The Social Network of Vitriol

In case you missed the latest example of vitriol within the social media of Facebook, witness “I Hate it When I Wake Up and Sarah Palin is Still Alive” page:

Below is the enlargement of its original sicko profile picture from Monday night shown in the search above . . . which has been changed following Rush Limbaugh’s mention of the page on his radio show Tuesday.

As of this writing, the page is still up and running. Entering the search term “hate palin” for Facebook, I found over 100 pages containing titles expressing varying degrees of overt animosity and vitriol against Palin:

While others contained truly sick, hate-filled threatening titles:

What sort of sick people personally degrade, threaten and wish death upon a mother, wife and fellow American whom they do not know?

Jared Lee Loughner for one.

Does the relative anonymity Facebook affords subscribers by permitting multiple pseudonyms and ever changing profile burqas (so to speak) embolden those who would otherwise shrink from such vicious expression and clothe their emotions in more polite civil speech? Applying the logic of the Make-Believe Media, should we judge Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg as enabling, provoking or agitating future crimes against the targets of the hate on his site?

Conservatives will answer “no.” Ultimately, individuals are responsible for their own actions, not movies, not the radio, not political rhetoric and not social networks. Rather than shifting the blame, we should ask focused questions about those sick individuals who attack, who injure, who use such vicious hate speech and what motivates them.

Sarah Palin or Gabrielle Giffords, take your pick. They are both human beings, the same, and worthy of the same polite dignity and respect.

Mr. Zuckerberg, do you agree? Then share this on your social network.