Innovation
A plunge for Facebook: Woman walks off pier while checking page
Once again nobody's "here" anymore. Everybody's "there." Is anyone paying attention?
As I've said before: No one's ever "here" anymore. Everyone's always "there," sucked away from their immediate surroundings by one of those ubiquitous handheld Internet devices that overpower our attention like some other-world wizard.
Never has that been more true than on Monday in Melbourne, when a woman under the cyber spell plunged right off St. Kilda's Pier into the bay while checking Facebook on her mobile phone, the BBC reports.
I'd like to think that her screen activity was of critical importance because, get this: She couldn't swim! But alas -- and this is complete fabrication (and stereotype) on my part -- at the time she stepped into thin air, she was probably reading something along the lines of "OMG! I can't believe Miley's new hairdo!"
Once she hit the Australian water, maybe she found a page that explains how to float on one's back, because that's what the non-swimmer was doing when police yanked her into a speedboat about 20 minutes later, alive and well.
She was still holding onto her phone.
Cover photo from Wikimedia
More Facebook and social media obsessions:
- Map: The countries where Google and Facebook don't rule the web
- The Top 10 countries snooping on citizens via Facebook
- Social media bubble is leaking
- Don't give away your ZIP code to retailers. Sell it!
- The rise and $23 billion fall of text messaging
- You are what you click
- The 8-million-year-old origins of Facebook
- Skewedonomics? Facebook’s worth $100B, trouncing companies that actually make things
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com