Yesterday in Salt Lake City, UT some idiot kidnapped a woman and held her hostage as the police were trying to serve a warrant on him. The interesting twist on this story is that the kidnapper decided to post updates to Facebook while he was holding the woman hostage. The end result of the standoff was the kidnapper shooting himself in the chest. At last report he was in critical condition in the hospital. 

This situation brings up a bunch of interesting issues. Apparently during the kidnapping friends and family sent the kidnapper over 100 messages, some encouraging him and some trying to warn of the police activity outside. Amazingly during the incident this fool managed to gain 12 new followers. 

As social media and mobile technology continues to evolve I’m sure we will see more situations like this. I would bet there will be a day when a SWAT team also includes a social media expert who is watching the suspect’s online activity in the hopes of getting the drop on them. Who knows, maybe a suspect will be talked out of a dangerous situation 140 characters at a time, or by text messaging. 

I think the most dangerous aspect of this behavior is with those who crave attention and are committing crimes while trying to fill their twisted needs. Traditional media usually will not report on suicides or some other types of crimes so as not to encourage those who commit them. With social media a person can gain a world wide audience in minutes. Throw a YouTube video in there and they can become an instant sensation. 

I don’t know how you would stop this kind of thing. It looks like social media is going to challenge our perception of free speech in ways our founding father’s could never have imagined.