Bob Collins“There are a lot of idiots on the internet who come to conclusions over no factual evidence.”
Truer words were never spoken like these from “Pavel,” who should know. He’s the victim of the untrue ones in the aftermath of the latest mass shooting.
Pavel is from somewhere in Minnesota. NBC News, which tracked him down, isn’t using his last name because … the internet.
He is the owner of the “Ravenchamps” ID on Reddit, an ID that is close to the “Ravens2012champs” ID that allegedly was used by David Katz, who killed two people and himself, and wounded 10 others at a Madden tournament in Florida.
Close enough, according to some far-right web sites and the usual suspects like commentator Mike Cernovich and Daily Caller reporter Ian Miles Cheong who identified Pavel’s account as that of the shooter.
Pavel jumped on Reddit yesterday to learn that he was dead, NBC News said.
“I went on Reddit. I noticed I had 60, 70 unread messages. Usually I have two or something,” Pavel, who didn’t give his last name out of privacy concerns, told NBC News on Monday night. “I look at the messages and it’s a bunch of people using my username claiming I’m that Madden shooter person. Half of them are messages like ‘I hope that person’s dead.’
Responding to a user who said “ravenchamps was his profile, see for yourself,” Ravenchamps wrote back.
“I’m alive you know?” he wrote.
Pavel then went to Reddit’s AskMeAnything board to answer questions about everything from his favorite TV show to what it was like to have all of his old opinions shared across the web as a possible motive of a mass shooting.
The conspiracy theorizing, far-right sites pushed the identity in order to claim that the mass shooting was carried out by an opponent of President Trump. The sites, like InfoWars and Gateway Pundit, have done this before.
After his interview was ending with NBC, he said he planned to spend the rest of last night, “calling out idiots on the internet.”
He’ll probably need more time than that.
(h/t: Paul Tosto)
