Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
The “american dream” has always had a problematic contradiction. You should work hard. Working hard is good. You should work hard so you don’t have to work anymore. Working sucks and you don’t want to do it. You want to be the guy on a golf course getting money while those hard working people assemble widgets for you.
Well, which is it then?
I always took it as “if you do your best you’ll never be without what you need” but that could still have a lot of broad interpretations