[iaskwhy]

It's almost like that but times have changed. In 1938 it was mainly a broadcast of a message which then wasn't easy to broadcast again by the people. Nowadays you broadcast something and in a couple of minutes it can reach the whole country just because of re-tweets and mobile messages. The end result can be a good number of times worse because of this.

[jrockway]

We had all better stop talking, just in case someone overreacts to something we say. Fiction writers, especially, take note.

[iaskwhy]

Or maybe we should think twice about saying things like "your kids are being killed at school". I am open to suggestions but I have never heard about a book causing mayhem in a couple of minutes.

[jrockway]

The reason why is that people don't expect to trust books. Open a random book at the bookstore, and it's probably a story that the author made up. Twitter is the same way, but people don't realize this yet.

I don't see why authors should be held responsible for their readers' stupidity, though.