Paul McCartney’s Teenage Sex Partners

The video is quite long, but it’s worth it ;o)

The headline above is a complete red herring, in the same way that the headline attached to this story on the BBC’s website is totally misleading in its inference that the death of the unfortunate woman it describes has anything to do with the social networking site Facebook. Yes Facebook was involved, but more important was the murderous ex’s state of mind, the alcohol he had consumed and the cocaine he’d taken. In the same way that I would guess all of the fab four were once teenagers at some point and probably had sex with similarly aged girls.

But the headline worked. It got me to read the story.

It’s not so much the journo trick of using a salacious headline to reel you in that I have a problem with. It’s the inference that social a networking site was in some way complicit with the crime.

Social networking doesn’t kill people, people kill people.

It’s like dumping a partner. At one time it had to be done face to face, then we invented writing and so gained the opportunity to become one step removed from the act. Then there was the telephone; at least the dumpee could hear your voice, but you didn’t have to look them in the eye.

Now we have the Internet and while the medium has changed what we communicate via that medium doesn’t.

So the next time that you see a headline blaming technology for some terrible event, ask yourself if it’s the technology or our human weaknesses that are at fault?