Joelology - Exploiting Tragedies On Social Networking Sites

If you haven’t been living under a rock or have been paying attention to the news, you will have most probably heard that there has been a shootout in a cinema in Aurora, Colorado. People were in the cinema to watch the premiere of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ film. A man by the name of James Holmes, entered the cinema through a back door and opened fire, killing a dozen people and injuring many more. Among the victims were a 3 month old baby; a child aged nine and a woman who had been hyping up going to see the film on her Twitter account. The man was arrested and didn’t resist, and at one point apparently claimed to be the ‘Joker’ or a ‘Joker’.

This situation, it’s really sad. Every time a situation like this happens — we the world sit back in awe and talk about how bad the said situation was. We give condolences, we thank whoever for being alive and so on. But there’s a distinct group out there who takes this to the next level.

What level? The next level. What’s the next level? Trying to benefit from a tragedy. Exploiting it for your own gain. That’s right. People actually do that. You may be sitting here, reading this and saying that news stations exploit tragedies, but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about ordinary people on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. We’re talking about those parody accounts you see on Twitter. We’re talking about those dudes who use pictures of cancer stricken kids to boost their likes on Facebook and try and make it as if they’re the second-coming of Jesus Christ because their ‘likes’ can magically heal people.

It’s sickening. It really is. It hadn’t even been a day, and already, a Twitter parody of Ted (you know, from Seth MacFarlane’s movie, Ted?) popped up trying to feed off the tragedy. Let me go off topic here for a brief moment. If there was ANY film I could predict to create this spur of fucking parody accounts, it would be this one.  There’s something about a bear that’s a loudmouth and smokes weed that makes it all appealing to people who have parody accounts. Like, a day after the film was released, THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF THEM. It’s like someone had dropped an ice cream on the floor and the ants started to crawl in a minute later. There’s an official Ted account linked to the movie (@WhatTedSaid), why don’t you follow it. Or does that not have enough cheesy jokes that you’ve heard one billion times and ‘truth tweets’ that aren’t very truthful?

Anyway, back on the actual subject. This is the actual tweet made by this fake Ted account:

You’re going to be sitting there wondering “What’s wrong with this?” Well guess what, I’mma break it down for you — bit by bit.

• ‘the youngest patient was only 3 months old’ — Now that my friends, is done to start the guilt-trip. This is guilt-tripping you into retweeting it. It could have mentioned any other person that got killed. Even that girl who was on Twitter.
• ‘R-t for respect’ — That is where the tweet peaks in trying to exploit the tragedy. Why? It’s an imperative. It’s demand. It’s telling it’s followers that if they don’t retweet, they aren’t showing respect. It’s effectively another part of the guilt trip.
• ‘If you don’t hv a heart keep scrolling’ — And the whole thing comes full circle. That’s the cherry on the cake. Didn’t need to state that. It was already enough to guilt-trip people. But that does it to an extra degree. People who put this on social networking sites are often seeking for people to actually do what they’re asking.

When I see this sort of thing. I get mad. I get real mad. Why? Because it’s exploitation. Exploitation to get something as simple as retweets. Why do they fish for retweets? Because they get paid. That’s right. People get paid for tweeting and having a large amount of followers. Didn’t know that, did you?

It’s just as sad as that dude on Twitter that’s named after that Rugrats character that was always scared and had ginger hair. That dude, he posts things like: “IF YOU FOLLOW ME, I WILL FOLLOW THE NEXT 100 PEOPLE BACK!” He doesn’t do it. He doesn’t care. He’s nearing 1,000,000 followers because of it. And he’s a nobody. Nobody cares for his existence, yet he has that many followers.

There’s a problem with this exploitation. It’s sad that people are doing this. Can I stop it? Nope. But I’m speaking about it (or typing — or whatever). I find it sick that people go and do these sorts of things. Can you imagine how bad this would be, if Twitter was around in 2001 around 9/11? I bet you, a parody account of Peter Griffin or Bart Simpson would be all over that.

And it’s not just on Twitter. You will most probably log onto Facebook and see those internet-fame hungry douchebags lapping it up. People you are friends with will like it. Why? Because they think they’re a bad person if they don’t. Go on here to Tumblr, people will exploit this tragedy and thousands more. People will throw that ‘scroll past if you’re heartless’ and that ‘this won’t make your blog ugly’ card. They’ll be in your ass if you disrespect their opinion.

So all in all, fuck these people who exploit these tragedies on social networking sites. I cannot fathom how stupid they are. But what am I gonna do? I’m just some dude who rants a lot and makes .gifs. I haven’t got the power to stop this from happening.

Class dismissed.

And rest in peace to those who died in this shooting. Nobody should go through that.