This past week, two stories have been creating a huge buzz. The stories could hardly be more different. One involves a man from Ohio, one involves a woman from England. And yet, one thing ties these stories together – Social Media. And for me, one other thing ties these stories together. I am afraid that we are letting Social Media fill the spot where personal responsibility should be.
The Ted Williams Story
In case you’ve missed it, this video surfaced a short while ago, featuring a homeless man with a voice to die for. He had been standing off the highway in Columbus holding a sign saying that he would demonstrate his “God given gift” for a dollar at a time.
When I first watched the video, my heart went out to the guy. He noted that he had this great gift but had wasted it away thanks to drugs, drinking, and “other things.” He had obviously fallen on ridiculously hard times as a result, and he was pleading for just a chance to do some radio work. Something to fill his pockets. I was not the only one affected that way. The video went viral in the best kind of way, and just a couple of days later, Ted Williams has job offers and house offers falling on his head.
I have no idea what Ted Williams is really like. You probably don’t either. I’m sure there are plenty of people who hold signs whom you drive by every day. There are people in my hometown who do it as a hoax. And yet, this one particular guy, because of a reporter shooting a video, got a chance. He’s going to get a job.
Is this 100% good news?
Before we get to that, let’s move on to story 2.
The Simone Beck story
Simone Beck’s story ends in tragedy. She posted to Facebook on Christmas day that she had swallowed enough pills to kill herself. She bid a fond farewell. Her “friends,” of which she had 1,000, mocked her via the status update and generally didn’t take it too seriously. Sadly, Simone Beck was not lying, and she was found dead in her home a day later.
There is a huge outcry against these 1,000 friends. Why didn’t a single one of them call the police? Why didn’t any of them reach out to Ms. Beck to help her out?
Are you getting the full story?
Here’s where I’m scratching my head about both of these stories. You have a fellow who admits that he totally blew the opportunity of a lifetime. We don’t know all of the details. We don’t know how many people he hurt along the way. We don’t know if he has a criminal record (drugs make people do DUMB things, as does alcohol). But because we are so hungry to feel good about ourselves, we spread the word that this guy deserves a job, and because there was such a push, he’s going to get a second chance at his chance of a lifetime.
Do we know that he is the right person in which to invest all of our hopes and dreams?
In the case of Simone Beck, obviously one can’t argue with the fact that any time a person commits suicide, it’s a deep and unnerving horror of a tragedy. But…to lay the blame at the feet of her 1,000 Facebook “friends” does not seem reasonable to me either.
How many times during a day do you say things like, “Oh man, somebody shoot me!” How many times do you post tongue-in-cheek comments to your Facebook or Twitter pages? How many people do you know who have 1,000 friends and actually are FRIENDS with all of them?
I know nothing about Simone Beck, just like I know nothing about Ted Williams. Maybe she posted stuff like that to Facebook all the time. Maybe it was a cry for help, but because people didn’t KNOW her truly, they didn’t know what she was after. Heck, sometimes real friends don’t know what others are saying when talking online. Why do you think there’s always drama?
What is happening to the concept of personal responsibility?
I am certainly not one to dole out judgment, and that’s not my intent. But I am looking at these two stories and just thinking, “Hmm…Social Media is filling in gaping holes in stories for us, and people are latching on to the first things they see and hear. Is that good?”
It’s easy to watch a video like “the golden voice” and think, “Man, that poor guy.” It’s easy to read a story like Simone Beck’s and say, “Man, those awful people, not helping that poor lady.”
In the days before Social Media, Ted Williams probably would not have gotten a second chance at his chance of a lifetime. He would have had to continue to live with the fact that he blew it, just like so many people have done in the past. Is this an improvement? I honestly don’t know.
And in the old days, perhaps Simone Beck, in her hour of need, would have looked for help via a telephone call to her mother, now distraught, or to a real friend. Perhaps she wouldn’t have confused Facebook “friends” with true friends of the heart.
Then again, maybe those 1,000 people do bear responsibility. Perhaps we should react as if it’s a worst case scenario every time someone makes a post like that. We should send the police just to be certain.
I don’t know though. Do you want to live life on that kind of heightened tight wire?
My mind is a muddle
So I’d love to hear your thoughts about the intersection of these two peoples’ stories with the world of Social Media. Are we headed in a good direction or a scary one?
Let’s talk about it.
Image by Ruth Livingstone. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Rbut
This is a really great post to get a person thinking Marjorie. Here’s my couple of cents on what I see here:
Social media is really easy to do some sharing and interacting at an “easy” level. (Click button to “Like” or “RT” or “Stumble” etc.) No further effort required. I get to feel like I did something for someone else, and they have the benefit of knowing whatever they put out connected with someone enough to take that small action. But then we’re done unless one of us puts further effort into it. Taking the one extra step of telling everyone else why you are sharing that information isn’t done as frequently in my opinion, because that simple activity suddenly starts to feel kind of “hard”. I like it- here it is- take it as you may.
In Simone’s case, I think that what she put out there just wasn’t taken seriously, or more than likely ignored. I’m not sure how much you were on FB during the holidays, but there were a lot of extreme comments- it seemed like either people were merrier than merry or they were complaining because they were sad, depressed, and lonely. So because of the magnitude of that one extreme, I know that I skipped over every single one of them without even reading the whole post. It’s a sad story, but I don’t think the 1,000 FB friends are to blame for what happened there.
Social media is definitely changing how we choose to interact, and what we are choosing to share. I think the question of social responsibility is going to continue to come up particularly because of situations like these.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Christy!
I agree 100% that the ease with which we can just share information is part of the problem. I wonder how many people shared the “golden voice” video without even watching the whole thing. They heard his voice, thought, “Wow, that’s amazing! Send!” and then went on their merry way.
I don’t want to insinuate that people who give to charities or what have you online are less genuine about their efforts, but I think the door is open for people to have “make-goods” or to do good without as much thought about what they are really doing.
Thanks for helping me work out the brain pretzel!
My suggestion is to not confuse the platform with the quality of the relationship. The fact that none of her friends reacted by calling the police has no relevance to facebook as a platform.
I have about 800 friends and, yes, some of them I do know well enough to be able to judge when they are in trouble, and I try to help. Same thing on twitter, I have 2600 followers. I don’t generally post news that I’d like real help with for all of my 2600 followers, I rather call the 5 or 6 people I have deep enough relationships with. That doesn’t mean that if I post something serious, the people who follow me with won’t try to help.
I’ve recently had cause to think about this because of a cancer diagnosis in the family. For the wider audience, it’s good to create a space where they can help, like for example I’m talking to the Anthony Nolan Trust about setting up an appeal for donors from with the right genetic background. People can help by spreading the word, without too much effort.
I guess what I’m saying is – the sort of relationships you build is not down to facebook, or twitter, the internet or the telephone. It’s still about you.
I’m sorry to hear that a family member is battling Cancer. Best wishes to you.
I agree 100%. There should be a sense of personal responsibility wherever you go online. Is there? I’m not so sure. I’m not sure people are taking the time to think about the power inherent in saying something and having (potentially) thousands of people see it.
That’s big stuff.
Is our society contemplating how that could change, like, everything? Doesn’t seem so.
Thank you for your comment!
I shared Ted’s video yesterday, and I did watch it all, plus the updates and his interview on the Early Show I think it was. You’re right, I got caught up in the excitement of it all; I don’t know whether he deserved it or not, but yes I wanted to believe something good.
I didn’t know of Simone’s story, it wasn’t important enough to make the BBC news site it seems. Christy has said it better than I can; I’m not a big user of Facebook, but I would have skipped over most of the content too. And as you say, how often do we post something tongue-in-cheek that could be misinterpreted?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to believe in something good. I’m certainly not a little green grinch over here. But it does make me kind of wonder. Are we going to find out that this feel-good story isn’t so much? Will that catch people completely by surprise?
I hope not, but it’s on my mind.
It’s a tough comparison, one that I had not noticed but now I have read this – where do you start! Poor Simone Beck, such a tragedy and as you sum up in your conclusion without social media her cry for help may have been heard.
But we don’t know all the variables and in a way it’s very sad that what she leaves behind, her legacy is this; her Facebook cry for help was mocked and failed.
Ted Williams, let’s hope he makes the most of his second chance.
Thanks for such a thought provoking posts Margie.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for coming by!
Glad you also find the parallel of these 2 stories interesting. It hit me like a ton of bricks last night that both of these stories are running at the same time, causing such different reactions due to such different endings. It’s interesting to me that Social Media is having such a major impact on our culture and society, and it all seems to be happening without us really noticing. Kind of scary, actually!
Very interesting comparison! I think one of the problems we are dealing with, of course, is information overload. I only go on my FB feed once a week, at best, as I just can’t keep up and it’s filled with nonsense. So how many of the 1,000 followers even saw the post?
Then there is the concern that if you do something drastic, like call the police, you are doing harm if she’s not serious. (To her reputation, etc). What if she was just kidding and meant it in a figurative sense? I follow some Mom blogs, and there was a post awhile back about someone who had the police called on her because she posted (or tweeted, can’t remember) that her kid was driving her crazy and she was going to go smother him right now. She meant it in the “I”ll kill you!” way you say to friends…. and someone called the police on her. She had to wake her child (that she had finally GOTTEN to sleep) to show the police officer that she had not, in fact, killed her child.
How do you know when someone is kidding? The person who called the police over the mom didn’t take the chance, and as a result that mom is now under the watchful eyes of CPS. So there was some harm in acting, in that case.
With *good* news, there is no harm in acting, forwarding, or Rt’ing…. you are only sharing good news. It’s harder with bad news/jokes/etc that you don’t know whether or not to take seriously.
Wow, that’s a real-life example of the exact kind of reality I’m afraid of. On the one hand, you can kind of see why it went down that way. On the other hand, are we getting to the point where we can’t even express the least bit of frustration online? On the other other hand, it was probably irresponsible of that woman to post her frustration in that particular way. It’s what I keep coming back to – I’m not sure people are really paying attention to how far and open their words are. You’re always “on” when you’re online.
Thanks for sharing!
Margie,
First off, thank you for writing a post that truly embraces the spirit and intent of blogging – to engage in a conversation. ’nuff said there.
As for the topic at hand, I too have followed both of these stories. And without getting into the moral question of Ted or Simone’s motivations. Here’s my take on the question:
We are (for better or worst) an increasingly attention-deficit afflicted society. I can’t speak for the species as a whole; and it seems like other cultures still know how to stop, observe and process their environment. In America, generally, we have lost that. We are sound-bite driven. The nightly news (if anyone still watches that), reports stories 60 seconds at a time. Any longer and the audience tunes out. Bloggers get railed for writing 500 words instead of 100 because we don’t have time. Our RSS is feeding us the next post, the next shiny object to chase. In business, we don’t follow through. Execution is an endangered species. We want to get rich quick, retire early, play the market, flip real estate, get in on the LinkedIn and Facebook IPOs, then get out. Move on. Keep going.
Social media has allowed us to put our ADHD into overdrive. We hold tweet chats where conversations fly by at warp speed, allowing us to pretty much say whatever, because who the hell has time to stop and engage, question for understanding. “500 new updates have arrived”. Move on. Keep going.
So, the point. Social media allows us to validate this way we receive, process (or don’t process) information and what we do with it. Is Ted Williams a hoax? Don’t know. Don’t care. I gotta get in on it and capitalize. Post a video of him and I drive more traffic to my blog. Give him a job and I get free press. Who cares if he’s scamming us. I don’t have time to think about that. And, that part of the story will be forgoteen and filed away under “Old News” behind Michael Vick, Ben Roethlisberger and Tiger Woods.
There’s no time to get the facts, find the truth. Social media gives us permission to make quick judgements, truth be darned!
Bravo! I love your points here.
As I quickly comment on your comment as to get in and out, and on with MY agenda. 😉
You’re exactly right. Perhaps these things aren’t on peoples’ minds because they just don’t care. It doesn’t register. I clicked something, good deed done. I passed on a call for help – good deed done. It’s how people end up accidentally retweeting spam to their followers on Twitter. We don’t take the time breathe, not to mention taking the time to think, be cautious, etc.
It’s a real turning point in our society. I feel that strongly. But no one seems to be monitoring the evolution. It’s going to be an interesting ride to see how it all turns out.
Hi Margie,
I’m familiar with your writing over at Pushing Social, so this is a first time visit for me and I LOVE what you’re working here.
I really appreciate the issue you raise, but I suppose I have to echo that which I hear in Anke’s sentiments.
Personal Responsibility is exactly that — personal. You are both responsible for how you use social media in terms of what you disclose (a cry for help) or what you promote (a story of hope). In either case, you are responsible as a recipient and as a sender.
I think the question becomes, at what point do you act on whatever level of responsibility you believe you have. Perhaps the person who called the cops on the mommy blogger should have made an attempt to contact the mommy blogger first and make her aware that her comment was being misinterpreted. Perhaps she should have been warned that if she didn’t make a convincing effort that she was kidding the authorities would be notified.
Maybe we need to qualify the messages we share with a (J/k) or “I don’t know the facts, but…”.
As for dear Simone, it is a tragedy that her voice went unheard in her desperate time of need. But how many countless victims of tragedy go unheard without any opportunity to make a public plea? Are we only responsible because she put the responsibility on us via her Facebook status? Certainly that seems unreasonable.
My take away is: THINK before you tweet, RT, stumble, digg, and when in doubt ask before acting.
Well thanks for coming on over, Marlee!
Interesting point that a lot of victims don’t even pass into the new headlines. They don’t make a public plea. Nothing happens. They just disappear, and it’s up to their friends and family to mourn them in a vacuum. I am not sure that the public tragedy Simone Beck’s family is going through right now is better, though.
You are 100% right, thinking is key. Thinking about what we’re saying. Thinking about how we may be received. Thinking about what we’re doing. Very important in all walks of life, but especially when you’re on a huge public platform that can take your words anywhere 🙂
Great thoughts Margie.
Indeed, social media can’t take the place of personal responsibility or reaching out to those closest to you when you need help.
Social media, however, is no different than traditional media, at least in the way you talk about it here. Media broadcasts information as they see it. Sometimes they have the entire backstory, sometimes they don’t. Social media acts in the same way. It’s up to us, as consumers, as an audience, as a community, to research and find out more when making up our minds about something. However, in a world where we’re doing 24 things at once, we may not always have the time to properly research something before we make up our mind about it.
Just like we can’t trust that the media is going to give us 100% of the story, the same can be said of the situations with Ted Williams and Simone Beck. It’s up to us to learn more if we can—though in some cases—that’s not possible.
Yeah, traditional media I think is influencing Social Media a great deal. As news organizations continue to engage in cut-throat competition, it’s clear that the quality of information is no longer as important as how fast you get some kind of information out. Look at the whole “cure for autism” debacle going on right now. Sure, the doctor is a fraudulent twit, but how did he get his word out? Everyone started broadcasting his truth right away.
It’s a scary state of affairs.
You deliver yet again Margie! Great post.
Thanks 🙂
Hi Margie,
Gotta agree with Barry on this one, the attention deficit world we live in is reducing pre-release fact checking to a quaint idea of a bygone era. However I do believe that the facts generally emerge eventually, albeit often well after the story has broken.
Everyone is in too much of a hurry to wait for confirmation, details, and accuracy. We need it now.
Perhaps this is an unintended side effect of our constant push for greater connectedness and sharing?
As Marlee said you are personally responsible for both disclosure and promotion on social media channels. There’s an old saying in carpentry “measure twice, cut once”. Perhaps we could adapt this for social media: “check twice, post once”.
Cheers,
Ben
I agree, Ben. I think we all need that one additional beat before we tweet or post. “Ok, so what am I saying here and how could it possibly be perceived? But that makes the communication ever so slightly less instant. Maybe even ever so slightly less authentic for some. Do we stop and think before we talk? Sometimes. But sometimes we get caught up in a moment and say things we really regret.
The problem with doing so online is that it sticks out there. If you have the great misfortune of someone retweeting what you eventually come to regret, boy, that really stinks. Now it’s out there for good.
I agree that hurrying feeds this. The desire for instant gratification feeds this. And also feeling like we have the luxury to say whatever we want however we want. But do we carry the responsibility that goes with that? Not so sure about that.
Margie, this post describes what I have been thinking for a while, but not necessarily about social media.
I think it bleeds beyond social media into this “instant news” and “platform politics” era we are in. The concept that in the media things can be reported, contradicted, and twisted all around makes people more comfortable making mistakes — and also leaving friends who make mistakes high and dry because it doesn’t elevate their own status.
And doing good deeds…..is something we expect credit for each and every time, since there is SO. MUCH. media to pass around….
I’m hoping there will be a pendulum shift in the other direction soon.
This definitely ties directly to the media, if only because the media has come to depend on individuals like you and me for their news. Nobody is doing due diligence anymore. Hence everything should be questioned first and spread later. Good luck to us, right? 🙂
Margie–
Thank you for making us think (again).
While I agree that as social media participants we all need to take responsibility for our actions and inactions, most users are passive. The reality is that most of us just lurk and consume content. Think of the 90% lurk/9% take a small action /1% contribute ratio. Added to this is the fact that entertainment is one of the major reasons people consume online content and videos in particular so that Ted Williams like Susan Boyle with their surprising talent wrapped in less than attractive exteriors are ready made eye-candy.
By contrast, Simone Beck’s story was a downer and probably skipped over by many people on Facebook. Further, most people don’t know about suicide until it hits someone they know. It’s the silent S as diseases go. Therefore, instead of reaching out to Simone Beck, most likely people assumed that it was a false alarm. Unfortunately, Simone’s death wasn’t the only one on a social media platform last year and probably won’t be the last. The challenge we have is to use Simone’s death as a call to action to pay attention to these cries for help.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
That’s an interesting comparison – Ted Williams and Susan Boyle. I never really appreciated the reaction to Susan Boyle. To me, boiled down, what people were saying was, “Holy cow, a woman who is not 18, 80 pounds, and blond can do something amazing?!?” Uh, yeah.
But look at what happened to Ms. Boyle. She went from being private and kind of shut in to being a celebrity. Then, when the pressure got to her and she showed she was actually a real human being who can get angry and frustrated, hoo boy. The media turned on her.
As it happens, today the mug shots of Ted Williams surfaced. I am looking carefully at how people react to this news. To many peoples’ credit, they are not saying, “Oh, well he shouldn’t get a job then.” To me, this means we should go out with microphones and find out how many other hidden gems we have living on our streets. Maybe there are some who have never committed a crime, who never got into drugs or alcohol. Why should just 1 person get such a chance?
And you’re right, of course. The world is depressing. We are all looking for good news. But I fear a situation where we become so desperate for good news that we manufacture it without checking if it’s real first. That could lead to a lot more frustration and disappointment.
Margie,
When I was a young child (probably around 6 years old), my parents took my sister and I to California for the first time. We were there to see Disneyland; however, we also ventured over to the beach. It was at the beach that I first discovered one of the strangest things I have ever seen in my life – there were a dozen or so performing artists working of money.
Some of these folks were quite talented, others were pure hacks. There were mimes, musicians, actors, painters, sketch artists and much more. Like the Ted Williams story, a number of these people were talented, but for one reason or another they had ended up working on a beach hoping to scrape by a simple living.
I cannot comment on how any of these people ended up where they were. All I can say is that they landed on that beach through a combination of personal circumstances and choices.
That was over 30 years ago. I am sure things have changed at the beach (in fact, I know they have). Things have also dramatically changed in our world, including social media. I am unsure. Should social media become a default second chance?
I am a big believer in the innate goodness of our fellow human beings and as such, I think we should believe that people can change. At the same time, rather terrible things on in this world (like people ignoring one another’s cries for help). Now is social media the place for this to happen? I honestly don’t know. I guess what it comes down to is this – social media is constantly in flux. What it becomes is completely dependent upon the crowd that is using it.
We define our communities. We make our collective rules. And the actions of those we allow in our communities are a direct reflection of those communities. It is up to us to determine how these communities are defined. My one fear is that we should constantly fight to prevent the media from vilifying social media.
Peace out my friend,
Jason
P.S. You have assembled quite an astute audience. Nice work.
That is such a wonderful lead-in. I feel like your comment could be a stand-alone post.
There is a lot to these issues I’m questioning. You take the people at the beach that you saw when you were a kid. If Social Media had been around, maybe you would have taken a video of them and posted it to YouTube. Maybe they would have gotten off that beach. Maybe we would know their names and all about them.
But you didn’t. It wasn’t. We don’t.
So I guess what I’m worried about, in addition to your fear about social media trying to protect itself, is that we have in our hands a tool that determine who gets a second chance and who doesn’t. Are we aware we even have that power? Who gets to make the decisions, then?
I’m just not sure people are fully absorbing where these stories could lead us.
And yes, my community of readers is the best on the internet. No lie 🙂