By now you all have likely read about the Tampa lady who tweeted about her alleged rape. Police have not identified the young woman, but say that she lived in a renovated bus in the Ybor City area and was allegedly raped after a man broke into her bus. Police, of course, asked her to stop tweeting about the incident, stating that it could get in the way of an investigation.
Last week I blogged about a would-be intern who decided to tweet about the interview process. Most of you agreed that such tweeting is, in fact, oversharing. That said, what do you think about tweeting about crimes?
I think it’s interesting that the Tampa lady so casually tweeted about her assault. And since she regularly tweets about living in this renovated bus, some Tampa residents believe she made herself a mark by being so open about her living space. I don’t agree with that. Don’t blame the victim.
However, the victim did tweet that her alleged rapist was a black man with tan shorts. As a former police reporter and as a black woman married to a black man who owns tan shorts, I think that’s not a very helpful description. There’s a reason why journalism students are taught to fully identify crime suspects. It’s kind of a “go hard, or don’t go at all” approach to journalism. By only partially ID’ing a man, you indict all of them.
But I digress. Tweeting about crime is the question. Now, I tweeted after my car was broken into. I’ve also tweeted about being witness to a situation where I saw a guy physically intervene when he saw a girl screaming and running away from a man in an alley. (That’s dangerous stuff, by the way, since the hero didn’t have a gun and the criminal might have been packing. Normally I’d say just call the police, but in this instance, the random man looked the hero up and down and decided he didn’t want nothing to do with an enormous black man asking the young lady if she needed some help.)
People are all a-Twitter about Sean Kingston’s accident and lots of people tweet about smoking weed.
Perhaps over sharing comes in when the topic is sexual or too closely related to money. I’m not sure. What do you think? If you were a victim of rape, would you tweet about it? If your house was broken into, would you tweet about it? If you got into a car accident, would you tweet about it? What exactly is off limits? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
There is such a thing as over tweeting. I’m just as nosy as the next person (reality check that’s why we are on Twitter); however, safety is too far. Call the police! Use common sense. Criminals do not have their own separate Facebook and Twitter accounts. They read yours. Side note: consider this when you splash children’s pictures, names, ages, and where you live all over cyberspace. Better to be overly cautious than to overshare and then be remorseful.
I agree. I think that people need to think a little bit more before they give up the ghost. And, if you DO give it all away, be totally aware of what you’re doing.
Uhmm, these are some interest questions you raise. My initial impulse would be to not tweet about being rapped. I would take a more authoritative approach. Which, for me, means telling the police so that they can conduct a full investigation. Somethings about a person’s life should be left private, or at least, left for close friends and family. That’s the thing about these social networking sites, it has blurred the lines of what “true” relationships mean. People get so caught up in their online social communities that they no longer feel the need to have “true” relationships with people. The internet becomes their friends.
I hear you. It’s also got to be scary knowing that your rapist might be following you on twitter. Why give him the pleasure of knowing what you think of him?
[...] Twitter during such a sensitive personal incident may look like just another example of social-media “oversharing,” but the victim said she specifically decided to continue talking about her rape despite the police [...]
She tweeted about her rape. Something that happened to her and was no fault of her own. Acting as though that’s weird or “TMI” just PROVES the shame and stigma we place on rape victims.
The police asked her to stop tweeting about the incident. Do you think they should have asked for that?