“I think one of the biggest moments that we saw play out online would be the murder of Lil JoJo, because JoJo was updating the opps on his whereabouts on social media. And people like to say that they got the low from social media because he posted that he was going to be at such-and-such place, and then he ended up getting killed,” Drea said.
Tony Woods, founder and executive director of Public Equity, added that social media is now “the block” for the digital age, compared to how Black people in their communities congregated in the 1990s. Through building hands-on relationships with community members, part of what Public Equity does is monitor conflicts that spark on social media platforms and help quell the fires through conflict resolution.
According to Public Equity, their work across Englewood has led to a 25% decrease in homicides and 31% decrease in shooting victims. And their work in Woodlawn, Greater Grand Crossing, and Auburn Gresham led to a 19.5% reduction in violent crimes.
“I think social media just made the world smaller, right? And Chicago was even smaller than that.” Woods explained. “So it just kind of highlighted what was going on in certain areas to everybody in every area. Now, certain things might be happening on the South Side [or] out West, and it almost became like a nasty competition to see whose area was the busiest, the hardest, the worst.”
Social media slowly morphed the streets into violent reality shows over time, according to Woods. The embarrassment from an incident is now public for millions of people online to see, rather than just your neighborhood. It’s made conflict resolution even harder.
“Now everybody sees what happened, and people just don’t want to be embarrassed. It’s amplified everything, right?” Woods said about social media. “So if a conflict takes place, you got two groups involved, if one of those individuals takes a hit, and somebody falls, everybody gets the chance to see that. And then the person who took the fall feels like they got to redeem themselves to get their lick back.”
Many often wonder why so many teens and young adults are willing to document violence on social media. Ryan Chandler, a Chicago-bred hip-hop therapist and school counselor, said that part is generational.
He said there’s a distinct difference between how Millennials view using social media compared to Gen Z and younger. Millennials, who grew up in the 1980s and ‘90s, knew a world where access to the internet was practically a luxury compared to younger generations who are coming of age with the internet and social media ingrained into their daily lives.
“If social media was here before you, you think, ‘oh, it’s normal to broadcast everything I’m doing, both positive and negative.’ It’s normal to connect with people more in the virtual space than in real life,” Chandler said. “Everything that has now become aspects of social media is now real life, and that’s where it gets problematic.”
On the flip side, new technology has historically been the enemy of “criminals,” Chandler said when mentioning how social media has made violent crime easier for law enforcement to investigate and solve. With new advances in technology, a reckless post on social media can become a lead for journalists when searching for details and clues to include in their crime reporting, for the police to use as evidence that could lead to an arrest, or for online gossip hounds to pick up and use as content.
For Patrick, setting people up by finding their location online is as old as Chicago gangs themselves, back when Italian, Jewish, Polish and Irish gangs dominated the city.
“The mafia was setting people up, left and right. So that’s not something that was created by social media or created by us,” Patrick said. “That’s something that has been going on for a while.”
“Whether it was talking on the phone, whether it was wiretaps, technology and the street code of ethics have never, ever mixed — and they never will. Every era of crime had to learn that,” Chandler said. “This is different because I don’t think the majority of people who are into crime life can help themselves. It’s almost like someone’s like, ‘if you don’t tell or show, it doesn’t exist.’”
Patrick said that the glamorization of today’s Chicago street legends — like the late James “T. Roy” Johnson, Gakirah “K.I. The Assassin” Barnes and rapper King Von, the latter whose mural near Parkway Gardens has become a landmark for tourists — is no different than the way old western gunslingers like Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde are idolized in American media.
“What’s the difference? What’s the difference between King Von and somebody like Billy the Kid?” Patrick asked rhetorically. Billy the Kid was a notorious young outlaw who gained a mythos from rumors of allegedly killing 21 people up until he was killed by a sheriff at the age of 21. Von was 26 when he died from being shot in a street fight with rapper Quando Rando in Atlanta.
“Billy the Kid got famous for killing people! He wasn’t famous for giving away turkeys on Thanksgiving. He was famous because he was a killer. He was willing to call people out in the middle of the town to have a shootout right in the middle of the town,” Patrick added. “So what’s the difference between them and these young kids?”
Woods and his Public Equity nonprofit are often tipped about derogatory and disparaging posts and arguments that are playing out on social media and have the potential to lead to violence.
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