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A8 News | | SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2019 2 R tomake of it. The message, left over the weekend, was nearly three minutes long, repetitive and inarticulate. But ignoring it wasn’t an option. “It puts a pit in your stom- ach and a weight on your chest that you can’t just shake as something that’s just kind of crazy,” he said. Out of an abundance of caution, he contacted the local police, who visited the school, recorded the message and began investigating. It didn’t take long to un- earth the roots of the threat. Two days earlier, on April 27, Comey had shared a tweet listing a handful of jobs he had held in the past alongside the hashtag #Five- JobsIveHad. Hundreds of others had done the same before and since, but a small fringe group of conspiracy theorists seized on the tweet, claiming it contained a codedmes- sage. By removing letters, the hashtag could be shortened to “Five Jihad,” they argued. And a search for the abbrevi- ation formed by the first letters of the jobs he listed— GVCSF— led to the Grass Valley Charter School Foun- dation, whose fundraiser was scheduled for this week- end. Comey, they concluded, was broadcasting an attack, perhaps as a distraction from other pending news. The Grass Valley police quickly determined that the theory was baseless and that the school, with about 500 students fromprekindergar- ten through eighth grade, was under no threat. “We definitely did our due diligence,” Police Chief Alex Gammelgard said. “Every single potential piece we did pointed to the same thing: that it was not credible.” But word traveled fast in Grass Valley, which is home to about 13,000 people. Maddock andWendy Willoughby, president of the foundation, had started to hear fromparents who were worried, not about the pre- dicted attack, but about the people who believed in it. What if one of them showed up, armed, to protect against a threat that did not exist, as had happened at a popular Washington, D.C., pizzeria two years ago? At the same time, some mem- bers of the community vowed to attend the event to provide protection. After several sleepless nights, Maddock, who wor- ried the event could spiral out of control, announced last week that the fundraiser was canceled, as reported by The Sacramento Bee. “This is an event with children’s games, and activi- ties and face painting, and a student-art auction, and live music and food, and just a real community builder for us,” he said. “I didn’t want the flavor of the event to be suddenly tainted by people that were showing up for all the wrong reasons.” One of the first people to warn the school about the false conspiracy theory was Mike Rothschild, a research- er who had watched it gain steamonline, its signal boosted by increasingly high-profile Twitter ac- counts. “I saw it unfolding, and I recognized immediately how bad this could get,” he said. “And ultimately it hap- pened.” He had urged the school not to cancel the event for fear that those who believed in the conspiracy theory would claim victory (they did), but in the end Roth- schild said he understood why officials made the deci- sion they did. Such theories have re- ceivedmuch attention in the media during the past year or so, but they remain on the fringes, said Rob Brotherton, an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard Col- lege who has long studied conspiracy theories. Giving themoxygen, even while debunking them, can nevertheless allow them to grow, he warned. “It seems tome, having studied these things for a long time, that giving it this kind of platform, even when it’s clearly framed as, ‘This conspiracy theory is not true,’ is only going to raise its pro- file,” he said. Rothschild disagreed with that sentiment. “This is hap- pening whether or not we write about it,” he said. “The first time you encounter this should be poking a hole in it.” And fringe though they may be, online conspiracy theories can spiral out of control, resulting in real- world consequences, as was the case for the Grass Valley Charter School. Not only was the commu- nity subjected to a minor panic because of the baseless conspiracy theory, but the school alsomissed out on an opportunity to raise about $15,000 and recoup thou- sands more that had been spent on the fundraiser, Paddock said. By NIRAJ CHOKSHI The New York Times A town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada recently found itself at the center of a baseless conspiracy theory that predicted an attack at a school fundraiser. All because of an innocu- ous tweet from former FBI Director James Comey. Scott Maddock, principal of the Grass Valley Charter School in Grass Valley, Cali- fornia, was unaware of the conspiracy theory when he arrived at work on a normal- seemingMonday in late April. But when he checked his voicemail, he heard from a man identifying himself as “a patriot,” alertingMaddock to the “threat.” “He was warning us that something was going to happen at our Blue Marble Jubilee school fundraiser and that we should contact the authorities,” Maddock said. “He kept saying that he is not behind it, but he has a credi- ble source.” Maddock wasn’t sure what Conspiracy theorists seize on Comey tweet, stir panic NATION&WORLD 405 University Street at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel 206-639-2407 | www.foxsseattle.com