Victims of mass shootings subject to harrasment

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as sitting half-naked on a street corner, hands covered in blood, when the TV news reporter approached. The 48-year-old, who had used his shirt to try to plug a bullet wound in his friend’s chest, recounted in a live interview how a young man he did not know had just died in his arms.

Cronk’s story of surviving the worst mass shooting in modern US history went viral, but many people online weren’t calling him a hero. On YouTube, dozens of videos, viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, claimed Cronk was an actor hired to play the part of a victim in the Las Vegas mass shooting on 1 October.

Conspiracy theorists harassed him on Facebook, sending messages like “How much did they pay you?” and “How does it feel to be part of a hoax?” The claims multiplied and soon YouTube’s algorithm

As record-breaking mass shootings have become a ritual of life in the US, survivors and victims’ families across the country have increasingly faced an onslaught of social media abuse and viral slander. Bullying from the ugliest corners of the internet overwhelms the grief-stricken as they struggle to cope with the greatest horror they’ve ever experienced.

The cycles of hoaxer harassment are now as predictable as mass shootings. And yet those with the most power to stop the spread of conspiracy theories have done little to address victims’ cries for help.

This spring, nearly two years after Alison’s death, as Andy’s wife, Barbara, was searching online for something related to the foundation they had set up to honor their daughter’s memory, she found something else. “The second thing that opened up on Google was a YouTube video that the foundation is just a scam for Andy Parker to make money, a complete hoax.”

More recently, Cori Langdon, a Las Vegas taxi driver who picked up survivors of the October massacre, became one of the prime targets for conspiracy theorists after she posted video from the scene. Her footage was stolen and republished across the internet and used as “proof” of a number of debunked claims, including the rumor that there was a second shooter.

Violent threats quickly filled Langdon’s inbox and populated the comment sections on YouTube and Facebook. People called her “queen of c***s” and “one of the dumbest f*****g idiots”.

Others said she was “braindead”, “FAKE AS f**k” and “f*****g stupid!”, with one writing: “They should bring this cab driver in for questioning.”

“I was a basket case, it was so overwhelming,” she said, recounting the first week after the shooting.

Lenny Pozner, whose six-year-old son, Noah, was killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in December 2012, has faced some of the most vicious abuse and threats. This year, a woman was sentenced to prison for sending him violent threats, telling him on multiple occasions that death was coming “real soon”.

“It’s typically very hard to discredit a conspiracy theory,” Van Prooijen said. “Anything people say that goes against a conspiracy theory can be seen as a sign that you are a part of the conspiracy theory.”