OLD soldiers will remember this maxim well: “This is my weapon, this is my gun. One is for shooting and one is for fun.”
Alas, the reverse is now true with modern-day ‘tools’ being far more dangerous than anything that fires bullets.
YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN : Butthead’s Beat: Naughty! A demerit for you, my boy (heh, heh)
Particular in this country, HIV/Aids continues to be the scourge that is decimating our population. This newspaper and our entire parent company (Caxton) has teamed up with Rotary clubs throughout the country and the Department of Health to organise Family Health Days between October 3 and 5 to record the status of as many people as possible. The locations in our neck of the woods are Margate and Bhomela clinics.
Of course, these efforts can’t offer any cure, but at least they can convince the men to use ‘rubber silencers’ which will no doubt be dished out free of charge.
However, there is another ‘tool’ that some might say is ‘far more dangerous than they all’… social media.
Ask Penny Sparrow (who needs no further introduction).
What is really scary is how ordinary citizens are just so quick to pull the trigger (or push ‘copy’, ‘send’, ‘post’, ‘share’) and ‘kill’ someone or some business without an ounce of remorse.
For example, Mac Bananas, a well know and popular tourist attraction on the coast, was literally blown to pieces by hundreds of people this weekend… over pancakes!
Without getting into the nitty-gritty of who was right or wrong, the cyber attack seemed to revolve around some dirt falling into a granny’s tea and onto her grandchildren’s already mostly eaten pancakes.
The manager offered a milkshake as compensation and, apparently, after hours of batter slinging, the bill was reduced by R50 or so.
The irate granny was still not happy and subsequently enlisted the help of a local gripe site. Soon there were 300 and upwards posts from complete strangers adding to the toxic pancake mix.
Trained journalists know that there are all sorts of checks and balances before they can go ‘live’ with a story and we still get shot as the messenger.
YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN : Butthead’s Beat: Feeling stressed? Try doing ‘down dog’
But these ‘citizen journalists’ are quite content to ‘post and be damned’, no matter whom they hurt in the process. Maybe the gripe was legitimate in this case, but that is still no excuse to drum up what can only be described as a ‘lynch mob’ in a bid to destroy a business on the mere say-so of one party.
Regardless of whether there was poor service, the backlash on social media was way out of proportion and unfair.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033
