You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Expressing yourself through the world’s hottest social networking vehicle only to have it all blow up in your face like an alka seltzer tablet landing in a bottle of gingerale.
That’s crazy.
In fact, I maintain, typing 140 words of anything that lands you in the grey bar hotel, is crazy.
That’s what happened to a Guatemala man named Jean Anleu. He is cyber spaces version of surprise, you’re the next contestant on who wants to be the world’s first guy arrested for texting.
In the vernacular of the medium; He tweeted. The totalitarian regime that runs his country tweeted back, with stunning ferocity. In fact it wasn’t so much as a Tweet as it was a STOMP!
Mr. Anleu was arrested and thrown in jail, cavity search not optional.
Reports from this third world nation indicate that Jean Anleu vented about political corruption and questionable banking practices in his sometimes corrupt nation.
His seemingly innocuous Tweet urging people to pull their money out of Guatemala’s bank went a little something like this: First concrete action should be take cash out of Banrural and bankrupt the bank of the corrupt.
According to the AP, Authorities proved Anleu sent the message by searching his home. With whatever evidence Guatemalan Police need to substantiate a case, they threw him in jail for a day and a half before letting him out on bail. But his troubles are only just beginning, and the rest of the world can Tweet about that, from the comfort of their own living rooms.
Anleu’s lawyer, Jose Toledo, believes the government wants to make an example of him.
“Clearly, the message was: Watch out, any of you guys that want to post messages, this can happen to you,” Toledo said.
Can it happen to you?
Obviously it can, and throughout history it has.
Though the internet is an interminable reservoir of cyber freedom, and relative anonymity, it is also can be a fire cracker that you light and hold for a just fraction of a second too long.
BANG!
Hey where did my fingers go? I can’t text anymore!
Yeah, but that’s Guatemala, you say to yourself. that couldn’t happen in a progressive country like the USA, right?
Maybe.
It is unequivocal, that one of the pivotal building blocks of this nation is the premise of the 1st amendment, the right to think what you want to think and say what you want to say, by and large without restriction or threats of incarceration.
But it wasn’t always that way. Think back to the days of Colonial America when dissent against the King of England might just get you an unpleasant visit from the provincial governor. Long before Tweeting was a pulse in your hard drive, an ink pen, a piece of parchment and the wrong message could land you in the stockade.
Now the AP is reporting that Anleu could go to jail for 5 years.
5 years! For posting a few strokes on the key board of his Blackberry. For stroking 96 characters and exercising his right to free speech, and bad grammar, and made up text code that frankly makes me angry.
Technology has changed the way we send the message, but the message is still the same, no matter how you send it.
As Mr. Anleu found out, Tweet the wrong Tweet in a less progressive thinking country and you just might end up being a dead duck.
And that is Crazy!