Five minutes reading tweets about Naya Rivera.
That’s all it took today to arrive at a single determination:
God may her body be found.
Put this Twitter madness to rest.
My are the cockroaches swarming now since Naya Rivera disappeared. The “Glee” actress went missing while boating on Lake Piru and is presumed drowned.
Upon announcement on Wednesday Day 1, tweets centered around initial emotions: shock, surprise, disbelief, prayers.
There was no dearth of tweeters telling professional rescue teams how to do their job.
Some were well-meaning, many aggressively and hatefully bashed searchers and their methodologies.
Because Every Body Is a Detective on Twitter.
Now Day 4. Intensive search continues. Tweets have taken on a decidedly different tone from Day 1.
CONSPIRACY.
With a force that could move a mountain. Or two.
People are reading improbable, ridiculous and outright impossible scenarios into anything and everything.
A jet-skier is now a suspect. Or the murderer.
A cottage on the shore needs to be investigated.
A blue truck is suspect. Ditto very vehicle in the lot.
A divination lady proclaims the actress is alive but her head’s “messed” up and she’s in a wheelchair and can be found by clearing eastwide woods.
Wayfair furniture store is involved in human trafficking of kids and adults and the actress is being held at a location whose coordinate points are revealed by various documents and convoluted machinations that even Einstein couldn’t unravel.
That’s my best translation from madness.
Shall I continue? You get the drift.
The cascading conspiracy theories are unreal.
Meanwhile, there is one moment of real. A heavy moment made refreshing because it is real.
Her mother and brother today at the lake, at the boating dock, the mother dropping to her knees, stretching her arms toward the water.
Ultimately, these are their moments and their story.
Their moments and their story shine a light beam into this dark cavern of twisted tweets and expose it for what it is: utter pure bullshit.
Crazed know-it-alls and bumbling idiots in a bubble of social media spouting their constructs, conjectures, convictions and certainties.
It’s what people do, have always done. Rivera’s disappearance isn’t evoking anything new or unusual.
Only seems so due to amplification of crickets and crazies thanks to social media.
In today’s swelling tsunami of chaos, I’m reminded of a truth simple and humbling:
A family is without a daughter and sibling and a son, 4 years old, is without his mother.
That is what is real.
Not some blue truck pegged as dodgy for some tweeter’s imaginary reason.
Not a jet-skier already judged, convicted and imprisoned for homicide before he’s identified.
I’d never heard of Naya Rivera until she disappeared. She drowned; that is my conclusion today as it was four days ago.
My hope for the family is that they’re staying off social media.
Keep it real.
My greatest hope is that her body is recovered. For you.
If that occurs, that too is real
Loss is real.
Grief is real.
I pray for your strength and communion in your season of need.
Allelujah, Arizona! 