Art and Culture, Articles, Social Media, Web

‘R.I.P. MJ and Farrah’. These were inescapable words that echoed throughout globe on June 25, 2009. Aside from the stories of these untimely passings, there were many stories about the stories, and the role of social media as a broadcast medium. Recently, we’ve been hearing substantial chatter about how social media such as Twitter is supposedly hammering yet another nail in the coffin, and further obsolescing traditional news outlets.

Call me old school, but I have remained skeptical, and a non-tragedy yesterday reminded me why – Jeff Goldblum is still alive, well and delivering lines somewhere in his trademark style (I’m a fan).

As many of you know, some questionable individuals chose to exploit yesterday’s high-profile tragedies to exercise their brand of decidedly unfunny humor. Given Michael Jackson’s impact on pop culture, yesterday was another rare instance of a ‘Where were you when you heard…’ moment, and for many it was a ‘Where were you when you read the tweet about…’ moment.  The blinding speed of social media on full display.

However, many of us also received tweets about the tragic passing of Mr. Goldblum (along with Harrison Ford and others), sparking a torrent of questions and disbelief. I can only imagine the temporary (but utterly unnecessary) horror that was maliciously perpetrated against the friends and family of the very-much-alive Mr. Goldblum et al. The ‘news’ became so widespread that Goldblum’s publicist was compelled to release a statement. Granted, the invisible hand eventually cleared up the confusion, but it took time and many, many requests to re-tweet the ‘Goldblum is not dead’ voices of reason messages.

What a mess.

In my mind, it conjured the growing tide of arguments that ‘Twitter is the new CNN’. Hmm…maybe not so much just yet. If yesterday is an indication, we might be over-estimating our current collective intelligence.

I don’t know about you, but I’d sacrifice a bit of immediacy in exchange for some good old-fashioned fact-checking with my serving of news (dead vs. alive…that sort of thing). Things may get better in the future, but there was a culture of ‘(re-)tweet first, ask questions never’ that was displayed in high definition yesterday.

Quite frankly, it made me appreciate the fact that we still have professional journalists left in the world. Thanks.

(By the way…loved him as Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park).