What seems very much like a "bomb scare" style threat has been circulating on TikTok that suggests there will be some kind of violent assault in a US school today (the 17th), so (across the entire country) many schools are cancelling classes - many students are anyway staying home.
I'm guessing it was a hoax?
Can of worms, Sheridan.
On the one hand, you could call it a nationwide hoax. Because it seems to have been sparked on social media with that intention.
On the other hand: there's been a sequence of what are being called TikTok challenges in schools in the US this year. The first was to vandalize bathrooms - so people vandalized bathrooms. The second was to strike a teacher, so people struck teachers. So, there's precedence here that if a dare goes out online, people will respond to it, even if it's clearly not in their best interests.
So, a rumor starts that the next "dare" is to cause a serious violent disturbance in schools on Dec 17th, and because this is the US, a lot of people take that very seriously. And then some kids start making actual threats, and several arrests are made (two at the school district that neighbors mine) across the US.
End result: no actual violent incidents occur, but the attendance of students that day plummeted to about 50% and a bunch of kids ended up arrested (some for making stupid threats online, some for carrying a deadly weapon onto school grounds).
I suppose the sad reality (in the US) is that gun ownership is on the rise, and so are school shootings (data
here), and rather than have a specific day when it's going to happen, it's going to be a nasty surprise, and it's something that seems impossible to make safe because of the collective insanity around gun ownership and safety in this country. Or, as Eina the Barmaid used to philosophically reflect: "shower o' c*nts!"
I suppose I've posted this in "minor impediments" because it's seen by politicians and many, many citizens as well as just a natural hazard of being in the *cough* greatest nation on Earth.
