A FIELD DAY IN A HURRICANE: How social media is changing how we relate to community

“What if gangnam style is actually just a giant rain dance and we brought this hurricane on ourselves?”

This comment went viral as Hurricane Sandy began to hit the northeast coast Sunday. The true beginnings of the post have yet to be proven. (Although there is much discussion via tweets, Facebook and blogs such as here.

Many tweets and Facebook statuses about Hurricane Sandy over the past few days have exploded. Many of the posts have been satirical, while others have had a serious tone as people in and out of the destruction reach out to each other.

While most of the somber communications have occurred on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram seem to have dominated.

This is something that would never have been possible before the era of smartphones and 3G (and 4G) connection. Millions of people are still without power throughout the northeast from flooding, down trees and other wind-related problems, but that has not stopped them from tweeting.

As a kid I loved the nights when the power went out. Mom and Dad would pile wood in the stoves so it was cozy and warm. We’d crowd around the kitchen table and play cards by flickering candlelight until we yawned too often.

My ghoulish candlelit face in the mirror above the bathroom sink would always cause me to turn it to face the wall so I could brush my teeth in peace. Mom would blow out the candles after I’d climbed the ladder to my bunk bed, and I’d fall asleep to the lullaby of the wind singing around the corners of the house.

Yes, these nights are what made us a resilient family. We bonded in appreciation of nature’s power.

Now with our smartphones and tablets as constant portals to the rest of the world, can we achieve that same intimate human bonding?

When I joined Facebook as a naïve 14 year old, I was bit by the oversharing bug. Twitter was even worse. I found this insatiable need to share my every breathing moment, every mundane or slightly amusing thought and an image of every meal with the world.

I have since scaled back—and deleted—much of my mundane social media presence.

Hurricane Sandy (or the Frankenstorm) has opened my eyes to a positive of the oversharing. We, as a worldwide community, have been able to share the experience communally.

The bursts of inspiration that create trend-worthy tweets and reposted Instagram images are almost more real than the socially-aware face-to-face conversations that I prize. They open the intimacy of a disaster to the entire community affected.

A picture says a thousand words, so Instagram has certainly trumped the 140 characters of Twitter. Images of trees crushing cars and houses, cars floating in submerged parking garages, the dark New York City skyline and the subway system flooded to capacity have been posted, reposted, moved to Facebook and tweeted from Instagram. In their wake, those of us who are not there have been touched by the dramatic scenes.

According to this article, Instagram posts regarding Sandy exceeded 10 images per second early Tuesday and likely only increased as people continued to explore their newly barren landscapes.

However, Instagram and other image posts on social media provided a problem of legitimacy. Wait; there isn’t a cat in the storm over the Statue of Liberty? That storm isn’t real? It was taken in a different STATE?

(Find more images here)

Because these images moved through social media faster than the winds of Sandy, people didn’t have the time to sort out what was real and what wasn’t (except for the obvious ones). As social media so often does, it fought to correct itself. Slowly but surely the doubt crept in, and the award-winning investigative journalists of Facebook and Twitter proved many of the images false.

So was there harm done with these images? Probably not, but clearly many people put a lot of energy into their creation and fabrication. Here is a compilation of many Instagram images.

Now the Twitter developments were my favorite.

From its inception on Friday to today (Wednesday), @AHurricaneSandy gained 238,150 followers and posted 320 tweets. As many other Twitter handles did, @AHurricaneSandy took on the darkly comedic persona of Sandy. A taste:

OH S*%$ JUST DESTROYED A STARBUCKS. NOW I'M A PUMPKIN SPICE                          HURRICANE.

DIS B*%&$ ON DA WEATHER CHANNEL CALLED ME A BIG STORM. HOW YOU JUS GON MAKE FUN OF MY WEIGHT LIKE DAT?

Unfortunately, as I read on the cursing became grating to read:

DIS B*@$% STANDIN OUTSIDE YELLIN "SANDY YOU AIN'T S*%&" SO I THREW A F^**ING MINIVAN AT HER. NOW WHAT B*@$%?!?

Sandy has repeatedly been referred to as a b!%^$, as you can see in the graph of twitter mentions above from Topsy.

The posts of @AHurricaneSandy began to repeat themselves, and some were floating around the social media stratosphere attached to other names. With many followers, @AHurricaneSandy took the opportunity to promote his other, personal Twitter handles, which he did so quite regularly. If you dug through the tweets, you could find an occasional gem—like the pumpkin spiced hurricane tweet or many rewritten song lyrics.

My favorite Twitter handle, however, was @RomneyStormTips. This effectively combined recent political gaffs with the storm of the year, without using expletives and generally avoiding the offensive.

Examples:

#RomneysFEMA We're out of food, water, blankets, and medicine but here is a tax cut

Todd Akin asks New York City women like @amaeryllis to shut this whole thing down #Sandy

Some 47%er is outside fixing the power lines. Hope it's not a union member. I want power but not Soviet Power #Sandy

For every head-palm-worthy Romney quote, there is a tweet.

@RomneyStormTips was since changed to @RepublicanTips, which likely signifies that the handle is around to stay and parody the Republicans further.

I don’t think this Twitter handle will have an effect on the election, as many other parody Twitter handles and blogs have emerged critiquing both campaigns. The only difference with this one is timing. The reality is that the followers of @RepublicanTips are likely already against Romney.

So with the many images and tweets scattered about the internet, have we truly broadened the intimacy of surviving natural disasters?

In some ways we have, and in others we have only moved further away. The immediacy and amount of contact between people all over the world brings us together, unified against the weather. We know what dangers await outside our doors without looking out the window.

The comedy invoked by Sandy was a game of sorts, like the card games my parents and I played by candlelight, except played by the glow of our smartphones and tablets. Correcting the doctored or false posts became a distraction from the howling wind outside.

These falsehoods, along with the obscenities of some posts, broke down the trust. This is the one flaw. It is easy to lie on the internet, especially when we all know the truth is dramatic.

So, we have a tighter community with less trust than face-to-face contact. Not bad considering how young social media is.

I’ll leave you with a few more tweets.

From‏ @AFrankenStorm:

YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO DESTROY CITIES AND TWEET AT DA SAME TIME? YOU AIN'T BOUT DIS LYFE.

From‏ @WhiteFolkProbs

Hurricane Sandy is forcing me to spend time with my family.