U.S.

The Internet Still Doesn't Know How to Observe a Moment of Silence

To commemorate the week that has passed since the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, social-media influencers and major organizations attempted — emphasis on attempted — to pause for a virtual moment of silence Friday morning.

By Esther Zuckerman
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To commemorate the week that has passed since the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, the leaders of the web attempted — emphasis on attempted — to pause for a virtual moment of silence Friday morning, as live ceremonies were held across the country and 28 bells rang from a church in Newtown, Connecticut.

Leading up to the hour social-media influencers and major organizations on Twitter used the hashtag #momentforSandyHook to spread word of their participation.

As the moment of silence began at 9:30, news organizations tried to symbolize silence on a medium that rarely ever stops:

Some, however, thought these efforts fell flat. On Tumblr Myles Tanzer took a screenshot of a version of the Washington Post tweet above that spelled Newtown as "Newton": "Not only is this a really bad attempt at sincerity on social media, but then they spelled Newtown wrong."

Websites used a code to implant a graphic that symbolized their moment of silence, in a move that TechCrunch noted seemed similar to SOPA protest efforts in January:

Meanwhile, CNN anchors had to cut each other off in order to recognize the ceremony in Newtown, which lasted nearly five minutes. That was supposed to be how long participants in the social-media version of the ceremony would stay silent on Facebook and Twitter, but social-media silence, today proved, is still impossible to come by.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.