Lightening up on Dan Bilzerian over his Las Vegas Shooting reaction
Author's Note: This is my second piece on the night of the Las Vegas Strip shooting. On Oct. 1, 2017, a lone shooter murdered 58 people and injured 489 by attacking a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, in what is currently the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. It's taken me a few days to write this because I'm still processing the tragedy. I have chosen to omit the killer's death from the official body count because he doesn't deserve to be counted amongst his victims. If you'd like to contribute to the Las Vegas Victims' Fund to help support the victims and families of the shooting, click here. For a list of the victims, click here. Thank you in advance for reading. #VegasStrong - Josh
Word Count: 577 | Est. Reading Time: 2:06 min | Readability Rating: B
Instagram celeb Dan Bilzerian's video was one of the first I saw circulate on Twitter during the attack. I was trying to figure out what was happening the night of the shooting when his video came across my feed.
He's famous, so naturally his video went viral, but I wasn't really sure of what to make of it at first. Here was this social media celebrity whose entire existence is a spectacle coincidentally at the scene of a major crime. The video I saw showed him filming himself running away from the attack in a panic. He breathlessly told his viewers what he was experiencing, including how he allegedly had been next to a woman who was shot in the head.
I visited his Instagram profile to verify that he did in fact post it before I decided what to do next. His videos influenced my decision to focus on verified law enforcement and media channels. I wasn't sure how sharing his video or others like it would help people get the facts on the ground. And so I ignored his video and moved on to more trustworthy sources.
A classic rule of the news media is to verify a source's claim by at least two other separate sources before taking it as an established fact. At least that used to be the case before clickbait culture. All I had to go on at this point from the video was the word of an Instagram star who could be using the moment to get attention.
Bilzerian's vlogging during the attack has been highly criticized. Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, for example, called out Bilzerian for his "tough guy" act. Bilzerian responded by saying that he also drove victims to the hospital.
Admittedly, in my sleep deprived state following the massacre, I needed a laugh and was amused by the responses to Bilzerian. My only conception of him is his Instagram persona and the playboy lifestyle he projects. Social media stars like him bore me. It felt good to see the responses of the likes of Meyer, an American hero, knocking Bilzerian down a peg.
But the the truth of the matter, though, is that even if I doubt the claims he was making in his video, he was at the event and survived. Las Vegas and the survivors of that attack will be dealing with the repercussions for years. Fear is a powerful instinct, especially if you're unarmed and exposed during an ambush.
And so I am sorry for contributing to the ugliness, even if only for a brief moment. This goes to the point I made in yesterday's post. We've become so conditioned to aggressively respond to others online that we fail to empathize with them when it really matters. Bilzerian deserves our empathy just as much as the next person.
Thank you for reading,
Josh
- Why I don't want to talk gun politics after Las Vegas with you right now
- Why am I angry all of the time and where did my friends go?
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Josh Peterson is a 2016 Robert Novak Journalism Program Fellow and a writer living in Denver, CO. Follow Josh on Steemit and Twitter. Keybase for secure chat. PGP Fingerprint: 4507 3000 1A40 2691 DAB8 ED65 A3EA 3629 73FD B7FF. If you appreciated this post and would like to tip with Bitcoin: 1C7ZAsTRKLtt9XYVxuWoyvmR1REbGWSrBd
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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