The latest tool for inciting hate: Facebook

Way to go, society.

Inspired by a South Park episode in which one character labels all redheads as evil, some 5,000 people decided to take a silly joke and elevate it into reality by joining a "National Kick a Ginger Day" group on Facebook. The online ringleader: A 14-year-old Canadian kid, who naturally insisted it was all a gag.

Alas, dozens of attacks were reported on the ostensible holiday last week -- November 20 -- from both attackers and attackees. While some of the attacks reported are likely phony, many are assuredly real, including a pair of young Alberta girls who say they were punched and kicked at school. Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police is taking the case deadly seriously and is investigating it as a hate crime.

As absurd as this issue is -- red-haired people have not historically been the victims of any real discrimination or hate crimes -- it's emblematic of the way in which online networks can become a tool in real-world violence other and anti-social behavior. It takes a lot of effort and considerable personal risk to physically go to a meeting of, say, the KKK. But how hard is it to join a white supremacist social networking group? Or register at an Aryan Nation discussion group?

To its credit, Facebook appears to delete all such groups that it encounters -- the National Kick a Ginger Day group has also been removed -- so at least that's a step in the right direction. But people, making a Facebook group that incites violence, however tongue in cheek, is just a bad idea. We should all know by now that despite how frivolous the material on the Internet often is, no one ever seems able to get when you're joking.