The consequential reach.

Hello world.

It’s definitely been a grueling 5 weeks of school. It did start out at a slow pace but as various projects accumulated over the weeks to the final one, things DID become and ARE very hectic.

This final semester in DMC has taught me alot of things. I’ll leave my emotional growth for those who are really interested (ask!) because the purpose of this blog isn’t to act as a rant-dom. But, a dedication to a very important and practical module, New Communication Technologies (NCT). Let’s welcome this topic with open arms once again. Every week we’d familiarise ourselves with at least 2 new topics (I’d cover that in a later post) but one thing that I have gathered from the majority of the presentations is that:

Social media connects, displays, stays and affects.

The other day, due to sheer boredom and procrastination of schoolwork, (haha) I decided to revisit my ancient blog that I devotedly updated every day when i was about 15/16. I was greeted with horrifying instances of libel on ‘bitches’ I couldn’t stand in school. Constant flaming of the academia realm and very very unflattering pictures of my classmates and I. Oh the embarrassment. The worse part? After making the site private, Google still indexed the blog url in its search results. I curse archiving! Base on my understanding of how the search engine ranks the result list, I’d have to bug my ex-classmates to revive their also ancient blogs to remove their link to mine.

Moving on, but still in relation.

I’m not a basketball fan and that means I don’t scour the NBA’s site for latest news on their players. But not long ago this year, a basketball player named Michael Beasley made the headlines. Not because of a fantastic winning 3 pointer but because of this seemingly innocent picture he posted on Twitter via Twitpic:

Picture taken from sportybrooks.com

Yes, we can tell that his threshold for pain is really high and he has a self-esteem to compliment it. And that the inscription almost reads like ‘Super Cool Beans’. Should have converted more people into Beasley evangelists right?

But no it didn’t.

Let me direct you to the bottom right hand corner of the picture. See the small blurry packet of ‘herbs’ that suspiciously looks like marijuana? Fans picked up on that and it wasn’t long before huge controversies and an uproar inevitably ensued.

Beasley was fined $50,000.

Companies should really tighten their rules on social media sites.

There was a particular incident with a K-pop singer who made a defamatory comment about the country he was living in on Myspace 4 years ago. Netizens managed to resurface that comment and that also ensued a huge uproar which led him to stay in the shadows away from the music industry for the time being. Or not.

The consequential reach of a tactless post is so huge. It scares me. I’ve since learnt to think twice before tweeting or posting anything that may be interpreted as controversial.

There is close to no anonymity on the world wide web. And if you happen to chance upon a social media/google guru and offend him/her…

All the best in your coming years.

p.s (To those who are too free and decide to search for my blog, I’ve already cleaned it up enough to hide things from us minions haha.)

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