When YouTube provocateur Messy Mya was shot dead in the New Orleans streets on Sunday night, Nov. 14, it was a time to reflect on the tragic loss of life — whether or not you agreed with his sometimes offensive online videos. But his senseless death pulled back the curtain on a problem that has been exacerbated by social media — that being the lack of tact and compassion for our fellow man.
As the 22-year-old lay dead in the streets surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, one spectator decided to take a picture and upload it to Twitter. Once other users caught wind of the picture, hundreds of users retweeted the picture.
Eventually, cries to pull the picture down were honored, but the damage had been done, and the message was clear …
Social networking removes our sense of reality.
That may be the only way to explain how so many people can pass around the picture of someone recently killed without an ounce of empathy for his family. In today’s cyber society, we have become a nameless, faceless people who say and do whatever we want on the Internet while hiding behind the cloak of freedom of speech and expression.
I’m sure this wasn’t the intention of those who created sites like Twitter, and it’s a gentle reminder that compassion and good judgment should be exercised both in real life, and in the cyber world. R.I.P. Messy Mya. –djr
