Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
I’m in support of making sure my kids are safe. When someone says something like this, even in frustration, I don’t know if they intend to act on it. I’d rather everyone be safe.
It was absolutely stupid of this teacher to fuck up like this.
But I’d rather the police show up and check on her than have yet another school of bloodied, dead kids.
But you do you.
Everyone except anyone who’s made a joke you personally find distasteful, apparently.
When the thought police come for you, I hope no one lifts a finger.
Jokes are funny.
This, wasn’t a joke. Maybe it was frustration. But it wasn’t a joke.
Funny is subjective.
This was a joke, and so is your bullshit attempt to justify punishing thoughtcrime.
Only thing less “funny” than this “joke” is the fact that people like you think it’s okay.
There is NO context in which this would be “funny”.
I have joked to my wife that our kids are lucky they’re so cute so we don’t throw them out of the window during a heavy day of misbehavior.
Obviously we wouldn’t ever do that (even if they weren’t so cute), so the joke is cathartic and can be funny in the right context.
An example that comes to mind is mockery. People generally find mockery of behaviour/ideas that they find nonsensical to be funny. So if someone proposes that everything can be solved by a good guy with a gun, you can then mock the idea by proposing it for increasingly ridiculous scenarios.
Safe from what? A joke?
Has there been any case like this? Or are you just pulling something out of nothing?
So there has to be a case like this for you to think hmmm maybe we should be cautious?
Wow.
well you better watch out for the boogieman
Yawn
Oh quit with the haughty hypocritical bullshit. There is no way you have gone your entire life without venting or joking about committing an act of violence against someone or some evil company. Maybe we shouldn’t crucify people for ordinary human behavior. Morbid humor is just part of human communication. If you actually have never done so, I would think there’s something deeply psychologically wrong with you. Like you’re obsessed with appearances and carefully choose every single word to control your public image to the most minute degree.
It’s okay, you do t have to agree with me.