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Examples: [Collected via email, October 2008] Origins: Regional circulation of e-mails and text messages warning of gang initiation activities that will supposedly be targeting random innocent victims is a common phenomenon. But at Halloween 2008 such rumors ran rampant, perhaps as an expression of the fears, anxieties and uncertainty that Americans were feeling amidst a troubled economy with a change in national leadership looming just over the horizon. Most of the messages posited that gang initiates in some Atlantic coast state (e.g., New York, New Jersey, Maryland, South Carolina) were going to be killing a symbolically large number (typically 30 to 34) of randomly-selected (white) women on or around Halloween, 31 October 2008. Despite police assurances that there is no evidence to confirm these fears and these rumors originated via text message and internet and in our opinion they are not credible, the gang warning rumors continued to circulate up through Halloween evening and beyond. In the event, no such gang killings were reported. In December 2008, a New Jersey man was arrested and charged with spreading false reports of gang violence in connection with those Halloweentime rumors, as reported by The Jersey Journal: In mid-October 2009 the same type of warnings began to spread anew via social media such as Facebook, these geographically non-specific versions claiming that gang initiates would be killing 140 women (or more) during the week of 21 October:
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