X
Innovation

A plunge for Facebook: Woman walks off pier while checking page

Once again nobody's "here" anymore. Everybody's "there." Is anyone paying attention?
Written by Mark Halper, Contributor
As I've said before: No one's ever "here" anymore. Everyone's always "there," sucked away from their immediate surroundings by one of those ubiquitous handheld Internet devices that overpower our attention like some other-world wizard.

Never has that been more true than on Monday in Melbourne, when a woman under the cyber spell plunged right off St. Kilda's Pier into the bay while checking Facebook on her mobile phone, the BBC reports.

I'd like to think that her screen activity was of critical importance because, get this: She couldn't swim! But alas -- and this is complete fabrication (and stereotype) on my part -- at the time she stepped into thin air, she was probably reading something along the lines of "OMG! I can't believe Miley's new hairdo!"
 
Once she hit the Australian water, maybe she found a page that explains how to float on one's back, because that's what the non-swimmer was doing when police yanked her into a speedboat about 20 minutes later, alive and well.

She was still holding onto her phone.

Cover photo from Wikimedia

More Facebook and social media obsessions:

Editorial standards