What If You Tweet Fire . . .

The modern day equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater this past week in Mexico, and authorities appear to be taking it dead serious.

Two persons are charged with terroristic acts - basically scaring the hell out of parents and causing car wrecks and panic.

The quick story - they repeated rumors (this is being generous) without verification. AP has this version from the Houston Chronicle:

Gerardo Buganza, interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the panic to that caused by Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds." But he said the fear roused by that account of a Martian invasion of New Jersey "was small compared to what happened here."

The story went global, as The Guardian chimes in. They add the extra angle of how a UK youth is in jail for trying to create a flashmob for destruction. Apparently only the Bobbies were watching and planning to show up. It did result in four years in prison.

So the radio commentator and tutor/teacher who made the tweets sit in jail, facing up to 30 years for sending a panic through Veracruz.

It comes on the heels of the disastrous Tweet by a Houston area TV station that went around the world about a psychic leading sheriffs to a mass grave.

Here is your 140 takeaway: you have no reporter to blame or editor to save you online; it's all you.

Remember kids - think before you tweet.