Social media trolls work hard to be hurtful

Social media is literally saving lives in Houston and at the same time thousands of people are making jokes on Twitter while people are dying and fleeing for their lives from the rising floodwaters.

There’s no doubt Twitter and Facebook have been incredibly instrumental in supplementing the more traditional emergency response processes in Texas.

@AlyxandriaErryn tweeted “My family is still waiting for a water rescue in the attic, they can’t get to roof!” She tweeted out the family’s address, which was retweeted by thousands of people.

Other people thought it would be fun to use Photoshop to make Houston’s airport look like a marina, to have a shark swim up a flooded highway, and to have former President Obama serving hot meals there.

The last Category 3 hurricane to make landfall dates back to 2005, when we didn’t even have Twitter. We have certainly seen how it can positively impact the rescue effort, but at the same time thousands of users are crafting posts with the help of digital editing.

But social media trolls are hard at work, apparently with an eager audience. That shark image has been shared more than 10,000 times.

Of course, Trump haters had to drag him in, with some actual fake news: “Something you’ll never see Trump do: Obama is in Texas serving meals!” Obama was not in Texas last weekend. The image was from 2015. Yet, that post was eaten up by thousands of people, many of whom are no doubt happy to view that as fake but true. Trump lands in Texas today.

@GenePark suggested the fakers are just in it for clicks: “This guy keeps reusing the same pic of Obama implying this is happening now. It’s fake, it’s from Thanksgiving 2015, he’s in it for RTs.”

Even Katie Couric got punked by a post showing an alligator on someone’s front lawn and then she realized she got duped. @KatieCouric tweeted, “Mmmm. She’s not answering. She lives in Houston but in nyc and someone sent to her...she sent to melooks like a double punk!”

Instead of pushing political lies and cracking jokes about other people’s misfortune, maybe these trolls could put their energy toward raising money for these victims. If they have so much time on their hands, they could change out of their pajamas and get out of mom’s basement long enough to stop by a phone bank. Somehow it seems to be more gratifying to conjure up a hoax than to actually do something useful.