It was 2001, and I attended a party where a friend was dared to drink his own urine to justify his argument that it wasn’t bad for you.
He was stubborn and he did. We laughed, we were grossed out, and we moved on. All I have to say is, for all the benefits of technology and social media now, for his sake, I’m glad it didn’t exist at this party.
Why? Mob mentality, social judgement and emotional detachment.
So by now, a lot of us have seen the Todd Carney “Human Bubbler” photo, or at the very least heard about it. For those who haven’t, Todd Carney is a professional rugby league player who willingly agreed to have a photo taken while performing the act of “Bubbling.”
“Bubbling” is posing like you are drinking your own pee from a water bubbler. The photo was released online, resulting in his sacking from the Cronulla Sharks.
It’s a shame really, love him or hate him, he was a talented league player, and he did have a lot more to prove as far as I’m concerned. But it’s not going to be and someone else will get their chance.
Now I can sit here and write about how he is responsible for his own actions, how being a professional sportsperson he had an obligation to set a standard of behaviour and be a role model for the kids, the fans and his team alike. I could sit here and comment about how he should have cleaned his act up after past alcohol related transgression, but that is an ongoing conversation and I will leave that to other articles.
No, I want to discuss the responsibility of the other side. The social media side. I want to talk about the person who ‘leaked’ the photo and then our subsequent actions because of it.
Whenever anyone posts a photo on Twitter, it’s intentional (of course there are circumstances where genuine accidents do occur). To ‘leak’ a photo is cowardly.
Now, I would somewhat understand if the photo was posted immediately, by his mate, as that comes across as a bunch of guys, doing a bunch of stupid, gross and might I add harmless, guy things. Unorthodox and disgusting yes, but harmless nonetheless.
I believe that to be a little more forgivable. But the photo wasn’t posted immediately, it was two weeks later, and to me, the person who posted this was either really naive or just down right malicious.
I hope it’s the former. I don’t believe it to be so, but I do still hope the person just felt it was harmlessly funny at the time, and wanted to share the laugh.
I mean, hell, who hasn’t been a part of things like that. Maybe not to that extreme, but we all have or have seen someone who has.
What did Todd Carney do to this person that inspired him or her to post a photo that would potentially ruin his career? This person did it annonomously, and once the photo was discovered online, the mob went to work.
140 character jokes, retweets, ‘Save Image’, ‘Post Image’, all eventuating with Cronulla rightfully looking after its brand and the kids and sacking the star. Sorry Toddy, the mob did its thing and your career is over.
I was at the Normanby Hotel back in 2010 when Allan Langer, a former great of the game of rugby league, drunkenly danced on the tables in his underwear. It was hilarious and all in good humour. His antics were cheered and everybody had a fun time.
And it was private.
Contrary to articles I read at the time, this was preplanned, the room was made secure so no one outside could see and security watched before they brought him down off the table. No harm done as far as I’m concerned.
Yes, I had taken video and photos. To be honest, I probably still do have them if I cared to look. I will admit, I was very tempted to post the footage immediately. Not in a hurtful way, but in a “look what I am a part of” way. It was fun, and I wanted to share it.
I mean, it’s Alfie, he’s a legend. I wanted to be a part of that legend.
And therein lies the problem. We are involved in moments in life, intentional or unintentional, of various emotional degrees, and we want to share them. We want to share the experience and get validation for being part of something. It’s natural.
Social media and modern technology has given us much greater power and ability to accomplish this. But I feel there has become a certain level of detachment. People tweet, and post photos, without thinking about the reality of it.
These are real people, who have real jobs, and real families. And consequences come from all our actions, not just theirs. Now, Alfie brought the attention of that evening upon himself the following day when he went to get his car and was charged with being over the limit, so responsibility had to be taken and he was correctly punished.
He made his choice, luckily without any harm to himself or others, and he suffered the consequences. At the same time, I also had a choice to make too. Due to his charge, the media were focussing on the events of the night prior.
People were submitting their own footage of the night to various online publications and news stations. Once again, why?
I find it interesting that these people who cheered and goaded him to continue his shenanigans, were just as quick to condemn him and ‘share’ the experience in a negative light to local media. Did they want to feel as though they had contributed towards social justice? Or did they just want to let the world know they were a part of something ‘newsworthy’ and be validated for it.
In the end, I didn’t want to add to the fire with more “incriminating” evidence. He was humiliated and punished enough without me sticking the knife in. I didn’t want to do it in the first place.
I feel that Todd’s incident is similar. To willingly take a photo like that, surely he must have felt he trusted whoever held that camera. Just like Alfie trusted the group he was peforming for. But to err is human. And they both drunkenly erred.
Have I seen the picture? Yep. Did I make a joke? Yep. I’m no saint, but that’s as far as it went for me. I am in an industry where privacy is invaded quiet regularly. I’ve had my fair share of invasions, so to a degree, I understand the mechanics of it all. I’ve been educated about the pitfalls of social media and the modern digitised world we live in ( which is where Todd has unfortunately failed ).
We all love a good joke, we all love a bit of gossip. But at what price. The problem with social media is that it creates a high level of detachment from reality, as well as ‘being’ a reality.
We share pictures and status updates of things we deem hilarious that sometimes are at the expense of others. And a lot of the time, the victim didn’t initiate anything, and by initiate, I mean willingly give permission for their private moment to be shared.
Yes, the reality is that once something is captured, willing or not, especially if it’s ‘news’, is a free for all, we are curious by nature and it’s hard not to bring something to attention, or snoop. We become a mob. The moment is shared, and the more it’s shared, the more people become invested, the more the subject potentially suffers. But we don’t see the suffering. Because we don’t see it, we don’t care and we never learn. Detachment.
Would we be as cavalier with our jokes and opinions if we saw the genuine reaction of who we make fun of every time we clicked on retweet? Would we be so quick to judge if we ever experienced it ourselves?
We all know how horribly volatile it can get. People have killed themselves over things like this.
Yes, these players are in positions many dream of. Yes, they are in financial positions many dream of. And yes, they have a responsibility to act accordingly. But they are just like you and me. And man, imagine if all of us had that one person who wants to break the story, or start the joke, waiting, with a camera, for us to slip up, especially in our twenties. I honestly could say, we would all be sacked.
Most of us are just lucky we aren’t ‘newsworthy’ enough for people to take notice, me included. We think of a famous, wealthy althlete, celebrity or actor as lucky, this isn’t anything new.
We post about them and make jokes whenever they step remotely out of line, but the rest of us are luckier in a way because we can screw up and no one cares to blast the world with it.
“It comes with the territory” is an argument I hear quite frequently. That may be so, but I feel as though that absolves the public of any responsibility for their actions.
I hope that whoever posted the photo, ‘friend’ or not, gets found out. I don’t believe for one second that you weren’t aware of potential consequences of its release.
You may have thought it was funny, but you knew this joke had repercussions. So, just like Todd will be punished for his many ruined chances, the person who posted should also fess up for contributing to Todd’s demise.
The irony of that would be he or she would probably suffer the same wrath that Todd did virally. But, in all honesty, Todd is probably just a picture on a computer screen for this person, a guy with tattoos running around wearing a Sharks jersey on television. He is a joke to partake in. He makes lots of money, he is famous and he did something silly so he deserves this.
No, he doesn’t. Not for that. And neither does Cronulla for that matter. Todd did not bash anyone, he did not start a fight, he didn’t sexually assault a girl, he didn’t arrange dog fighting, he was drunk and did a stupid lewd act to himself. Thanks to him, the photo was taken. Thanks to the ‘leak’, the photo was made public. And thanks to us, that photo is everywhere.
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