Rioters in San Francisco celebrating the World Series victory disturbed the streets, started a fire, and broke a door leading into a Wells Fargo bank on Monday night … and then proceeded to share the entire event on social media outlets. What is the world coming to?
Displaying a shrewd combination of multitasking and the inability to disconnect from technology, Giants fans utilized Foursquare to check in to riots. For those who aren’t technologically savvy, “checking in” means clicking a button to let your Foursquare friends know where you are and sometimes sharing your location via Twitter.
Fans made sure to Tweet all about the event too, using their smartphones to upload TwitPics and popularize the hashtag #sfriots.
Social media can be fun and informative, but checking in to a destructive riot is a bit ridiculous. Sports are supposed to be a distraction from life, a source of entertainment and an outlet for expressing the whole gamut of human emotions. But when we become distracted from the distraction, doesn’t that seem a bit like a counterintuitive waste of time?
