Facebook and Surreality

In my "real" life I'm on Facebook. In my C6C life, I am not. It's unlikely the two shall ever meet.

But yesterday, I witnessed one of the stranger online phenomena I've seen in some time. Among my nearly 400 "friends" are a bunch of people I used to work with in my past life in EMS. First thing in the morning, I noticed a curious status message from one of the more prolific users within my group of Facebook friends. It was fairly vague, but mentioned "drama" at his current workplace and thanked everyone for their support.

I thought no more of this until a few hours later when I noticed this story online and being blasted around TV and radio. Now, I really have nothing to say at all about any of the information in the story, or anything about how I know this guy, etc. etc. In the news business, they call it a "No comment."

What I will say is that the subject of the story kept updating his Facebook page throughout the day and reacted--via Facebook--to specific paragraphs in the story and what was being said about him in the media. This struck me as a particularly bad idea. His page remained open to the public--seemingly no privacy settings were activated--and while he recorded a generic "no comment" outgoing voicemail on his phones (good idea), he seemed to have a bit of a disconnect about how his actions via Facebook could (and will) be perceived.

If you're facing a possible court-martial with three charges of murder tacked on, social networking might not be the best priority. On the other hand, it's proving to be a great way to rally support.