A superior court judge in Connecticut
has demanded a divorcing couple hand over the passwords of their Facebook
account to the other’s lawyers. This split took place last year.
Facebook is now not only a valid
ground for divorce, but posts and messages on the social media juggernaut can
be used for rulings regarding child custody and alimony. Think it’s a good idea
to slag off your ex on Facebook and impress your friends with your snarky wit
in the form of an immaculately crafted status update? Think again. Facebook is
now being used to gather evidence and as an aid in cross-examining a witness. Anything
on Facebook that can be used as an argument slamming your parenting skills,
drinking, drugging or even disparaging comments that disobey a court order
could be used as admissible evidence in court.
More than a third of divorce
papers lodged last year referenced Facebook, according to a UK survey conducted
last year. Over 80 per cent of lawyers in the US are seeing a rise in the social
network being dragged in to divorce cases.
Internet browsing history, text
messages and emails are all permissible as evidence in court in some states in
the US. Speaking to the Smart Money blog, a lawyer said 60 per cent of divorceproceedings he worked in exclusively involved Facebook.
The social network has
accelerated the speed at which extramarital affairs are formed. Users are
witter, funnier, sexier versions of themselves online. Combine this with the
fact you can ‘friend’ an old fling, high school sweetheart or former boyfriend at
the click of a button and the results can be quite explosive. Users ‘friend’
someone they only met just briefly. “It puts temptation in the path of people
who would never in a million years risk having an affair,” Facebook and Your Marriage
author K. Jason Krafsky says.
People can upload contentious
data whether they are aware of it or not, and this takes the form of a check-in
somewhere, or forgetting to edit the photos where a person who is not supposed
to be in there is in there when they
select the Upload All function in the photos tab.
These grievances aside, Facebook’s
faults are many and varied. Anyone who uses the social network could rattle off
a list of things wrong with it. Not least of these is Facebook’s constantly
shifting privacy settings that seem to change on a weekly basis.
When Mark Zuckerberg got hitched
and changed his marital status to married, he received over one million likes
from his followers. Aww, people said.
Facebook recently announced it
would be adding a function to its Timeline feature that would “literally save
lives”. At the click of a button, Facebookers would be able to opt-in to donate
their organs (as well as telling everyone on Facebook that they were doing so).
Organ donation agencies said they
noticed a spike in organ donors when the feature was made live. The work of
organ donation agencies is commendable and kudos to the people that decide to
donate parts of their bodies when they pass away.
However, with all of Facebook’s
faults, annoyances and ever-growing bloat, is it too cynical to suggest maybe
Zuckerberg and co. announced this new feature to great fanfare to clean up the
social network’s image? Rarely has an addition to Facebook’s features been heralded with so much media attention. The
only time Facebook received more press coverage than this was when it went
public. Why not make an announcement about the ever-changing privacy features,
for example, that users have no idea are occurring and require them to enter
their privacy settings and tighten up the screws a bit?
Now this is where the second half
of my headline comes in.
During the filming period of Mr
and Mrs Smith, Jennifer Aniston must have known she was screwed when Angelina
Jolie visited her on the set of Friends. Didn’t that strike her as a bit random?
A bit unusual? Why was Ange so keen so play Happy Co-Workers? Ange was the
hottest woman on the planet at that stage.
She also had a history from stealing
men from their partners. Laura Dern was engaged to Billy Bob Thornton when Ange
came into the picture. And that’s just a reported case.
In a recent interview with marie claire,
Jolie admitted she didn’t have many female friends. Is it any wonder? She’s the
chick that would fuck your boyfriend and then never give him back.
Maybe Brad Pitt cheating on
Aniston was the best thing that ever happened to her career. She gets one
magazine cover story out of it at least once every six months and has to
mention Brad at least once in every interview. Pitt doesn’t help, saying he was
a stoner basically because was bored to death in his marriage.
Jolie’s Oscar win marked a
turning point in her image. Before that, she was a weird goth chick who pashed
her brother on the red carpet and carried vials of Billy Bob’s blood around her
neck. Never underestimate the power of a blow-dry and a pretty frock. It can
works wonders. Just ask Ange.
There’s a role Angelina Jolie
needs to win another Academy award for and it’s a role she plays with as much
vigour as a violinist playing a jig on his fiddle. It’s her Mother Teresa act.
Ange couldn’t possibly visit
another Third World country or speak at the United Nations without camera crews
to follow. True, cameras tend to follow her around like a bad smell, but surely
she could do some charitable work without announcing it first? Adopting a child
from every country in the world. Being a United Nations ambassador. And don’t
forget Shiloh is “just a blob” to her mother.
Is it too cynical to suggest that
Angelina Jolie takes part in highly publicised philanthropic and humanitarian
work to clean up her own image? Facebook does not allow any of its good deeds
to go unpublicised because of all its massive flaws. Perhaps it’s taking a leaf
out of Jolie’s book?
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