[thrush]

This is a pretty negative portrayal (obviously) of the dark side of social media. I think that it should be taken that people should be careful about getting too sucked in rather than thinking that social media is "evil". A lot of good and amazing things have come from Facebook (maybe chat-roulette not so much). For example, the Soccer Goalie story is pretty moving (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpOvYWd4KW4). Granted this came directly from Facebook, there are other similar stories out there if you look.

[stephengillie]

I don't understand how this shows the dark side of social networks. It does show the ugly underbelly of human interaction, but that side is no uglier for the technology used. The guy was lonely, his gf was worried about something else, so he became insecure & impetuous and decided to move on, as young people are wont to do. Only today it's happening through websites and webcams instead of phone, telegraph, snail mail, or message-in-bottle.

[esrauch]

I'm curious whether anyone on here ever actually seen anything like the Soccer Goalie story in your own usage of social media. I would say this video is one of the most truthful statements about what social media is actually like; the soccer goalie story is an absurd outlier about possible upsides of social media and an unusually negative portrayal would be more along the lines of cyberbullying and harassment.

[burntsushi]

> rather than thinking that social media is "evil".

Are you suggesting that this was the message of the OP? That's not what I took out of it.