
 
 People use their smart devices on an American Airlines plane. (Reuters/Carlo Allegri) 
 
 This post has been updated. 
 
 One dumb teenager is easily excused — but the host of Twitter users currently tweeting bomb threats at major airlines is another story entirely. 
 
 In case you’ve somehow missed this latest round of Internet idiocy, here’s what went down: Sunday night, a Dutch teenager identified only as “Sarah” infamously tweeted a threat at American Airlines. (“hello my name’s Ibrahim and I’m from Afghanistan. I’m part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I’m gonna do something really big bye,” she wrote. Hilarious!) She then promptly made the account private and insisted it was all a joke — “I’m so stupid, I’m scared,” she wrote at one point — but not before American reported her name and IP address to authorities, leading to her arrest in Rotterdam on Monday. (Notably, while American tweeted that the airline gave Sarah’s IP address to officials directly, Twitter has since questioned that account: Under Twitter policy, the social network does not share user information with anyone but law enforcement, and only under certain circumstances. Asked by the Post if there had been some error, however, American Airlines repeatedly refused to retract the tweet or explain it further.) 
 
 In either case, you’d think that would warn off other pranksters — but the opposite has actually been true. In fact, at least a dozen other people have threatened American or, oddly, Southwest, an unrelated airline, under the guise of a “prank” or “joke.” 
 
 @AmericanAir the bomb goes of in 3 hours — Alden Fernandez ♥ (@AldoFernz) April 14, 2014 
 
 @AmericanAir I have a bomb under the next plane to take off — Army Jacket . (@ShyyLicious) April 14, 2014 
 
 @AmericanAir I’m gonna bomb your 737 jet — ▲ demi ▼ (@ddlovatosteddy) April 14, 2014 
 
 @AmericanAir You really seem to not care that i’m about to bomb your plane that’s headed to Paris. Btw, my name is Ahmed. — Allie (@ComedyBatman) April 14, 2014 
 
 @SouthwestAir @WesleyWalrus is gonna bomb your next few flights — donnie cyrus. (@MileyFawLife) April 14, 2014 
 
 @AmericanAir Hello Am From Iraq i Want 1Million Or I Will Plan A Bomb To Your Next Flight To Paris !! Bye Bye America ” — The Real Slim Shady (@WaleedMeshari) April 14, 2014 
 
 @AmericanAir Hello, I’m eduardo. ago a couple of weeks were warned, i´m ignored. you will pay the consequences. Bomb! HAHAHAHA — eduardo (@eduardo37276391) April 14, 2014 
 
 @AmericanAir hello my name is Ibrahim I think you guys are the BOMB!!!!!! — zahra (@versaceftziam) April 14, 2014 
 
 .@SouthwestAir I bake really good pies and my friends call me ″the bomb” am I still allowed to fly? — Kale (@KalenRiley10) April 14, 2014 
 
 We hardly need reiterate the problems with this kind of thing: airlines need to take threats seriously, no matter how silly they seem, which means a lot of airline employees (and presumably, police and security and FBI) are spending a lot of time tracking down nuisance threats, as well. 
 
 Good rule to live by: Don’t make bomb threats, regardless of medium. Didn’t think that needed clarification. cc @SouthwestAir @AmericanAir — Justin (@TheAngryGents) April 14, 2014 
 
 Leaving aside, for a minute, the vast waste of taxpayer money and manpower that represents, there’s another more ground-level problem here: This trolling completely destroys whatever incentives airlines have to engage with their customers on Twitter. Which is, as many a Twitter-using traveler knows, basically the only decent line of airline customer service left. 
 
 Just last week, the Post’s Andrea Sachs reported on the use of social media at major airlines — it’s “unrivaled in its efficiency,” one expert said. In other words, if you ever have a problem on a flight, social media is the surest way to get relief. Or it will be, until other Internet trolls spam airlines with distracting, and potentially dangerous, clutter. (Imagine the chaos, if 4chan or some such signed on.) 
 
 Then again, that kind of disruption is presumably just what trolls want. That term is often used as a catch-all for agents of Internet mischief and unpleasantness, but recent studies have actually suggested a link between dedicated trolling and psychopathy. To quote a February paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, “it might be said that online trolls prototypical everyday sadists” — a.k.a., people who enjoy deceiving and manipulating other people. 
 
 That isn’t to say that Sarah is a sadist, of course; maybe she’s just another teenager spewing bite-sized idiocies into the void, like so many teenagers before her. Her copycats, on the other hand, know exactly what they’re doing. Let’s hope they realize how unfunny this schtick is — sooner, rather than later. 
 
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 The Rotterdam police confirmed on Twitter that the girl who was arrested for tweeting a threat to American Airlines on Sunday was released from prison on Tuesday. 
 
 See also: Teen Arrested After Tweeting Terror Threat to American Airlines 
 
 American Airlines Twitter threat: Dutch girl released pending further enquiries. #Rotterdam #Police #Force — Politie Rotterdam eo (@Politie_Rdam) April 15, 2014 
 
 The 14-year old girl, who tweeted under the handle @QueenDemetriax_, posted what seemed to be a pretty serious threat over the weekend, and she included American Airlines' Twitter handle @AmericanAir. 
 
 "Hello my name's Ibrahim and I'm from Afghanistan. I'm part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I'm gonna do something really big bye," she tweeted. She later claimed it was all a joke; her Twitter account is currently suspended. 
 
 Rotterdam police confirmed Monday that she has been arrested, and that the investigation is ongoing. 
 
 See all her tweets — which have since been deleted — thanks to a Storify by Rachael Perrotta: 

 US Airways apologized for an extremely graphic photo that it shared earlier today, depicting a naked woman in a sexual position with a toy plane. 
 
 On Monday afternoon, the airline tweeted the photo to a customer who was complaining about their service. US Airways said in the tweet, "We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail here for review and follow up." 
 
 It took almost a full hour before the company removed the tweet, and it has already made its rounds on the Internet. 
 
 A representative of US Airways told The Huffington Post that they were looking into the incident as of 3:25 p.m. 
 
 The company sent out a follow-up tweet after the original NSFW image garnered more than 500 retweets. 
 
 We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating. — US Airways (@USAirways) April 14, 2014 
 
 And if you must absolutely see the image in its completely un-blurred, original posting, then so be it. Again, this is VERY NSFW. 
 
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– Thanks to the 14-year-old Dutch girl arrested after tweeting a fake terrorism threat to American Airlines, fake Twitter threats are apparently now a thing. The Washington Post reports that dozens more teens (well, they're assumed to be teens, and many have usernames like "@ddlovatosteddy" and "@MileyFawLife") are picking up where 14-year-old Sarah (who was released today, notes Mashable) left off, and the Post has screenshots of ill-advised tweets, some of which have since been deleted, including: "@AmericanAir I have a bomb under the next plane to take off" "@AmericanAir You really seem to not care that i’m about to bomb your plane that’s headed to Paris. Btw, my name is Ahmed." "@AmericanAir Hello Am From Iraq i Want 1Million Or I Will Plan A Bomb To Your Next Flight To Paris !! Bye Bye America" Other copycat tweeters have also directed their "jokes" to Southwest Airlines, for some reason. (Southwest told at least one such person that they would be reported to the authorities.) In other unfortunate airline-related Twitter news, someone at US Airways is probably in a lot of trouble today after a very unfortunate incident yesterday. In response to a customer complaining about her flight, US Airways tweeted, "We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up:" But instead of a link to a feedback form, what followed was an extremely graphic image. The airline quickly removed the tweet and apologized, claiming it was unintentional. Apparently the image had been tweeted at US Airways earlier from another Twitter user, and "we captured the tweet to flag it as inappropriate," US Airways said in a statement, according to USA Today. The image was then "inadvertently included" in the airline's tweet. If you really must see it, click here.