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On 1 October 2017, a shooter opened fire on an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds. As is often the case with major or tragic events, rumors immediately began to flow, even before the shooting ended and the investigation began. The shooting began just after 10 P.M. local time (or after midnight on 2 October 2017 on the East Coast). Many of the claims circulated during prior mass shootings and reflected tropes commonly invoked by such events, and others were unique to the incident and circumstances: Although outbreaks of violence are frequently attributed to the Islamic State before an initial investigation takes place, a propaganda arm for the group attempted to claim responsibility for the attack. However, investigators quickly ruled out their involvement in the shooting. No. A Facebook page claiming to be run by antifa operatives in Melbourne, Australia posted and then deleted a status update essentially blaming the massacre on American antifa protesters. However, credible news sources and the group itself pegged the Facebook source as phony before the Las Vegas shooting. Also no. Photographs of a Trump protester circulating on social media do not show the Vegas gunman: Oftentimes, initial compelling rumors continue spreading long after a mundane explanation has emerged. Many social media users heard about an eerie warning spread by a visibly agitated woman nearly an hour prior to the massacre, but far fewer saw that the witness to that purported prediction later walked her claims back significantly. No. The concept of a second shooter became embedded in American consciousness after the first conspiracy rumors circulated about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A meme that appeared after this particular mass shooting highlights purported inconsistencies in the narrative of the incident, but it does not vary much from the other conspiracy theories that come up after every such incident: Similar rumors take root in the wake of nearly all mass shootings, but neither investigators nor any evidence has indicated that anyone other than Stephen Paddock fired into the crowd at the concert. Yes. CBS attorney Hayley Geftman-Gold was relieved of her duties after a controversy after post-shooting remarks attributed to her were captured and publicized by a blog. A status update was widely shared as a silver lining after the massacre: Its veracity remains unclear at this time. On 3 October 2017, a Facebook post appeared featuring purportedly leaked crime scene photographs of the Mandalay Bay room from which the shots were fired: The authenticity of the photographs is unknown, and it is not clear whether they were leaked (versus being taken by a bystander or obtained in a fashion other than surreptitious distribution). Another claim common in circulation after the Las Vegas massacre was that mass shooters are affected by psychotropic drugs such as benzodiazepines, antidepressants, or anti-psychotic medications: On 3 October 2017, Facebook user Rikki Raulerson shared the following Facebook status update, the contents of which are unverified: Although this rumor is a variation on the second shooter claim, it also fails to take into account the difficulties faced by eyewitnesses in identifying the specifics of the shooting as it happened. Due to the close proximity most Vegas casinos share (many are connected to neighboring venues) and the acoustics of the Strip, a barrage of gunfire from one location could easily be mistaken for one from somewhere nearby. Unproven. The post in question was nebulous, and still managed to inaccurately describe the subsequent attack. Although the general location (the Las Vegas strip) fit the prognostication, no other elements were compelling enough to consider the claim credible. No. Although the meme's origin was unknown, it was one of many satirizing Bachmann's positions. No. A disreputable source claimed that Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos was an accomplice to Las Vegas Strip mass shooter Stephen Paddock, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) put paid to the phony story with alacrity. For the most part, no. Conspiracies swirled arround a Las Vegas Craigslist ad archived on 17 August 2017; date stamps suggest it was published on or around 3 August 2017: On 6 October 2017, Puppet String News claimed: WorldTruth.tv asserted the same day (in a post riddled with typographical errors) that the suspicious advertisement had conveniently been deleted after the Las Vegas shooting: However, all Craigslist posts expire automatically after 30 to 45 days. Even going by the latest date the post was archived (19 August 2017) and not the likely date it was posted (3 August 2017), 49 days passed between the date of the post and 6 October 2017 and two months between the posting date and the 1 October 2017 shooting. Moreover, anti-semitic conspiracy theorists previously set their sights on the same posting -- as part of predictions that bad actors planned chaos for the then-recent Mayweather/McGregor bout. Another post in a general conspiracy forum warned: Even after Vegas shooting conspiracies had begun circulating, forum posters recalled the post as linked to the boxing match. Although there was some confusion, posters for the most part correctly identified the Craigslist post as dated to early August 2017. The advertisement was legitimate, but it was retrofitted to align with false flag theories about the Vegas shooting and its original connotations (fizzled predictions about a race war at a boxing match) were elided in the retelling. Claims that it disappeared were down to the fact the page was more than 45 days old at the time it recaptured social media attention.
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