NEW: Judge orders Va man NOT to "tweet at all for any reason to anyone" - Man charged w/ Twitter threats at Senators pic.twitter.com/5O5euP4uwu
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 28, 2016
A Virginia judge ordered that Kyler Schmitz, an Uber driver from Virginia, “not tweet at all for any reason to anyone” after he tweeted threats to at least two U.S. senators, according to court documents filed on Monday. Schmitz allegedly was upset by the Orlando shootings and via Twitter threatened to shoot Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)…. Schmitz’s Twitter account — which is now suspended — also included tweets saying: and “I am coming for you.” These messages were directed at Blunt and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.). The judge told Schmitz that he didn’t know “how to read these tweets in any way but as threatening” and ordered he “not tweet at all for any reason to anyone.”
It’s been said (very often by me) that Twitter is where psycopaths, sociopaths, and those who generally don’t play well with others go to unburden themselves. Some folks seem not to grasp the reality that, even on Twitter, a filter and/or a functional sense of the reasonable and appropriate is generally a good thing.
There are certain things that even on a social media platform renowned for welcoming haters, bigots, zealots, and misfits of all shapes and sizes, certain behaviors are out of bounds. Take threatening public officials with murder, f’rinstance. Turns out that’s pretty much universally frowned upon and can result in some unfortunate consequences for the person making the threats. Our intrepid (most definitely not a) hero, Kyler Schmitz, seems somehow unable to grasp the reality that Twitter is a public forum and that tweets become a matter of public record. Threatening to murder public officials (“I am literally going to buy a gun shoot you in the face I watch your brains splat (sic)”) is something that tends to attract attention…and not in a good way.
It might be difficult for someone who doesn’t know Schmitz to ascertain the seriousness (or lack of same) of the threats he’s made. Perhaps he’s merely in the grips of some mental health issue with a long and unpronounceable name. Or perhaps he was serious, in which case I really have to wonder how someone capable of that sort of mayhem could be so phenomenally…intellectually deficient. Then again, we should probably be grateful for Schmitz’s lack of intellectual agility; otherwise, we might have had a real tragedy on our hands.