“When life gives you lemons, shoot people.” James Holmes on Twitter?

Before going more to the plethora of evidence that James Eagan Holmes acquired his arsenal on the Internet, here are some indications of his social media use. The New York Post reported Saturday–following TMZ, Radar Online and Mediaite–that Holmes appears to have shown up recently on a sex web site, AdultFriendFinder.

His username is the innocuous ‘classicjimbo’, fairly popular as a user name on the Net–like ‘The Joker’. Accompanying photos, however, do look like Holmes, and user gives his place as Aurora, Colo.

Holmes and friend on web site

Looks like a match, as does this.

Holmes' page on web site

Here is another match: The same username and photo pop up on Twitter. User’s quotation of choice: “When life gives you lemons, shoot people.” “Prison.”

Same photo:

'ClassicJimbo' on Twitter

Oddly, early reports stated that Holmes showed no use of social media, including Twitter. Other commentators rushed to assert that Holmes had no Internet presence to speak of.

Jumping the gun to attack the wrong James Holmes online is one obstacle to achieving accuracy, and is certainly a problem for the persons wrongly accused.

Asserting early on, in news reports, that a young male neurosciences grad student did not use social media is another problem for accuracy. Listening to the news coverage, I was astounded at that statement. It would be remarkable for any budding scientist not to have cyber presence.

N.b.: The people named James Holmes on Facebook and on Twitter, etc., are different persons than the Colorado shooter. Attacking the wrong person–or any person–is no path to a solution.

If the ClassicJimbo on Twitter is Holmes, he was not following anyone. AdultFriendFinder is also on Twitter, as was Jessica Ghawi. It would be illuminating to trace Holmes’ computer use during his last days/hours, if only as part of a process of elimination. Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates has said that authorities are examining the computer found in Holmes’ apartment.

[Update 6:30 p.m.]

This media-outlet insistence that James E. Holmes had no social media presence, or no online presence, is looking odder all the time. He had, and he did.

There’s another oddity, too: Reportedly Holmes called himself ‘The Joker’ to police. But he does not resemble The Joker. The red-orange hair resembles Jim Carrey’s Riddler. Obviously this is a detail, but colorful details loom large in the envisionings of schizophrenics and deeply depressed individuals. Regardless of whether Holmes was in some confused way trying to throw authorities off the scent, or just got the names wrong, or was misreported, The Riddler is the look that determines the hair color. There’s no Heath Ledger in that carrot top.

Carrey as The Riddler

For what it’s worth, searching the social media site MySpace for ‘The Riddler’ turns up 400 hits. Narrowing the search to young males in Colorado turns up two, one a 24-year-old in Aurora, Colo:

http://www.myspace.com/thetownnobleman

There is nothing illuminating here, no disclosure, and the personal details are wrong for Holmes. But ‘the town nobleman’ is also code name for diamonds–the card suit–in an obscure and complicated online game elsewhere, and The Riddler in the previous-franchise Batman movie attempted to steal diamonds.

Holmes had considerably more presence elsewhere online, but that item will be covered later; tomorrow if possible.

Meanwhile, the no-social-media-footprint meme is insta-myth.

False, not factual.

[One further update:]

Again for what it’s worth, Holmes may well have thought he resembles Carrey, and then of course there’s their first name.

Here is the familiar photo of Holmes.

James Holmes

Jim Carrey