Support NeoGAF

[Learn2read]

A playground in Mystic, Connecticut, dedicated to a girl shot during the Newtown massacre, is allegedly being vandalized by "truthers" who claim the shooting never took place.

A vinyl sign weighing 50 pounds was stolen last Tuesday from the Grace McDonnell Playground.

The sign featured a peace symbol that was based on the 7-year-old girl's drawing. She is one of the 20 children shot by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012.

Grace's mother, Lynn McDonnell, found out about the theft when a man claiming to have stolen the sign called her.

During a brief conversation, the sign-stealer allegedly told McDonnell that he took the sign because he believes the school shooting was a hoax, CBS2.com reports.

He also taunted her that her daughter never existed, a comment that suggested he thought McDonnell was part of the alleged conspiracy.

Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members at the elementary school after killing his mother at their nearby home, in one of the most infamous shootings in recent history.

However, a small group of "truthers" allege the shooting never occurred or was part of a ‘false flag’ operation designed to open the door to the confiscation of all guns by the government, The Raw Story reports.

Truthers offer numerous theories about what they say really happened, but all of them can be easily explained or debunked.

The Grace McDonnell Playground was opened on April 27, and is one of 26 being built in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey by the Where Angels Play Foundation, to honor the victims of the massacre.

The foundation has ordered a replacement sign, according to executive director MaryKate Lavin.

"We are going to keep moving forward," she told NBC Connecticut. "This is not going to stop us, but it is heartbreaking."

The sign theft at the Grace McDonnell Playground isn't an isolated event. It comes just days after vandals painted graffiti at a playground in Hartford dedicated to Newtown victim Anna Grace Marquez-Greene.

The sign was spray-painted with the letters “BEKS” with a peace sign and then the words “To Sandy Hook,” CBS Connecticut reports.

Police are still investigating both incidents.

gj right-wing media sesspool

 

[ComputerMKII]

Why are people so mean?

 

[Az]

Wish he never existed.

 

[Camp Lo]

Damn, my heart goes out to that family. I might have went to jail that day if that were my daughter.

 

[Ushojax]

Why are people so mean?

Because people are idiots.

 

[Loxley]

What sad lives these people must be living.

 

[MacNille]

What a fucking cunt. He should get punch in the fucking face. Really hard.

 

[djplaeskool]

 

[Messi]

Does he have nothing better to be doing?

 

[dankir]

Yeah, I visited Sandy Hook the week of the shooting to pay my respects. It happened and there isn't any doubt about it.

Nerve of some people.

 

[ShaneDude]

I can't believe people like this actually exist

 

[Lambtron]

What sad lives these people must be living.

I would be sad if Usurper in Chief Barrack Hussein Obummer was trying to take away my guns too.

 

[tokkun]

I would guess this person is mentally ill. This is a level of conspiracy theory that goes beyond willful partisan ignorance.

 

[x-Lundz-x]

What sad lives these people must be living.

Seriously...

 

[Renta]

Had a friend's friend on facebook lecture me on the "truth" of the shooting. It's just really unfortunate people think that way.

 

[Zombine]

Between this and the 9/11 conspiracy people... They have no idea how badly this affects the people who have lost a loved one in events like these.

Stick to Bigfoot, Reptilians, and Ancient Aliens. Leave the innocent out of this.

 

[LiK]

What a fucking cunt. He should get punch in the fucking face. Really hard.

I will join you, mate.

 

[Aesius]

That mentality reminds me of when I was a kid. I lived in a small town and had never seen any famous landmarks, so I hatched this conspiracy theory in my mind that places like New York City, Washington D.C., Paris, etc., didn't actually exist.

Then I saw them in person and grew the fuck up.

Seems like these truthers have the same mindset.

 

[ReidSkeeRebarn]

It's one thing to be anonymous on the internet and say this kind of nonsense. It's another to actually say it to the face of a mother of one of the victims. And it's another thing entirely to actively TAUNT a mother who lost a daughter in such a horrifying way about how her daughter was imaginary.

This story makes me so irrationally angry that I might just punch the next "truther" I see.

 

[pupcoffee]

I would guess this person is mentally ill. This is a level of conspiracy theory that goes beyond willful partisan ignorance.

Whilst this guy might be... there are many who just make a hobby of being media detectives on any tragedy, most of them know it's not their place to take it outside of whatever forum they're in but they do discuss stuff like this seriously.

 

[shadowkat]

This is cruel. The mother already lost her child and now she has to deal with this nonsense.

 

[tfur]

Jesus, if that happened to my daughter... and someone got in my face to say she never existed....

 

[TheLaughingStock]

Wow. So shameful and disgusting...

 

[Blader]

I would guess this person is mentally ill. This is a level of conspiracy theory that goes beyond willful partisan ignorance.

There are plenty of people in their (relative) right mind that believe this. One guy is a professor at a Florida (lol) university, iirc.

 

[Carcetti]

They should get that guy committed to the funny house. Can't have someone that separated from reality wandering the streets.

 

[dskillzhtown]

There are some serious nutcases in the world. To be that far gone and think of even doing something like that is just crazy. I often think these people don't experience life outside of the internet and talk radio so they assume the craziest ideas are actually true.

 

[MikeDip]

I can't believe people like this actually exist

Agreed. This is not right. What a terrible thing to say/do to someone.

 

[Camwi]

That's one of the shitty parts of the internet - it gives these nutjobs the ability to come together and feed off of each other, so that now every major tragedy has a fucking conspiracy behind it and these psychopaths now have the balls to pull stunts like this.

Really, really disturbing.

 

[V_Arnold]

This is some next level bullshit. Damn it.

 

[GulAtiCa]

What an asshole...

 

[toxicgonzo]

This is like something out of The Onion.

Except I'm not laughing.

 

[The Boat]

Fucking hell, no matter how many things like this I hear, I'm always surprised at how many complete and utter assholes there are.

 

[Gartooth]

I would guess this person is mentally ill. This is a level of conspiracy theory that goes beyond willful partisan ignorance.

I wouldn't say that, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who are just monumentally fucking stupid and never once learned of the basic idea of "empathy". It is quite sad how many people don't give a shit about it these days.

 

[PhoenixDark]

There are people who still call the family members of Flight 93 victims, telling them their loved ones either didn't exist or are hidden somewhere. Disgusting.

 

[CrankyJay]

It's times like this I wish someone could just touch these idiots like The Crow and make them feel the collective pain/anguish of all the parents of the children who died.

 

[Guerilla]

Disgusting but expected from these nutjobs.

 

[zma1013]

What a fucking cunt. He should get punch in the fucking face. Really hard.

After reading this, all I imagine is a person walking up to the dude and throwing some red fruity party drink in his face.

 

[FrostuTheNinja]

How completely disgraceful.

 

[pupcoffee]

I was lurking a forum as all this conspiracy was first breaking, something about the mainstream news being inconsistent about where the shooter kept his guns. The gun which the news filmed authorities taking out of the trunk after the massacre was the gun which the shooter was apparently using/had already taken out of the trunk at the beginning (oddball inconsistencies like that). This is normal "insight" for a conspiracy site but the theories also took an especially weird route where they began writing about how strange it was to them how one of the dads who's daughter was dead didn't seem "sad at all" at the speech and that just before he went to speak he was doing some sort of breathing thing that actors do to make themselves cry (this breathing being on the original news footage too). This led to online stalking/research of the Dad and photo linkage to "actors" that have been theorised to have been used in previous false-flag media videos.

You can hate these people all you want but damn they have deep lore.

edit: also something about how they'd taken in more than one person into police custody for questioning, early reports of more than 1 shooter, one of the other guys "taken in" had been hiding like in nearby trees with camo, then vanished from the media, stuff like that. Your usual stuff nobody bothered to put closure to so now conspiracy theorists see potential for conspiracy. They even tied Batman into it, too.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

What a fucking cunt. He should get punch in the fucking face. Really hard.

Yeah, this. Someone do it while I'm still in the initial anger stage upon hearing this so I can feel better about it happening.

This is like something out of The Onion.

Except I'm not laughing.

You've got appreciate their talent. It's continually getting harder to parody real life

 

[BocoDragon]

Hey guess what: the next major incident will have people claiming it's a conspiracy too.

It's not like the next time a mass shooting or terror attack happens, fringe media will be like "oh, well.... this one's real...."

 

[JDSN]

I was lurking a forum as all this conspiracy was first breaking, something about the mainstream news being inconsistent about where the shooter kept his guns. The gun which the news filmed authorities taking out of the trunk after the massacre was the gun which the was apparently using/had already taken out of the trunk at the beginning (oddball inconsistencies like that). This is normal "insight" for a conspiracy site but the theories also took an especially weird route where they began writing about how strange it was to them how one of the dads who's daughter was dead didn't seem "sad at all" at the speech and that just before he went to speak he was doing some sort of breathing thing that actors do to make themselves cry (this breathing being on the original news footage too). This led to online stalking/research of the Dad and photo linkage to "actors" that have been theorised to have been used in previous false-flag media videos.

You can hate these people all you want but damn they have deep lore.

No, the lore isnt deep, the inconsistencies is the media being the usual incompetent self and the actor thing is just rubbish.

 

[HerbertFish]

gj right-wing media sesspool

We are even blaming this on the right wing media? Good lord gaf, never change.

 

[pupcoffee]

No, the lore isnt deep, the inconsistencies is the media being the usual incompetent self and the actor thing is just rubbish.

It's rubbish but have you SEEN the sites they have pinning these actors. The story they build is something else. It's entertaining to me because even though it doesn't follow logic, it follows a sort of weird "train of logic" that's darkly fun to follow on a bored evening. The cliche of the "babbling conspiracy theorist" doesn't really do it justice.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

It's rubbish but have you SEEN the sites they have pinning these actors.

It could be 100 percent on the money and that wouldn't in any way justify harassing the family members or vandalizing memorials. Like, no matter how much you believe in a given conspiracy, you need to know there's always a chance you're wrong. Just because you think these people are actors doesn't erase the (most likely) possibility that their children actually were murdered.

Go fuck with the people you think are actually behind all of this. Screwing with the memorial playground doesn't even make sense in a crazy/stupid way.

 

[Savitar]

These crazy people need some sense slapped into them.

Delusional isn't even the word for it.

 

[Camwi]

We are even blaming this on the right wing media? Good lord gaf, never change.

Right wing media was all over the parents and the president for trying to enact some new gun laws. The main reason that these conspiracy nutjobs have for the shooting is that the government wants to take away their guns. It kind of goes hand in hand.

 

[pupcoffee]

It could be 100 percent on the money and that wouldn't in any way justify harassing the family members or vandalizing memorials. Like, no matter how much you believe in a given conspiracy, you need to know there's always a chance you're wrong. Just because you think these people are actors doesn't erase the (most likely) possibility that their children actually were murdered.

Go fuck with the people you think are actually behind all of this. Screwing with the memorial playground doesn't even make sense in a crazy/stupid way.

I agree, and so do most of the people who take it seriously, mind you, in fact they're all probably going to write things like, "Oh no there goes our reputation again" when this news hits. They don't actually support the behaviour of this man. They're "working on fucking with the government" and not the families by spreading their "truther" stuff on the internet. They're even apologetic of the offense it causes, and do know they are probably wrong but of course also go on to add "we can't say we're not concerned about the facts" etc.

Conspiracy on a whole is full of nooks and crannies of lore. There's even multiple versions of the same lores. And there's tiers. It's literally a parallel universe. Nothing else like it. (I am a born Delillo fan)

 

[zero shift]

My mom and my brother believe this shit. They watched this video and now believe that it was an inside job.

 

[The Albatross]

Right wing media was all over the parents and the president for trying to enact some new gun laws. The main reason that these conspiracy nutjobs have for the shooting is that the government wants to take away their guns. It kind of goes hand in hand.

No it doesn't. It is a ridiculous stretch, beyond stretch, to say that right wing media are truthers or support a truther agenda... Truther's are named after 9/11 For Truth people, who believe that 9/11 was a government conspiracy or a staged hoax. You really think that right wing media proposes the idea that the 9/11 attacks didn't happen?