We all know how horrible auto-correct can be, that’s why you can spend hours on websites like DYAC, but this auto correct spelling error went a little to far. Two schools in Georgia went under lock down on Wednesday because an autocorrected text message sent out a possible threat. A student from a nearby technical college was trying to text “Gunna be at West Hall today,” but instead his cellphone changed the text message to “Gunman be at West Hall today.” To make matters worse, he texted the wrong number. The number belonged to a random person in the community who in turn called 911 and then all hell broke lose. Will Schofield, the superintendent of the school, told The Gainesville Times – “Be assured that we will always err on the side of caution when it comes to the safety of our boys and girls.”
Maybe this is my investigative side coming out, but if that student was trying to text a question why didn’t he add a question mark? That text message wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Additionally, he sent out the text message to a wrong number in the community – allegedly by accident – but the text message was obviously meant for a friend, other wise he wasn’t going to be asking a random person “hey are you going to be on West Hall today?” Then you have other factors too, like storing people’s phone numbers on their phones. Also, even if it was a phone that was not stored in your contact list, if you ever communicated with this person in the past, your phone keeps a record of what they last said. I think the police should look into who he was trying to text, and then see if the numbers were even remotely close to the person he was sending the text message to.
I’m not saying this couldn’t of been an accident but I think in this day and age those accident’s don’t happen to often. I think this was another one of those stories like the kid in the balloon. This kid found a way to inflict panic in a community and then get away with – oh it was just a simple cellphone error that everyone makes.
