Everyone knows how SMS and social media helped organize and proliferate the series of related social movements now collectively referred to as the Arab Spring, right? This, the most visible and perhaps consequential example of populist uprisings enabling themselves via wireless technology...

...wait a minute: nobody wants to read another blog entry about how instant communication in all its glory is changing, no REVOLUTIONIZING human communication, do they? Of course not.

Instead, how about a short bit about an absurd and vaguely perverse example of Facebook put to bad use?

Just yesterday (30 September), some clever fellow coordinated a social-media disinformation campaign in several high schools across France, all for the purposes of tricking volatile adolescent minds into believing that the government was going to shorten all of their summer vacations from three months to two (the horror!!). As the rumor—wholly unfounded—circulated via SMS and Facebook, the vitriole snowballed in predictable fashion, protests were organized, protests turned into mini-riots and a whole lot of property was damaged. Have a look at the video featured in this story to get an idea of the magnitude of some of the festivities.

Analysis

While I'm very happy for the repressed nerd who no doubt made this all happen—I'm sure it was just a coffee break for him, a ludique pause before getting back to the serious business of building his girl robot—the whole episode does give one pause. Instant communication certainly has many fantastic applications, ranging from the simple facilitation of daily tasks to the bestowing of interactive power upon those whose traditional means of organizing have been taken from them by The Man. And you know I'm all about sticking it to The Man. However, it also has the unfortunate consequence of enhancing the already-powerful human tendency to eschew patience and reliability when presented with emotionally-powerful stimuli. In this example, no one even bothered to click over to lemonde.fr or liberation.fr or some other reliable left-center news website to see if there was any truth to the story; if it's on Facebook, it must be true.

Taken as a whole, French high school students—faux-revolutionary tendencies aside—are a pretty smart bunch who are academically solicited at a level that most American parents would probably consider to be child abuse. You can't blame this sort of thing entirely on the insouciance of idle youth, nor on a culture that supports (or at least tolerates) a good quantity of public grievance-airing, including a certain amount of violence.

Then again, as with teenagers everywhere we're dealing with Facebook addicts...which brings us to the most diabolically genius aspect of the world's largest social network: you can never blame Facebook for anything, because Facebook doesn't actually do anything. It's the electronic equivalent of poster board: does anyone ever blame the walls to which swastikas are glued? How can you blame Facebook for what people post on it? A few minor legal skirmishes notwithstanding, this seems to be the position from which we will go forward.

Aye, there is the rub: this sort of communication is here to stay, to be put to good and bad use, as (increasingly capable) users see fit. This time it was a stupid rumor about school scheduling, and the result was a bunch of overturned cars, some damaged property and a few kids spending a couple of hours in jail. It was a page five news story, just filler material for everyone who wasn't directly implicated in the "protests." But what will it be the next time the world's collective Poindexter sets down his silicone and turns his impressive technological know-how to manipulating the captive Facebook audience? The possibilities are endless. And terrifying.

Hmm. I guess I should go put this blog on Facebook so more people will see it.