(Photo from The Weather Channel)
The building behind this makeshift memorial in Toronto today, was my home. Just a block down the street was my office, and my mother's flower shop. This area is still my place to hang out with friends and family members, my temporary office for clients' meetings, a traffic hub I park my car or transit to the Viva bus with the TTC (Toronto Subway). It is still one of the densest areas in Toronto. This happens too close to home, it sends a chill down my spine. It is a part of "uptown" in Toronto. I would have never thought this kind of things would happened in this area, we would all assumed "we are safe, we are not in core downtown".
For those who doesn't know what happened. Here's a brief incident happened yesterday April 23, 2018 around lunch time at 1:30pm. A young man named Alek Minassian drove a van through the street, hitting anyone and anything, for about a 2 km. 10 people killed, 15 injured. There was also a standoff between a police and the suspect (Yes, Alek is still a suspect in trial). You can easily find news and videos by just googling, it's trending. Ka href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_van_attack">Wikipedia page is also up for this event with most updated information.
Today I also learned some new words, Incel, Chad, and Stacy, and what fake news is about. I am not saying this is fake news, this is as real as it can get. People are dead, that's not fake. Just right now, I received a news "confirming his facebook account" stating he is an Incel from with Title like this from MSN
The truth, there is no confirmation. The FB page was created after the incident, so it most likely to be fake. Nonetheless, I think the page has been taken down by now. But someone name Alex Minassian was wrongly identified instead. Police raid the wrong home going after Alex Minassian. The wrong guy and his family is being trolled and harassed.
(I am not linking to his page)
The amount of clickbait titles from the media is unprecedented. To top it off, here are the media badgering the suspect's father just few hours ago from court. He looks dumbstruck. What do we expect him to say? Comment start pouring in demanding his apologies and accuse him of "not raising his kid right" I guess. No family is perfect, it is not his fault.
It seems that we are living in a time of angriness and craziness. Alek is angry, if he is an incel, he is angry at feeling like a loser who can't get a girl that drove him mad. Journalists are under tremendous pressure to pump out news that catches people's attention just to make a living. People are so angry that they find the wrong guy with a similar name to throw stones at.
Almost every day there is someone doing something horrendous simply because they are angry at something. Do we want to simply call all these pent-up rage mental health issues, and let psychiatrists to admin some happy pills and declare problems solved? How about everybody on the scene, victims' families and friends, young cops, and paramedics, whom most likely will suffer from PTSD. Griefing and bereavement care seems to be non-existence because there is "no money to it".
We human being tends to absorb into our own reality. We created a society that neglects the values of caring for one another, compassion, grace and mercy. We need justices, but it is not the same as judgemental. Anger cannot fight anger. The "war to ends all wars" didn't work after all.