didn't Chris stop him, why was he drunk, why was he silent. After all why was it only about him, wasn't his family around... or at least knew something. This resulting in his kids being harassed at school, calling them the "Suicide kids". Ben was only 10, and Andrew was just turning 5. The news really hit the children, as Ben questioned his father why couldn't he have saved Brock. Everyday, at school he was always teased by his friends about being the son of Satan, and when someone felt light headed, they ran up to Ben and asked him if he could help them suicide like his dad did. Being labelled a suicide kid really sucks, but Ben just shrugged it off, however Andrew couldn't.
Andrew who was 5, couldn't even talk to his friends anymore. The mothers around him always told their kids to never go near him. Andrew always sat there in the classroom alone in the corner. Even the teacher started to ignore him too, as a mother herself she felt pity for him, but at the same time, she could not bear the fact he too could be a murderer like his father. Of course Andrew as a kid always did cry according to his mother. Like most kids, crying is a sign of fear or attention, and of course Andrew was that kid of kid. However after a few months, those tears stopped dripping down, in fact he just sat there alone everyday, it was like he has given up connecting himself to the world.
As a child, you are suppose to trust your parents, Ben trusted his father, but slowly gives up his hope each day when the media keeps promoting advertisements against suicides and using his father and his neighbors as the prime examples. Andrew just grew more silent than before, with his photos over the media labelled, "A future suicide hotline" he couldn't understand why his face was labelled around. Granted, suicide hot lines are a great invention in our society, using a child who doesn't understand the concepts of life and death as your advertisement really scars a child for his future. New Reporters and markets share no boundaries as this is new story gold mine for the time being. There is no rehabilitation for the children and the family, just a story to be shared and left alone like a used tissue.
Within days of the court case, Chris's lawyer was gather evidence about his case to prove his innocence. The lawyer spoke to Chris's wife, but she refused to speak from her personal religion. The lawyer begged her to give it out, even though there is no religion against giving out names, so Chris's wife did. When she spoke, the lawyer's mouth dropped, and this opened another view of the story. See, Chris's wife was a transexual, however they could not afford the operation to have a complete transition to becoming a female, Chris decided to adopt his kids in this situation because he did infact loved his wife. Chris's wife also did not change her name because she wanted to respect her parent's decision of her name, as George. From this conversation, the lawyer compiled a case for the trial. However word did spread, and everyone in the area had an uproar of a Gay couple in the neighborhood. As some neighbors actually drew graffiti all over their house walls with quotes like "WE WANT NO HOMO". Yet those who did in fact wanted to fight for their rights, just didn't. It wasn't their family, it was someone else's... why bother?
What the media did was to bring out the fact homosexuality is a real thing in this neighborhood, but brought them as a target once again. It wasn't bad enough Ben and Andrew were harassed as Suicide kids, but after it blew over this controversy started. Ben was shocked to hear that his mother was actually a male, and he started to oppose of the idea. While being bullied about 'the suicide kid label' didn't affect Brock, the fact his mother was indeed a male really hit him because this was real. He couldn't trust his parents anymore, and he sat there crying in his bedroom thinking, how does the world know more about his family than he does. Being harassed online saying how he wants to molest males through Twitter and Facebook by his friends really damaged his interpretation of what is right in this world. Though his friends thought it was a joke, it indeed hurt him.
Andrew, on the other hand received more pity from the community, parents of other children actually spoke to the teacher to treat him better because he was "different". Andrew did however began to have more kids communicating with him, which made him smile. Those previous boundaries he had before with the suicide kid disappeared and Andrew began to be opened to his kindergarten class. Though this seems great, the fact that pity is the reason the kids are communicating with him must hurt in the long run... but for now Andrew is happy.
With all of this drama going around, the real story of Brock's death was covered up by the media's impact of an unusual family in a small neighborhood. Of course none of this mattered to Chris, because he was at court at the time. Brock's wife appeared in court to prove Chris was guilty of her husband's murder. Though there was no evidence at the crime scene to prove Chris murdered Brock, Brock's wife appeared with a suitcase. At the trial,Brock's wife told the court, that Chris was not his children's father, infact they were taken from herself and her husband.
Of course this was big news around the court, and new reports were broadcasts from outside the court around the world, that a suicide may have been an act of revenge. This of course made no sense as a headliner, but it did peak their audience's attentions. What more could you want, a suicide that was done as revenge could not be anymore sweeter of a story, especially for a journalist who wants to make it big. The first Tweet that came out was, "A man who steals kids and commits murder #SMH #ChrisTheMurderer"
This was one of many, throughout the case different emotions rose, the case was no longer about Brock's murder, it was to tarnish Chris's image to the public. Brock's wife also brought up the topic about Chris's family, how they are even able to have an income when he's a stay at home father. Brock's wife received testimonies from Chris's past clients, they were all drug addicts. Chris was known through out the underground society as Green Daddy, a dealer for Marajana, and if it wasn't bad enough as it was, those drug addicts were at the course to testify against Chris.
Chris broke out of silence in the court room, and said all these allegations were false. Though on Twitter it was a different story.
"What kind of father is a drug dealer #ChrisTheMurderer"
"A Gay Drug Dealer? What is wrong with this work #ArrestHim"
"Yo is this serious? This story can't be real #ChrisIsInnocent"
"He helped my homeboy do crack I think #TrueStory"
"PLEASE STOP MY DAD'S INNOCENT! #ChrisIsInnocent!"
That last tweet, was from his son Ben. Though still on a confusion about his family, he wants his voice heard among the crowded ReTweets of hatred against his family name.. though his words were mute compared to the news room reports across the web with comments filling up with hatred and disgust for Chris's actions.
Near the end of the trial, it has all seem to be a loss, no one had been looking at the case of Brock's murder or suicide, in fact it has been judges by Chris's reputation alone. Just when the court was about to close, Chris stood up, and said, I am guilty. As Chris's words said, "I did deal the marijuana, but I did not do anything besides watch my friend suicide infront of me". Chris's face began to become red with tears dripping down his face, and dropped his knees to the court. Chris then began to speak softly but trembling as each word came out of his mouth. "I wanted... to keep my family wealthy, and I was a pharmacist a few years back. After I met my wife, when I found out she wasn't a female, i broke down and I started stealing my own prescriptions of marijuana to calm myself down. Brock was one of my clients, he was a great friend to me... My kids, aren't my kids... not from blood. When Brock and his wife declared they were in a low financial situation, we decided to adopt their kid Ben. Andrew also adopted after Brock and his wife gave birth 1 month earlier than expected, and it showed signs in Andrew that he may have a mental disorder, but we took him in as well to make sure Brock and his wife could know their kids would be happy, and it made us happy that we could have a family."
This made the court room silent, the truth that he was not a father, that he did infact give out marijuana, the fact that he couldn't have kids so he adopted his neighbors, the fact that... they were friends before the incident.
The judge then believed his emotions, and so did the jury. Chris was sentence to jail, but not for murder or drug dealing, but for assistance suicide. He was sentence to one year and deemed his drug dealing was not what he was sentence into court for, and would be recalled in a years time to investigate his drug dealing past.
The final verdict came out, Chris was accused of being guilty.
From outside the court room, no one could tell the whole story, only summarizing it into 140 characters for the public to see
"Chris is guilty of Suicide Assistance"
"Guilty of being Death's Right man "
"He was innocent, those people were idiots #RetardedLaws"
"1 year for assistant suicide #ChrisSuicideHotline"
"Call him at 1-800-Kill you"
"A Father who worked hard to end up in prison"
The last tweet that has the hastag #ChrisSuicideHotline said,
"Thank god that devil is in jail #ChrisSuicideHotline"
________________________________________________________________
Rather than solve the problem, the media exposed the problem like NBC's Lookout. While it's great to know there's a problem why isn't there someone trying to find a solution.
The case is now officially closed, but has the truth really been solved?
Well, at the end of the case, the truth was never discovered and the media has spread the fiction as reality. Well it wasn't full fiction, but it wasn't full truth.
See Brock's wife has a mental disorder in some ways its considered bipolar, she had two different personalities. when she remembers back in the past she thought that Ben was indeed her son. This was her state of mind during court, while her other side was just a normal house wife, who was always cheery. The drug addicts she brought in, were in fact Chris's clients but they were bribed to tell an exaggerated story about Chris's dealing because they Brock's wife convinced them that if Brock was murdered, so could they. Though this may seem odd why they would admit the truth, in a court room, people will say anything to get out of the situation.
Chris on the other hand, did not murder Brock, but why couldn't he stop Brock from suicide?
They day, Brock was drunk from drinking all morning before he came over to Chris's house. Before Chris returned home, Brock rustled through his house to find some marijuana, and when he saw a picture of Chris and his kids, he broke down in tears.
When Chris entered his house, he saw his door broke, and when he walked inside he saw Brock in tears with a beer bottle wrapped around his arms. Chris went down on his knees and realized what the situation was. Chris told Brock he could no longer give him marijuana anymore, he couldn't see his friend be addicted to a substance, while he needs to get back on his knees. Brock took out a knife from the kitchen and threatened to suicide if Chris didn't give him the marijuana. Chris looked away and thought about his children... well Brock's children, and told him, "I can't let you do this... your kids need a role model and I need your support. You were always there when I married my wife... you were there when I wanted a family... I need to save your soul before you destroy it like I was..." Brock fell on his knees, and cried, "Destroy? My life is miserable, I lost my kids, and my wife's respect... I have no way to be happy unless I kill myself" He took the knife and put it near his throat. Chris told him he should stop, as he went closer, Brock slipped over his beer spill and fell onto his knife, straight into his throat. Chris stood there in shock, and called 911. This the true story of the events.
Now look back at the story, did any of these tweets tell this story? Some people would like to hide the truth, while others would like to expose a story from the origins from this story.
Like broken telephone if someone said, "Suicide" and someone added suicide hotline, you make it from a death to a career, which made it seem worse for Chris's reputation. In media we HAVE to make a title interesting or else would have no viewership, so the truth would always be smothered from reality.
None of the tweets you see were persistent tweets about a solution, only spreading gossip, and news networks taking them as a truth pill.
Besides could Chris really tell the truth? Getting exposed as a drug dealer is something you would like to avoid, or avoid of your family's secrets... these are things people do not want attention on and hopes to god the news don't expose these stories. In that scenario, you would probably avoid to tell these truths to save your family.
If rumors are what we completely trust, then we are not getting the truth. And what's to say one's action over states another's or why someone shouldn't be punished for their actions? Rather than allow the news media to capture one quote from an online source, why not get it from the actual source. Or better yet, why not wait for the information to solidify than report it as broken pieces.
This is why I hate today's news. Social media has become "evidence" rather than a guide line. You have to be an idiot to trust what the news says when they say, "According to a Tweet"
But then again, that is our society today, and maybe in the future it will be, "According to my dreams"
I commend reporters who do uncover the story fully, but public harassment isn't right. To persist a story without one's permission, to allow the truth to come out fully than taking on a few words isn't journalism, that is gossip. And most news networks wouldn't apologize for their actions unless their audience have an uproar about it.
By the way, this story isn't just fiction, these emotions are what people may feel when a story is covered about them. What ever happened to Chris's family after this... Is Brock's wife anymore happier now? The after math of news hurts even more... like a world crisis or a natural disaster, do people care after, and has there been a solution...
It makes you think, is news necessary for us if we can't find a solution? Or do we even care about the victims anymore?
In 140 characters, "Can you prove #ChrisIsInnocent?"
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