I don't know a single, solitary person who isn't heartsick for what those horses and their owners/riders/connections are going through. But some of the reactions I'm seeing online seem to be just different stops on the same spectrum that includes willfully harming an animal.
My FB search results of the girl's name yesterday turned up posts by two different women publicly announcing that they weren't her and they had no connection to horses or barrel racing. Apparently they're receiving messages/comments; I'm guessing threats. I'm also guessing no one contacting these people have any meaningful connection to those involved so, as always, I ask WTAF compels a person to send threats to a complete stranger, let alone one they can't even be sure is their target.
And then there are the comments, including a man whose profile indicates he shoes horses, recommending use of a specific hammer on her skull.
People are scouring the internet and drawing highly detailed conclusions about this young woman and her family from scraps online but no one really knows anything about her, her family, her emotional and mental health.
A lot of the comments strike me as performative rage ginned up and rewarded by the nature of social media and the internet. The last post I read, in which the FB user offered her "74-cents," suggested a lot of sympathy being posted online. Maybe it's the algorithms but I haven't really seen it. The online lynch mob seems to be outweighing questions about this person's mental health and whether or not a 100% punitive response is the most appropriate one.
I'm a horse person and, as I said, heartsick contemplating what those animals experienced, but I'm also pretty sick at what I've seen posted by strangers about a stranger that we know next to nothing about.
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