The Internet Will Kill You... again...

People, I thought we were over this...

Once again, people in the media are using the remote relation to the internet in a recent murder case to perpetuate the idea that the internet is somehow inherently evil. This seems like such a clichéd theme in our society: if you don't understand something, don't try to learn about it, just attack it. Here's the lowdown:

Brenda Brunner, a woman living in the farming community of Lynden in Washington state, got in touch with Kenneth Hoshowski of Langley through an internet dating service. After some initial conversation, Kenneth decided to go visit his new sweetheart in Washington state. Early Sunday morning, Lynden police received a 911 call to a mobile home park. Upon arrival, police found Brenda Brunner suffering from wounds to both her head and her hand, and Kenneth Hoshowski deceased. It looks like this is the work of Brenda's estranged husband, 42-year-old Frank Brunner. Police are looking for the man.

Now, CBC's article at Canada Now explains all of these pertinent details. Then it goes on to talk about the dangers of online dating. I think that headline on the Province the other day was calling this an "Internet murder".

Wait a minute... what the hell?!? Let's review: Man meets woman online, man visits woman, woman's estranged husband kills man. The actual fellow who did the killing didn't lure anyone to his abode using the internet. If Brenda had met Kenneth in a bar and brought him home, and Frankie had shown up and killed Kenneth in a jealous rage, would all the papers be calling this "the bar murder"? I think not!

I mean, how much logic does it take to draw this conclusion? The brainpower required to compute this deduction isn't significant enough to add 1+1. As a libertarian, I like to think of journalists as the people who keep society's moral compass in line. They are supposed to be impartial, informative, and most importantly, investigative. That means thinking about a story before presenting it to the public rather than jumping up and down and screaming sensationalism.

Maybe some of my international audience will see this as highly idealistic. But this is what I have come to expect from Canadian media, and I will hold them to this high standard of expectations. For the most part, Canadian media is impartial and informative. We don't have sensation-based news media like Britain, nor fear-based news media like the United States, nor lie-based news media like China.

For those members of society who are too lazy to use the squishy lump of gray matter between their ears, here are some facts of life. There are dangerous people in society. They are everywhere: in bars, on the street, on the internet. You can deal with this in one of two ways. Method one involves locking yourself in your house and not seeing anyone, ever. Method two involves being a normal person and using a degree of common sense in everyday life. Most of the time, method two is quite enough.

So to recap: the Lynden "Internet Murder" is not a story about evil people on the internet luring hapless singles to their doom. It's a story about the dangers of psychopathic ex-husbands. Watch out for those, guys. And women, just don't marry them in the first place, 'kay?

Duh, people.