It's a Rich Full Life

Never been kissed. Susan Boyle...

It's hard to dismiss modern TV when you see things like this. I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. Bless her.

Susan Boyle on Britain Got Talent
by dwarthy

Prime Minister Dion?

I don't have much to say about this video that it does not say for itself.  For all of you coalition fans, you should rethink your position on the Liberals ability to lead. Thanks to Darin Brox for forwarding me the link.

When your facebook friend is charged as a sociopathic murderer

Ok, I admit that Mark Twitchell is only charged with 1st degree murder at this time, and I will be the first to admit that he could be innocent. I doubt that greatly, as I have faith in the Edmonton Police Service, but let him get a fair trial and see where it shakes out.

What I find fascinating about this story, if it could be anymore fascinating, are the social media aspects. Firstly, the story broke yesterday with an eerie article on the 880 News website. The story was written by a local media employee that I follow on Twitter, BritL, and it hit my Twitter feed immediately after she "tweeted" it's release.

From there it get's really strange. It turns out, the alleged murderer has an open facebook profile (possibly only open to users in the Edmonton network). That means anyone in the Edmonton network on facebook can peruse his pictures, videos, work endeavours and even thoughts. I can't find the exact words for how I felt, as I read the posts on Twitchell's facebook wall. You can see in the image below, that he even posted that he was feeling "Blah" approximately 14 days after the alleged murder had taken place. Seeing the purely provincial nature of his status updates making this story hugely unsettling.

Another thing that I noticed yesterday when I first visited Twitchell's profile was that he had over 130 "friends" on his facebook profile. Just as I write this, he is down to 126 125. I suspect that we will see that number decrease rapidly as the public and media start to scour his profile. Imagine waking up on a sleepy Sunday morning to find out that your "friend" has been charged as a sociopathic murderer. Arguably, it might make you think twice about that "friendship". If in fact it ever existed in the first place. Of course I am being tongue-in-cheek as I have written before about facebook "friends with quotations" before. Mark Twitchell no more had 130 friends, than I have 130. In fact, I think as I have aged, the number of true friends I have in this world has probably fallen. Most of the 370'ish people that follow my updates on Twitter are no more my true friends either.

I am not searching for a complex moral to the story. I am simply reminding myself that social media allows us to see the spiderweb of connections between real friends and acquaintances. Of course It allows users to establish new friendships, real lasting ones, and that is the upside of this technology. The downside, if you don't see the difference between an online "friend" and a real life friend, is that if you are charged with murder, you may find out that you have many less friends than you thought.

A really creepy afterthought has occurred to me. In this strange world, especially on Twitter where you can't limit who follows you, a well publicized murderer or accused, would probably gain "friends / followers". Maybe that should tell us something about social media, I am just not sure if that downside is greater than the upside.