'I Will Die Young': The Eerie Subtext of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Social Media

In the most crowdsourced terror investigation on American soil, we have come a long way this week in the neverending game of amateur investigation on social media. Here are the few — if ominous — things we've learned about ourselves, and about a man who was, it seems minutes ago, just a stranger.

This article is from the archive of our partner .

In the most crowdsourced terror investigation on American soil, we have come a long way this week in the neverending game of amateur investigation on social media: the bags and the backpacks, the smoke and the batteries, the CNN "arrest" disaster and the Reddit photo sleuthing and the Post "Bag Men" turned very bad and borderline racist. Now, as the manhunt continues for a 19-year-old introduced to the world in bits and pieces on Friday, it's only fitting that Twitter feeds both apparently real and very fake have emerged, along with a page on Russia's equivalent of Facebook, and millions of Google searches. Here are the few — if ominous — things we've learned about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and ourselves, from the big social media reveal of a man who was, it seems minutes ago, just a stranger.

What We Learned About Ourselves: People Are Jerks

And we don't just mean the "losers" and "small stunted individuals" that are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan. In the very moments after the name Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, plenty of fake Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts popped up — some even made "jokes" about killing cops. Publications like The Boston Globe, one of the most reliable sources of information in a shaken city this week, found themselves duped into thinking a fake Twitter account belonged to Tsarnaev. As to what drives people to impersonate suspected killers (Adam Lanza and James Holmes, too), we have no answer. But it got so bad that the Boston Police Department had to tell people on social media to stop interfering with their investigation:

Boston Police to Twitter: Stop making up fake Twitter accounts, stop tweeting scanner details, stop telling people where we are.
— MyFOX8 FOX8 WGHP (@myfox8) April 19, 2013

All this after Boston Police, in the police scanner live-tweeting insanity of early Friday morning, had told people social media to... stop interfering with their investigation:

#MediaAlert: WARNING: Do Not Compromise Officer Safety by Broadcasting Tactical Positions of Homes Being Searched.
— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 19, 2013

Did we mention that the FBI, on Thursday night, had told people on social media to... stop interfering with their investigation?

Other photos should not be deemed credible and they unnecessarily divert the public’s attention in the wrong direction and create undue work for vital law enforcement resources.

At least this guy, in the face of conspiracy theories taking foot, had the good conscience to sit on the URL for BostonMarathonConspiracy.com, which currently reads only the following:

Here's What We Learned About Djohar Tsarnaev: Bits and Scary Pieces

You can read our thorough accounting of the teenager on the lam right here, but a few questions key pullouts are worth knowing in this still uncertain phase of the manhunt:

His Facebook-Style Account Listed His 'World View' as Islam

Vkontakte (or VK) is something of a Russian equivalent to Facebook, with some 200 million users. And according to Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner, this is Tsarnaev's account. The dates of Tsarnaev's schooling, birth, and time spent in Boston seem to match up from what multiple reports suggested all day Friday. And, yes, it says his "World view" is Islam, but no matter what the anti-Muslim crowd tells you, let's keep in mind that how you identify yourself on Facebook (or VK) doesn't necessarily mean that you are what you say you are. A commenter on our bio of Tsarnaev, claimed to be friends with him and wrote that Tsarnaev did not practice the tenets of Islam:

His views on Islam were far from normal. I am the president of the Muslim Student Association here at UMassD and I approached him several times to join our group and learn and partake. He didn't want to join, nor be associated with us. We played soccer together weekly and I knew him fairly well. If there's one thing I can assure you it's that this kid was NOT a Muslim. He did drugs, he drank alcohol, he didn't want to help us when we were carrying out humanitarian relief efforts... he knew nothing of Islam.

Tsarnaev's father has said his sons aren't religious. Though, again, this is a father who thought his son was a second-year medical student at the age of 19.

He Tweeted That He Would 'Die Young'

The @J_tsar account was, according to classmates who spoke with BroBible, Gawker, Buzzfeed, the one Tsarnaev really used. It's still out there with messages that aren't that easy to (over)read into, but, according to Google cache data, there's a tweet from almost a year ago to the day, in Russian, that translates to "I will die young." Foreshadowing? A teenager trying to be cool? Both? Like we said, everyone's been overthinking a lot this week — take from this what you will:

Two Days Ago, He Tweeted That He Was Pretty Relaxed

The Night After the Bombing, He Told People to 'Stay Safe'

The Day of the Bombing, He Talked About a Victim

A cover-up? Who knows. The young man at the center of the man hunt was on social media, like many young men with less evil minds. And his online activity will provide real investigators with a few more details in a fuller picture of a criminal, like it does with every criminal investigation of this size. Essentially, these gristly bits of Tsarnaev's social media life are part of him — pockets of a life he chose to reveal to the faceless Internet. And though he was in control of what he shared, he won't be in control of how he's remembered. Stay tuned here to find out how the next chapter unfolds in real life.

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

About the Author

Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, I worked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.