The Wonders of Facebook

On a Tuesday at the university I go to, there was a chemical scare. Some dried acid was found, which is explosive like TNT when it's dried. Part of the campus was evacuated and classes were canceled for the day (yay for us). I was at home since the class I had that morning wasn't meeting that day. And I bet your wondering where facebook comes into this, well.....since I didn't have any classes until noon I was playing facebook games and watching national news. My roommate posted an update to her facebook that simply read "the buildings are evacuated" my comment to her was "what?!?". She then says that there was a chemical spill and that the campus was evacuated and she was on her way home. Then I get a phone call from school security. Security was looking for my other roommate since they work for security. and here in lies the joy and wonder of facebook. Without the campus emergency text messaging system or being on campus I had learned that the campus was evacuated and classes for the day were canceled all without having any official contact with the school. After the excitement of canceled classes and hunting the local news sites for the story, I started to think about the speed at which the word had gotten around and what would have been the consequences if the word had been incorrect. We trust that what people update their statuses as is correct and factual but what happens when it's not? And in the case of the school, what would have happened if it was an organized effort to keep people from going to school? Following that line of logic what would happen if someone where to post nasty rumors about someone. Most of us have probably heard about Phoebe Kates, the young lady in Massachusetts that was unmercifully bullied both at school and on the internet. Her story is the dark side of what someone or a group of people can do with facebook when they have it out for someone. I personally think we have a responsibility to tell as much of the truth as is safe and to watch what we say to people on the internet as we do in face to face meetings. In this way the post of the chemical scare at my school can be trusted and not doubted, and what happened with Phoebe Kates could have been prevented by that sense of responsibility.