Tweeting at the face of death..

A few days ago, there was a fire in a very busy building at Bangalore - the Carlton Towers. The unfortunate event claimed a few lives, and surely has left many a survivor traumatized.

There was a side coverage for the incident due to one other reason - There was a person stuck in the blaze who was tweeting updates to the world - even photographs of the crowd below.

The tweeter and his tweets made it all over the Internet, TV channels and newspapers that reported the incident.

So I went to his blog and there were so many people congratulating him on his 'excellent first person documentation of being trapped inside a burning building'. Someone also gave him kudos for tweeting the situation inside which 'actually helped in getting help and alerts and can be credited to for so many peoples final escape.'

While I do agree with all the comments that the guy is a level-headed and brave bloke considering the calm practical messages he tweeted, I do not think they actually helped or were intended to help the escape process.

Not that it's a bad thing.

It did set me thinking though - He is caught in a building that's ablaze. Why would a person is such a situation whip out his favorite gadget and report what is happening to him? He did not call his family or friends, not wanting to worry them, but he did send out the message to the whole wide world that he was caught in a burning building and had watched a few people jump to their deaths. Why would he do it?

The Internet and its plethora of communication platforms have changed the world - and to an extent, the mentality of the Internet Man - myself, the tweeter and every one of us included.

When the Iraq invasion was going on, I chanced to read an article criticizing the invasion which claimed that the American news channels were giving too much screen time to live coverage of the invasion, and accused the average American to be sitting at home and watching it as if it were 'just another reality show'.

But aren't we all sold on such 'reality shows'? With our camera phones and WiFi Internet gadgets anything from street fights to child births are photographed, videographed or blogged almost real-time to the Internet. Things find their way into social network walls, viral videos, blog posts and before you know it, the whole world knows who you are, and what you did/saw/went through.

From Jennifer Ringley who video-streamed live all aspects of her personal life on the Internet to Chrystie Fitchner who was unwittingly videoed participating in a dirty lap dance at a school function, real life's 'reality show' has trickled into the Internet like water into sponge.

A couple of the tweeter's blog readers did chastise him with one even calling him an 'attentionwhore'. I guess the tweeter was just being the Internet Man - reporting what he was experiencing. Maybe it was a way for him to keep himself focused and calm.

The tweeter himself has answered the query with this - 'We were trapped in a corner where there was nothing to do but wait. Only a moron would tweet when they should be running.' I still don't get the 'don't-want-to-worry friends/family-by-calling-them, but-will-tweet-and-just-believe-they-wont-see-it-and-get-worried' concept thought.The logic behind that seems...kinda flaky.

And then there was the ubiquitous media-bashing.

It is not often, at least in India, that someone is caught in a blaze and uses technology to give real-time updates on the same, no matter what the intent behind it is. And so the hawk-eyed media was quick to pounce on it - pestering the tweeter for interviews, which he gave initially but stopped after their persistent bugging.

His blog of the incident is signed off asking 'what is the point of an interview? It sells advertising for the interviewer, but will it do anything at all to improve fire safety?'.

No it will not. And neither will blogging about it. But we will continue to blog, and the media will continue to try to get the next person's interview.

The whole world is a stage, and every man is a reporter. It is news of the people, by the people and for the people.