// June 15th, 2011 // No Comments » // Science, Technology, Thoughts
It was a fairly quiet Sunday in May. My wife and I were hanging out in the living room watching a Netflix movie. I was tooling around in Facebook on my PC and Twitter on my iPhone when another tweet came across from one of my favorite seasonal Twitter accounts, @tornadohunt. Most of the month they had been chasing storms, so I was used to the typical predictive nature of their tweets… locations they were headed to… where they thought a storm was turning.
This one was whimsical,
“Been driving in hail for 15 minutes now! Uncle! Golf balls hurt. Hang on Joplin.”
My mind conjured images of a team of rag tag storm chasers, “Wow”ing at each plunk of the ice while they worked their way through waves of rainfall chasing a beastly cone of wind and torn up trees.
I asked my wife if I could switch the TV from our Xbox to the news to watch what was going on, she begrudgingly agreed. When I turned to the news, there were reports plastered all over the bottom of the screen regarding tornado watches and warnings in our region (north-eastern Oklahoma). Within the span of about thirty minutes, all hell broke loose in Joplin, MO.
The following tweets were received in sequence from @tornadohunt. They were basically first responders after the disaster:
“Joplin hospital hit hard! On fire”
“Major damage in joplin!”
and even more alarmingly…
“Joplin MO. personally witnessing injuries and fatalities”
“Medical personnel needed in Joplin!!!”
Joplin, Missouri.
Then, a full five to ten minutes later, the meteorologist on the news reported the story. I looked from my phone, to my TV, back to my phone, fairly astonished that this little device in my hand made the situation in Joplin all the more real, and brought it to our attention several minutes before the television broadcast. Video came out afterwards too, broadcast on Youtube showing a first hand experience during the tornado. I’ve received breaking news alerts and traffic advisories from local news stations a ways before audio or television broadcast, or even before their websites are updated, but never before something this heavy.
Not to take away from the gravity of the Joplin situation, but just another social media observation that over the past few weeks, I’ve watched new celebrity personalities filing into Twitter, like @AlecBaldwin who joined in mid May of 2011 started with a few drinking/alcohol related tweets and has already ruffled quite a few political feathers just in the past few weeks. He tweeted that he’d been advised that he shouldn’t “drink and tweet”, commented on the nature of commentators on the political site Huffington Post and had his account apparently hacked.
Regarding the instant access to information that Twitter (and Facebook/other social media) represents, does all of this point to the increasing weight of the American instant satisfaction and gossip mentality? I’ve heard dissertations about how destructive that frame of mind is. However, I will always think back to the Joplin tornado and the scores of people in and near Joplin that had their jaw agape at the information they were receiving over a social network and take assertions that this particular form of instant information is bad for us with a grain of salt.
Regarding celebrities in the social spotlight. As unhealthy as a fixation on the lives of celebrities can be, those situations do reveal that when someone who doesn’t really grasp the full scope of what exposing your life to the world through a medium like this, they can damage themselves and/or their reputation. (Anthony Weiner for instance, along with many other celebrities. Courtney Love is another example). It is a window into the increasing reality that these folks are still fallible. It’s harder to hide your inadequacies when you hand your thoughts to the public. Media sources pounce on those things faster than you can say “I don’t think that picture was me, my account was hacked!”
If you’re not on Twitter, which would surprise me, give it a try. Follow some folks. Keep an eye on things and compare it to what the news reports.
It really is interesting how so much information you didn’t ask for, helpful and otherwise, will spill into your brain.
