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Essay On Elonis

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In today’s society, we as a nation showcase our lives through social media. The case, Elonis vs. The United States, the petitioner, Anthony Douglas Elonis, is no different. He was an inspiring rap artist and was using Facebook as a platform to share his lyrics. After his divorce, things got out of hand. He started to post threatful lyrics about his wife, co-workers, and a kindergarten school. One of his friends saw these post and decided to report it. The FBI ended up getting involved and before long Elonis found out and started to post about the FBI agent. The FBI then had enough of it, so they arrested him. At the lower court the jury of his peers felt that the post constituted a reasonable threat and sentenced him to 44 months in prison. He, of course, appealed it, sending it to the Supreme Court, saying that his intent was not threatful. The Supreme …show more content…

This form of sharing is generally intended to generate a response from others. With all things in life not everything is going to be one-sided. We will get responses that are not positive towards our intentions. Even on private pages our thoughts and ideas become public. Screenshots are taken and shared with the world. We have to be careful how we share and what we share. Especially, in a professional setting. This case is a prime example of such. In conclusion, we can walk away from this case. We learn from this case not everything that is useful is helpful. Elonis artistic ability to write lyrics was certainly useful to his career, but it was not helpful in advancing his career. We can learn that words do indeed hurt those around us. In this case, even the fan who followed Elonis was in some way hurt by these lyrics. He was concerned enough to take time out of his day and report his concerns. We learned that we need to not be such an impulsive society when it comes to social media, but to think things through

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