Sunil Tripathi Puns

Sunil Tripathi has been accused of being Suspect 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings for hours on reddit and all over Twitter.

His name has been trending for the past 4 hours.

Many posts and tweets have been calling for his death or pain on his family.

We did this.

Maybe we didn't mean to, or even want to, but we did.

The downside of instant journalism is that we sometimes get things wrong. And sometimes media outlets can take this false information and run with it.

Hours before the media blitz and craziness of this night posts in /r/FindBostonBombers called Sunil out by name, speculating that he was involved. Even if the circumstances were too coincidental to ignore, what's the benefit of posting his name and picture to an online community instead of discretely calling the FBI?

When did imaginary internet points become more important than helping an investigation, or not jumping to conclusions and causing a witch hunt?

The point is, this family has suffered far too much. Well before we as a community stuck our ugly neck beards in their business.

Reddit, we owe them.

Facebook Page: Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi

Twitter Page: Finding Sunny #FindSunny

EDIT: The supposed originator of the Suspect 2/Sunil comparison photo has apologized on Twitter. Hopefully more media outlets will follow suit.

EDIT 2: Sunil's family posted this on Facebook a few minutes ago

>A tremendous and painful amount of attention has been cast on our beloved Sunil Tripathi in the past twelve hours.

>We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil.

>We are grateful to all of you who have followed us on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit—supporting us over the recent hours.

>Now more than ever our greatest strength comes from your enduring support. We thank all of you who have reached out to our family and ask that you continue to raise awareness and to help us find our gentle, loving, and thoughtful Sunil.

EDIT 3: Buzzfeed and various contributors who initially posted on Twitter false confirmations that Sunil was Suspect 2 has scrubbed their twitter pages and refuse to apologize for inadvertently hurting an innocent family. @BuzzFeedAndrew

There have been many posts identifying a cop as the man who started the rioting and looting. The only evidence I have seen is his ex-wife saying she recognized his eyes and some text screenshots from questionable sources. The police department he works for says he has an alibi, and while I've not yet looked at the statement, it seems like it's more believable based on the number of cops in groups I've seen from videos of Minneapolis. I wouldn't be surprised if they were receiving help from nearby areas as well.

Now I'm not saying that it's impossible for this cop to have started the looting, but I have already seen calls from Redditors calling for finding his address and phone number already. It's like no one in those threads remember what happened last time Reddit decided to take justice into its own hands. I've seen links to Sunil Tripathi's story called irrelevant and unimportant. Do we seriously want to do this again? The possible cost and damage we can do is far more problematic than any good that can be done.

I don't want to see another statement of: We did it Reddit

You remember Sunil Tripathi, right? The random foreigner who became Reddit Public Enemy #1? Well, the Providence police just IDd a body pulled out of the river as his.

The details make it sound like it was probably suicide, and probably soon after he went missing on March 16. [Edit: This is well before the bombings in Boston, so there's no way he could have been involved.]

If there's one silver lining, and there isn't, but if there is, at least he never had to live through Reddit's goddamn witch hunt. Of course, it makes things a thousand times worse for his family. If reddit hadn't gone apeshit over a missing student with the bad luck to have dark skin, all that the Tripathis would have to deal with would have been their son's death. Instead, they have to mourn in public. No one should have to bury their child, and especially so with thousands of neckbearded morally bankrupt Internet idiots watching.

Hopefully this will be the end of the story. But I know that's unrealistic. Even now, some wacko conspiracy theorist is writing up how the body's teeth don't match Sunil's dental record in some subtle way, and using that as proof that he was teleported back to Al Queda's comet base after planting the bombs and stopping by the White House to pick up his secret Socialist Medal of Fascism and train the shape-shifting lizard people in the Secret Service to telepathically detect patriotism.

This is exactly, exactly why vigilantism is a bad idea. At least Anonymous only acts on halfway-decent information.

Stop jumping to conclusions that Sunil Tripathi or anyone else is a suspect!! His poor family has already suffered enough! Until professionals and officials declare the truth with evidence, people should stop spamming naive but dangerous opinions that could potentially endanger families!! It is especially saddening to see people posting links to his family pictures etc.

http://blog.reddit.com/2013/04/reflections-on-recent-boston-crisis.html

How witch hunts are started and why we discourage you from posting each other's personal information.

Following the false accusations/suspicions made last week, this is particularly saddening.

Email from Brown U President Paxson:

>It is with profound sadness that I write to share news that the state medical examiner has confirmed the death of Brown student Sunil Tripathi.

> For more than a month our community has sought to support the Tripathi family in their courageous and tireless efforts to search for Sunil. > We are grateful to the commitment of law enforcement during this time and to friends locally and globally who have contributed in myriad ways throughout the search. We extend our deepest condolences to Sunil’s family for their loss and for the immeasurable pain they have endured during this period.