
When a Fatal Grizzly Mauling Goes Viral - joegahona
https://www.outsideonline.com/2396854/grizzly-mauling-yukon
======
steven2012
Honestly, when you're dealing with the scale of the Internet, ie. billions of
people, do the disgusting comments of a few dozen, hundreds or even thousands
of people matter? It's not something you encounter in the "real" world, but it
feels like we need to change our scales logarthimically when talking about
Internet comments.

Probably a million people read about that article and 99% didn't think those
horrible thoughts, but maybe less than 1% did and commented on social media.
Just by sheer numbers, you're going to get a lot of terrible comments, it
seems like this is the "new normal" and growing thicker skin is something we
all need to deal with, unfortunately. To a regular person, a few dozen shitty
comments will be hard to take from real people, but when considering the scale
of the Internet, it's probably not significant and it's something we all need
to learn, unfortunately.

~~~
bArray
Even in person you'll probably get a considerable number of awful comments,
there are simply a large amount of insensitive people out there. It doesn't
help that they feel emboldened by anonymity.

~~~
Waterluvian
Insensitivity, I think, can be a coping mechanism for some. I was a teenager
during 9/11\. I remember having a good cry about it and then spending the rest
of the day looking at and sharing wildly inappropriate photos (that we now
call memes).

~~~
bArray
I agree. Perhaps evidenced by yourself, the people who we call insensitive or
trolls today, could be the pillars of society tomorrow. We should be very
careful when trying to answer the question "what do we do with these people?".

------
Macross8299
Is the comment of "she should have had a gun" really that insensitive? I say
this as someone who grew up in bear country and knew people that had bear
spray readily accessible when outdoors. I'm sure some of them would've carried
handguns if Canadian gun laws were less restrictive and not dictated by
urbanite easterners out of fear.

~~~
kalenx
I don't know in which bear country you grew up, but good luck killing a
grizzly attacking you by surprise with most guns. Not that this is
fundamentally impossible (her husband did it, after all) but not with a
handgun. These guys are nothing like the black bears you may see in other
parts of America...

~~~
Macross8299
Grew up in Alberta, but spent a lot of time as a kid in the Kootenays in
British Columbia, so no stranger to grizzlies. I've seen a few while hiking as
well, very scary.

I think the idea that a handgun cannot penetrate a Grizzly's skull is a myth
anyways. Plenty of accounts of people shooting attacking grizzlies dead with a
large calibre handgun. Bear-spray can work but what if it doesn't or what if
there's wind working against you?

~~~
kalenx
Sure, it is not _literally_ impossible to kill a grizzly with a handgun. But,
to quote yourself:

> Handgun can work, but what if it doesn't?

The point is not that it should be forbidden to bring guns when you hike in
grizzly territory, but that by experience, many people who do are also the
least knowledgeable about bears (and I say it that way to stay polite). Who
cares if I let meat leftovers next to the campsite, I have a gun! Who cares if
I go down a trail rangers explicitly told me not to because of the bear
presence, I have a gun!

------
mmaunder
"In the aftermath, I found myself surprised and disturbed by the amount of
attention the attack received. I felt intensely protective of my grieving
friends and my shocked, horrified community—I wanted to shield them from the
intrusive phone calls, the strangers creeping into their social-media
profiles, the awful, cruel comments appended to every news story."

...so I wrote an article in Outside magazine about the other bad people
writing articles about it.

~~~
thomasz
You seem to think that this is ironic, but I fail to see how you came to that
conclusion.

------
y96V89C668e7Q74
It seems like the other comments in here are proving her point. Hacker News,
too, proves to be an insensitive place.

------
darawk
> Later, after he had used his Garmin InReach to contact the nearest
> detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)

Did this read to anyone else like an extremely odd product placement
advertisement? Why not just say 'satellite phone'?

~~~
205guy
It's a publication for outdoor enthusiasts (and armchair enthusiasts too) who
care about such details (equipment and its capabilities). Not all satellite
products work in all regions, and readers might be interested in what worked
in this case, as well as what someone might choose Also, it's not a sat phone,
it's a sat messenger (no voice, only text messages), as well as emergency
beacon (though the article does not go into enough detail about whether he
used the emergency functionality or just the texting).

~~~
darawk
That makes sense, thanks.

