Whelp, you better think before you post, share, tweet, snap or even text. (Screenshots are a thing, you know.) Ask yourself the following questions: “Would I be okay with my mom seeing this photo? How about my direct supervisor? What about the United States legal system?” Seriously, that status update can and will be used against you in a court of law. According to a story in New York Post, 26-year-old Alvaro Medina is learning that the hard way.
Busted on the Book
Here’s what happened: New York resident Medina sued his employer, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, in 2013 for emotional distress, inability to socialize and a litany of other complaints. He claims his emotional handicaps were caused by a drill accident on the job in 2012 when he was apparently pinned up against a wall when the drilling machine slipped.
Then some MTA lawyers came across of photos of him smoking weed, drinking beer and otherwise having a good ole’ time at what appears to be, you guessed it, socializing. His Facebook profile is supposedly set to private but how “private” is it when people can look a person up and easily see pictures like this? Privacy is an elusive term when it comes to the book of faces. MTA lawyer Max Bookman claims, “None of the photographs which he has left on his Facebook page for the whole world to see depict a person who suffers…psychiatric conditions.” Touché, Bookman, touché. I’m sure Medina’s response was less amused in tone than mine.
Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words
Of course, pictures of someone living it up do not necessarily mean they are in fact living it up. A happy-seeming social media presence does not always equate to actual happiness in real life. Haven’t you learned that by now, MTA and counsel? Quite the contrary, it’s never that shocking to discover that often the people with the most upbeat-seeming social media images and updates are usually the most miserable off line. Also, the pot-smoking picture of Medina is especially troubling. A grown man with a bong literally strapped to his face by way of a hazards mask doesn’t exactly scream “jiving and thriving” to me. One could even interpret these photos as indicative of a serious cry for help. There is a fine line between people who love to party and people who are so desperate to escape the reality of their life that they start aggressively abusing booze and drugs in an effort to do so. So maybe the emotional distress this man experienced directly caused the need to physically attach a marijuana dispenser to his face?
Or he could just be drinking a beer, smoking weed and too dumb to realize documenting such activities in a public forum might not aid his cause of requesting cash via a lawsuit.
The Takeaway
This just goes to show, anything and everything you put online can come back to haunt you (says the girl who writes about her struggles with alcohol in a publicly accessible online magazine and shares intimate details of her relationships with men in stand-up videos on YouTube). But the case of Medina does make me wonder, why do we all feel the need to document everything we do in pictures and posts now? Before we had virtual town halls and cameras on our phones, picture taking was reserved for special occasions like weddings, graduations and birthday parties, not Friday night’s umpteenth brewsky swig. Must everything be an Occasion now? The answer to that is apparently a resounding yes and if you need proof, check how many #ootd (outfit of the day) hash tags there are on Instagram. Getting dressed now calls for announcement of sorts. When will it stop? I waiver between wanting to completely boycott all of it and removing myself from any social media… and just accepting that this is now the norm.
But when in doubt, post a picture of your sandwich, not your bong hit.
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