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Facebook app incites a murderous rage

by Andrew McKinnon on November 1, 2008 at 11:10 PM



If you are a Facebook user ,then you are familiar with the status update feature in the profile section. It allows you to share with your friends things like what you're doing right now, what you're wearing and your relationship status, married, single, dating or divorced. Recent divorcee Emma Forrester, 34, and mother of two, after 15 years of marriage changed her status from married to single on her Facebook profile. Wayne, her now ex-husband, noticed the change and went homicidal.

On the 18th of February 2008, in the Croyden section of South London, Wayne, drunk and high on cocaine, repeatedly stabbed Emma with a kitchen knife in the head and neck. The attack woke up the neighbors, and he was discovered by the police sitting outside Emma's home covered in blood. Wayne was ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years, a shockingly lenient sentence for such a horrendous crime.

What lesson can we draw from this tragedy? In this new world of sharing personal information with large groups of people at the click of mouse, the emotional stakes are higher. It is one thing to share with your friends that you are back on the market, but to share with a community with the aggrieved present is another issue entirely. Facebook is a powerful social interaction tool and people get hurt, and when people get hurt, some lose it. Switched has been following some of these cases and perhaps will write the Facebook etiquette guide to help you avoid any major disasters.


From the BBC

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