The events that happened Monday at the Boston Marathon were shocking, horrific and sad. Moments after the bombs went off, social media was abuzz with questions about it. People nearby who heard the bombs were wondering what had happened. People who had friends and family in the race were wondering where their loved ones were. And then, people who were in the actual area started to tweet and post images of the area.
I used to have a very simple morning routine. Get the paper from the porch & sit down to read it with a cup of coffee. A great start to the day. For the past few months, that’s all changed. The paper is pretty much forgotten and the first thing I do in the morning over a cup of coffee is check out the photos that Commander Chris Hadfield is tweeting out from space.
The Super Bowl is known as much for it’s TV advertising as it is for the game itself. The average cost of a 30 second TV commercial during the Super Bowl this year was $4 million.
I’ll do the math for you. That’s roughly $133,333.33 per second. Seriously expensive.
Approximately 250,000 Twitter users have had their online security compromised after a cyber-hack in which hackers may have gained access to user names, session tokens, encrypted passwords and email addresses.
BAM! All of a sudden this morning, my Twitter and Facebook feeds were full of posts about ING Direct.
What?
It’s all about an ad that ING Direct has recently promoted for RSP season. The tone of the ad is dark and at first glance, you’d think it was talking about something very serious, but it’s actually a tongue-in-cheek satire about the anxiety of RSP season. After the ad first aired, it didn’t take long for Canadians to speak up at the insensitive parallels between the tone of this ad and the underlying comparison to the effects of mental illness.
The news spread swiftly yesterday, which is pretty much the norm for anything being discussed on social media. Unwanted, harassing tweets from a 52-year-old Ontario man had resulted in him being changed with Criminal Harassment.
That’s pretty serious stuff.
The last tweet sent out by the accused, known as @greg_a_elliott, seemed foreboding:
Technology is an incredible and wonderful thing, and I truly believe it’s something that everyone needs to embrace in whatever way they can to enrich their lives. Geekdom rules. However, there is an ugly side to technology and social media: Cyberbullying
Like thousands of others last week, I was totally devastated to hear of another teen suicide that was the result of cyberbullying. Beautiful 15 year old Amanda Todd took her own life after years of trying to undo a mistake she did online.
Every day it seems I get direct messages from people on Twitter that say incredibly shocking things like,
“OMG I can’t believe they filmed you doing this!” “Someone is spreading nasty rumours about you” “This person is making up dreadful posts that are about you” “What exactly are you doing in this movie?”
Contrary to popular belief, my life is not that exciting as these DMs might suggest. I'm actually quite well-behaved.
