Social Media to Admit to Crime?

[Tonichelle]

http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-man-may-face-homicide-charges-youtube-drunk-205813546.html

Cordle begged viewers not to drink and drive.


"Don't make the same excuses I did," Cordle said. "Don't say it's only a few miles or you only had a few beers or you do it all the time or it will never happen to you. Because it happened to me. I can't erase what I have done, but you can still be saved. Your victims can still be saved."
The video is the latest in a series of recent online confessions to crimes in the United States and abroad.


Early last month, a Florida man named Derek Medina posted a Facebook message to "friends" that he had killed his wife after she started punching him, and posted a picture of her lying on the floor. He pleaded not guilty to second degree murder last week.


In April, a man in Vietnam named Dang Van Khuven surrendered to authorities there after confessing on Facebook to killing his wife.

Am I the only one who is not a fan of this "new trend" in social media? Wouldn't the honorable thing to do would be to contact police, not a lawyer and a social media network?

 

[Olympia]

I'm of a different generation, so living online has no appeal for me in the best of circumstances. And this is far from the best of circumstances. Do people not know how to live real life anymore?

 

[Tonichelle]

I'm of a different generation, so living online has no appeal for me in the best of circumstances. And this is far from the best of circumstances. Do people not know how to live real life anymore?

My life is online... most of my friends have moved outside so it's how we keep up and I can still feel a part of the group. Sadly the only way these days to meet people in my town are the bars. I don't do the bar scene, and I certainly don't want to pick a core group from what they produce. So I'm a hermit.

But as an introvert that suits me fine. :yes: So I deal with the whole "you're on the internet too much" by just ignoring those comments.

 

[Olympia]

There certainly are advantages to having the Web, and you mention one of the main ones. It's a great fighter of isolation. I sympathize with you about the bars. I'd hate that too. But you're also part of a community, and you have your business and your family. If your friends moved back into town, you'd hang out with them. Most important, you seem pretty much morally awake to me.

I think kids who spend all their time online don't have the opportunity to develop social skills that best come with face-to-face life. Many of these kids also do a lot of gaming, where they're not even dealing with real people long-distance. They're dealing with constructed characters often made up by commercial enterprises. This is not an ideal way to learn how to interact with people.

 

[heyang]

Use of electronic communication has become a real issue in the workplace.

People don't speak to each other anymore. They'd rather send an e-mail vs pick up a phone. E-mails can be ignored. That little 'urgent' flag doesn't mean a thing. If something's important, either pick up the phone and speak with the person OR get up and walk over to the person's desk and speak face-to-face. Things get resolved a lot quicker with a little conversation.

One of our vendors had to issue a no electronics Friday. Their younger employees were texting each other even though they were sitting within 5 steps of each other. Another company had a sales staff that was just sending out e-mails and expecting someone to reply back - of course, those went to spam folders and people were wondering why no one was responding to their e-mails.

I've told my friends and family - anything that is need to know immediately (i.e. dinner reservation changes) = call me. Don't text or e-mail - I don't have my phone clenched in my hand. Once I thought I was meeting some family members at 7pm for dinner. My cellphone was in my car in the garage. As I left the house at 6:30, I saw that my SIL had texted that plans got moved to 6pm and she had texted me at 5pm.......sheesh.

 

[Olympia]

I belong to a writing group, and we correspond through e-mail to tell who will be bringing something to read and who won't be there. The convenience of that is immeasurable, but then we get together face to face. Many of us go out to eat afterward. Online life is a great addition to face-to-face life, but it's not a great substitute for it.

 

[Tonichelle]

Here's another example - this time from an ongoing case in Alaska

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/artic...ged-first-degree-murder-2-year-old-sons-death

It's heartbreaking.

 

[Olympia]

That is indeed tremendously sad and distressing. I hope the little one didn't suffer.

 

[Tonichelle]

Found out one of my closest friends who just became an ADA and moved to Bethel was the one who arraigned the case I linked yesterday. He's not having a good time out there as that area is ripe with Domestic Violence. He is definitely a more sensitive person, so I know this case is going to really take a hit on him. Thankfully he will most likely not be the lead DA on this one.

 

[Olympia]

I'm sorry to hear that there's so much domestic violence in your friend's new district, both for your friend's sake and for the sake of the people involved. That's a vortex it's hard to emerge from, and it so often wounds the next generation, which only perpetuates the cycle. So often a death like the one of this poor child results from a moment of impulse: someone loses his temper (or hers) and just hits or reaches for the nearest blunt (or sharp) object. Then the moment passes, and one person's remorseful, but the other one's dead. There's a reason that so many cops and lawyers have stress-related physical and emotional difficulties. If this is the continuous atmosphere in your friend's new location, I hope he can find a way to leave at some point. I noticed that the population is under 400? That might make things very claustrophobic for a newcomer. Another sad factor: look at how young the father is.

 

[Tonichelle]

Bethel is the hub - it's a little larger than the village where the crime happened. There's a lot of politics as to why so much of this occurs and nothing is done - basically it's the "white man's law" vs. "native law" and how we punish those that commit the crime. And those that aren't native but have grown up and lived there also come away with the same mindset, it's... hard to explain without me sounding racist.

My friend is used to the small town issues, but it's a whole new ball game being the "minority" and automatically being considered the "bad guy" because of his skin color. We don't play that game too much in Kenai even though we have a large Native community, but they're not "Bush community" natives, so it's a different attitude. We're getting a lot of "refugees" though from that area - women and children running away from the violence. It's sad.

 

[Olympia]

A lot of what you're saying is kind of what I'd deduced. Though that part of Alaska is unusually isolated because of population sparsity, terrain, and other elements, there are certainly other places in the world where similar factors come into play. It's an old, sad story. And though it's inaccurate to judge morality by gender, generally in these situations the women and children suffer most.