@GrimDarkSurvivor
It’s rather too late for that, considering that he is equally as dead as his victims.
@Twiface
First, I’m assuming that you meant that everything happened in roughly the same order but shifted 3 or 4 years later, and not that the show still started in 2010 but it wasn’t discovered for fandom to develop until after Twilicorn.
It depends on precisely when in 2013 or 2014 you’re talking about as to how different it would be. If it was early enough in 2013, then there’s a small chance that it ends up developing similarly to the fandom we all know.
Any time later than that, we are forced to contend with the fact that Gamergate and its consequence have been a disaster for online culture. Either GG would have split the fandom as it was forming or FiM would have only caught on on one side of the online culture wars. There could be a slim possibility that two parallel fandoms would have developed, but the near-certain outcome is that MLP would only have caught on within the no-fun zone or among the /mlpol/acks. Either way, it wouldn’t be a fandom worth joining.
@Background Pony #9DA8
That makes it sound like there were already red flag laws that should have been invoked but the cops didn’t feel like enforcing them before things became deadly.
@Latecomer
I’ve increasingly arrived at the conclusion that complaints about a lying press generally miss the point. A specific news outlet or journalist may lie, but “the media” as a whole does not have a coordinated agenda and only falls into line due to market pressures.
Newspapers know they must report on tragedies while the bodies are still warm to get the most clicks and cable news does the same to grab the viewers. However, there is often very little newsworthy in the critical click period. Instead, each new fact is treated with the potential of being the key to the whole story and given a separate article.
Another reason why the news lies to us so often is that the people who are most willing to talk to a journalist in the first place are those who wish to push a specific agenda. Lonewolf’s Rolling Stone link and last year’s Nazi brony panic are both prime examples of journalists echoing politically motivated sources in action (not to speak of the NYT leaking “evidence” of WMDs in Iraq). There is not enough real journalism to go around, so tips and leads need to fill the void.
That all said, I have to agree that I’m not sure whether more coverage on the victims would help. We all know that coverage on the latest shooter is useless. However, most of us live non-newsworthy lives yet I have yet to meet a single perfectly average person. If such a person existed, that itself would be notable. Coverage of the victims
feels like the morally right thing to do, but I can’t reasonably see such coverage doing anything to reduce the likelihood of future tragedies.