when social media backfires
no one can deny the tsunami that social networking and media has become. from tweeting every move you make to the iPhone allowing us to snap photos and upload them to our MySpace/Facebook/Friendster/Etc…we all, to an extent, are generating content (which is a completely separate blog post).
that being said. the digital “paper trail” that we leave with this massive output of content can potentially backfire. take the following example.
Ashley Todd, a McCain/Palin supporter caused a flurry of interest and scandal when she reported that she “was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night”.
At this point you are probably asking yourself, ok, what does social media have to do with this? AHA! that would be where those little tweets that i told you about come in. Ashley just happens to be a twitterer (?) and tweeted a few little tweets around the time of her alleged attack. which is great news, we have a record of what happened…unless the attack was fake and then when they go back to the atm camera and check the time between your tweets and see that you weren’t where you claimed to be (never mind the fact that the letter “B” that was “carved into her face by her attacker” was backwards and looked like it had been done looking into a mirror”). Then when confronted with that and the inconsistency that has begun to arise in your story the police have you take a polygraph, the results of which were never released to the public (i wonder why…).
now i grant you that this is an extreme case, and for the most part social media is either neutral or good in its effect on the population at large (again, that is another debate). but i just thought that it would be interesting to bring up the possible double-edged nature of social media.
tweet/blog/post with care.
your resident conspiracy theorist
rob