I woke up yesterday still affected, like everyone else in the country, by the senseless slaughter at Virginia Tech. I was feeling contact grief for the families and friends of the victims and also effected by the idea that it could have happened at any college, including WVU where I have two sons attending.

I talked to Marken about it, and his mood, reflecting his military training, was he didn’t want armed guards and metal detectors everywhere, but that it showed the necessity of everyone being tactically aware of their situation at all times.

It is the mass nature of the killings that make the impact so strong. Statistically, there are 50 murders a year on American college campuses. While the impact of death on those who know an individual is qualitatively the same regardless of the numbers involved, it is the quantitative aspect that has such a vicarious impact on larger populations.

The media milks it for every viewer it can get, sensationalizing it as the largest mass killing in American history. The 350 men women and children who were massacred at Wounded Knee might argue that. More properly, it is the largest school shooting the “school” part is dropped.

It is also ironic that the banner headline above the story today on CNN was:

“Bombings in Baghdad kill 127 people, including 82 in an attack at a market”

32 dead in Iraq would have been a slow day. Feeling how bad we as Americans are feeling about the VT shootings, take time to have some compassion for the majority of Iraqi people who just want to have a job and raise their kids but have to face this level of tragedy on a daily basis.

Anyway, I woke up yesterday with those images in my mind, and went about checking my regular route of websites. There on Planet ISKCON was a feed from a prominent devotee site that said a devotee in NV had died. It was bylined his wife.

I went and got Vidya and we were discussing this and feeling some grief. My first thought was to copy and paste the announcement onto Brijabasi Spirit, but as it was so sketchy, I decided to get some background.

I made some calls and found out that it had been a cruel hoax. Since I had seen it on a reputable site that it was false never crossed my mind. I am sure that others had the same reaction. Since there has been a slew of devotee death’s lately, I am sure the editors of the site never even considered that it was a hoax.

I wish I could say I was doing due diligence and second sourcing the story, but I wasn’t. I was simply trying to get more detail. I fell for it also.

While the nation as a whole is reeling from this VT massacre, and devotees are feeling vulnerable for all their godsisters and brothers who have left their bodies recently, this hoax was an egregious violation of trust. If I were to find the perpetrator, there would probably be an ambulance involved after the session.