Independent Correspondent Mark
Fleming takes a look at how Twitter has revolutionised and changed the way that
people’s final moments can now be catalogued in a mere 140 characters and made
public for our digestion.
‘Goodbye
world, the time has come, I had some fun’ – a jokey farewell, perhaps, somewhat melodramatic
but with tongue firmly in cheek. You could be forgiven for assuming the
sentence formed part of the resignation statement of an outgoing England
cricket captain. This message was actually a tweet. But what made it so much
more poignant than some online comment about moving on is this, these 10 words
represented the final moments of a 58 year-old man’s life.
Tony
Nicklinson was just an average family guy from Trowbridge in the leafy English
county of Wiltshire. In 2005 he suffered a catastrophic stroke that left his
entire body paralysed, while cruelly leaving his brain fully functional. He
campaigned for the right to die with dignity – after the High Court ruled
against his wishes in August 2012, his health deteriorated. Tweeting remained
one of the few ways of communicating open to him. Undoubtedly connecting with
the virtual world helped him cope with his condition. Tony’s Twitter account
inspired him to continue with his campaigning, right up until that finale.
Tony is
perhaps one of the highest profile twitter users to have made the national
headlines in recent months. His valiant epitaph, using up a mere fraction of
the 140 allotted characters, is a perfect illustration of this social media’s
power to transmit instant messages. Anyone with access to a web browser
anywhere on this planet could have tapped into his touching farewell within
seconds.
Since Twitter
began accumulating its 500 million active users in 2006 there have
been many other examples of final tweets. The immediacy of these communications
can really bring news stories to life with a raw realism.
Take the
tragic case of US sports broadcaster Jessica Ghawi (who tweeted under the pseudonym
Jessica Redfield). When she was aged 24 she witnessed a shooting at a shopping
mall in Toronto, Canada. In the summer of 2012, in an unbelievably cruel twist
of fate, she found herself inside a late-night cinema in Aurora, Colorado. The
late-night special being screened was The
Dark Knight Rises. When university dropout James Holmes suddenly burst
through a fire exit with loaded guns, Redfield became one of the 12 victims of
his indiscriminate shooting. Right up until the lights dimmed, like a lot of
other teenagers in the audience, she was busy updating her Twitter feed. Her
friend at the other end enquired why she was engrossed in her hand-held device
rather than the film, ‘MOVIE DOESN’T START FOR 20 MINUTES’ became her last
words.
Tweeting has
meant frantic final messages can be picked up on the far side of the world. If
a pocket of Free Syrian Army volunteers are holed up in a shell-damaged suburb
of Damascus, you can be sure they have one desperate hand on their triggers.
But the other might well be tapping urgent messages on hand-held devices, keeping
the outside world abreast of their plight in real time. In one notable recent example,
a rebel fighter tweeted a video clip of the Syrian army tank that had just
reduced the neighbouring room to rubble.
Twitter
has also highlighted the idiocy of certain youthful behaviour. Maryland
teenager Elizabeth Nass, who went drinking by a railroad with her friend Rose
Mayr in February 2012, tweeted ‘You, me, a handle of Burnett’s.’ (Burnett’s
sell vodka and gin). Seconds later the girls caused a freight train to derail
and were buried under tons of coal.
In more
domestic but equally heart-rending circumstances, the tweet has sometimes
become the 21st century’s version of the suicide note. 17 year-old Texan Ashley
Duncan posted a series of increasingly dark messages on her Twitter feed,
culminating in one reading: ‘I finally got a gun’. She then wandered to a
reservoir and turned the weapon on herself.
There is
no doubt social media such as Twitter have revolutionised communication. Not
only does tweeting provide a platform where your thoughts can instantly become
shared with everyone from Tongan students to Finnish reindeer farmers, you can
keep tabs on your favourite film stars and even send them a personal message. But
the nature of Twitter does mean that, occasionally, tweets will filter through
that reveal much darker aspects of life.
Such is
life.
This article reflects the opinion of the author only. If you have any comments or feedback, drop us a line at [email protected].